There is a very real systemic problem with police not being held accountable for their actions. It’s pretty similar to the way pedophilic priests have been protected from consequences for their actions.
This is a problem with the operation and priorities of the justice system, and it very clearly is the job of the executive branch to fix it. Protesting the flag is the correct and appropriate approach here.
And as protests go, it’s the absolutely most respectful protest ever. They’re kneeling before the thing. They’re saying they can’t stand for what it represents, but they still honor it and beseech it to do better. I can think of no better way to say that they love their country - certainly it conveys it more than some fuckstick who declares that everyone must stand, because patriotism is run by a dictatorship now!
If they were really disrespecting the country, they would be burning the flag, not kneeling before it.
I can’t say this is because I am liberal, but my response to the flag is that it has no inherent meaning other than “this is the flag of the United States.” So I find it bizarre that people will take away any other meaning than the one the people say they mean. Because there is no other one.
It’s just a flag. There’s no magic there. Disrespecting it won’t cause a god to shoot you with fire. It harms no one, and being forced to honor it is unfair to our ideas of freedom. These things we do are just traditions, not anything that has any intrinsic value.
It’s not that the flag is oppressive. It’s that it’s just a flag. It’s not an object of worship, but a symbol for the U.S., same as the words “The United States of America.” If I didn’t stand up when I wrote that, am I not patriotic?
When did kneeling become less respectful than standing? Don’t we kneel in church? Isn’t that done because it’s more respectful than just standing? How is kneeling before something, your God, your Pope, your grandparents disrespectful?
I think the answer is it’s not. Just like removing statues to the defenders of racism, isn’t ‘erasing’ that history. Or demanding justice for those wrongly killed by police is being anti police. Abortion isn’t murder, it’s perfectly legal. Just because the Right wants these things to be truth, doesn’t make it so. Saying it doesn’t make it so.
You know who is always showing 100% respect for their flag, under threat of prosecution? North Koreans.
It’s worth recalling that some substantial proportion of Americans have authoritarianism-craving brains. (This appears to be the case for all nations; it appears to be a species-wide phenomenon.)
For people who crave a Great Father and strict hierarchy and strict rules by which the hierarchy is enforced, “standing for the anthem” and “saluting the flag” are not what they are to less authoritarianism-oriented people. For those who don’t crave the Great Father, standing for the anthem and saluting the flag are merely symbolic stand-ins for what may be a very real appreciation for the nation’s history and for the people who made it, from the Founders to the military to the guy down the block who went out of his way to help out following a hurricane or other disaster.
But to the authoritarian-oriented brain, the anthem and the flag aren’t merely symbols—they are things-in-themselves. “Disrespecting” them provokes both terror and outrage, because such “disrespect” threatens to endanger the hierarchy.
There’s probably no amount of reasonable discussion that can dissuade an authoritarianism-craver from believing that ‘disrespecting’ the flag or anthem isn’t a national emergency. It’s just the way their brains work.
When the announcement is made “Ladies and Gentlemen, please stand up for the National Anthem of the United States of America”. Was that supposed to be a trick question?
I know it’s Great Debates, not General Questions, but really, that sort of answer ought to at least carry with it the disclaimer: I’m pulling the following opinion totally out of my …
There are plenty of people who view the flag as symbolic not only of the country, but of the values and ideals they attach to our country. Like Liberty, or Freedom, or Apple Pie. So if you are disrespecting the flag, you are disrespecting the value that they cherish, in their mind. Which has nothing to do with craving a “Great Father”.
The either/or fallacy: either it’s this one thing that I say it is, or it’s this other thing I say it is. There are no other interpretations.
Except, of course, that there are, like this one: Our country is a great country that has issues that need to be addressed.
Or this one:
Our country is a great country that has more than a few bad cops.
Or this one:
Our country is a great country, but its president is a man who disrespected my teammates, so I’m going to show solidarity by kneeling with them.
The majority of the NFL players who took a knee last Sunday were, if you’ll recall, doing so in reaction to Trump’s tweets: hence the huge increase in those kneeling.
My point was that those who feel emotional about “respecting” the flag (by performing some physical actions and not other physical actions) differ in a fundamental way from those who, as I said, believe that:
Such people feel no particular outrage or uneasiness when, say, a football player kneels instead of standing. They feel no particular outrage or uneasiness because they don’t have the sort of mind that sees a threat in the kneeling; instead, they may pause to consider the merits of the particular protest demonstration underway, while reflecting on the value of a culture that not only permits peaceful protest, but enshrines it as a founding virtue of the republic.
But others do feel outrage. They see threat. They cannot pause to consider the value of peaceful protest, because their minds are consumed with their indignation and wrath.
My post was intended to convey the concept that these are two different types of minds. That concept is more than my “opinion,” as any cursory search will reveal.
For some helpful objective information on the topic, try:
The research of J. Weiler and M. Hetherington; this is a lay-friendly presentation:
Trial lawyers are very much aware of the personality-type divisions and the effect they can have on jury selection. This is a review of research on many aspects of jury decision making; the discussion of “high-authoritarian” jurors versus other types begins on page 53: http://ai2-s2-pdfs.s3.amazonaws.com/5cf0/c05cf4cf27e3912ecaeddac03d71b01d4532.pdf
It may be the case that you don’t want to believe that there is such a thing as the authoritarianism-oriented personality type, but in fact there is copious supportive research available exploring the concept; enough, certainly, to show that this isn’t merely my “opinion.”
Or this one: We have no business spending our time and effort thinking about whether we are “great” as a country.
We should take satisfaction in accomplishments, but not because they make us “great” or not. Our concern and goal and our constant struggle should be to identify what can be improved and take steps to improve those things.
We should alsways be thinking about what we should be doing for others and never about how good we are.
We should recognize individuals for what they do to improve things for others but we should never extend that to honoring ourselves as a group, and we should never allow recognition of an individual’s good deeds to allow him or her to be elevated as an object of veneration.
Saluting the flag amounts to a ceremony of group self-love, which is something we should strictly avoid. Our eyes should always be on what can be made better, not how good we are, especially compared to others.
Nothing should be venerated, nothing should be worshiped, especially if it amounts to self-congratulation.
Very lofty, but perhaps a tad unrealistic, given human psychology, sociology, etc. For instance, social identity theory holds that we maintain healthy self-esteem in part by seeing (realistically or not) our mutual in-group’s good (or great) qualities. I’m not sure that can be limited to seeing our in-group’s merely-OK qualities.
And then there’s the sticky business of taking satisfaction in accomplishments–but not because they make us “great.” How about if they make us satisfactory?
What we should do and what we can do are, alas, not always the same.
Well what we certainly can do is stop staging public rituals to praise ourselves, especially at commercial performances. There’s nothing unrealistic about that.
Interesting, since you didn’t officially have a national anthem until 1931.
No, everyone (well, most Americans) accept the arbitrary practice of standing for the anthem and consider it a gesture of respect. If the long-standing arbitrary practice had been to kneel, that would be considered the way to pay respect.
Maybe they respect the country but want it to know it can do better. There’s certainly a lot of room for improvement.