The kneeling is pretty deliberate. I think we are conflating intent and motive. You’re saying the motive is not to disrespect the flag or country (when I seems pretty clear at least in Kaepernick’s case that the kneeling is not being done out of respect for flag and country) but they are in fact kneeling intentionally. I see a difference between the motives of kaepernick and the larger demonstration of kneeling after Trump got involved. Kaepernick is at best protesting police brutality by refusing to stand for the national anthem because he can’t stand for a country where race based police brutality exists and worst he is cynically trying to extend a career that was about to flicker out. The recent kneeling of entire teams was (IMO) a response to the government telling employers to fire people based on a particular for of speech, this should be objectionable to probably everyone. YMMV I suppose
Well most white people support Trump and the audience at most NFL games is almost entirely white so its not a bad guess that most of the people there support Trump I suppose.
You misspelled “highly skilled entertainers whose talents and audience-drawing power enrich their employers by billions of dollars every year”.
I’m not much of a professional-sportsball fan myself, but I do know that professional athletes are doing something orders of magnitude more demanding and difficult than “children’s games”. And their work has massive impacts on our economy and our culture. Trying to demean them by making it sound as though their employers or fans are doing them some kind of favor by paying market value for their services is mere jealous spite (and, for anybody identifying as a fiscal conservative, thoroughly hypocritical).
Calling your country’s attention to systemic injustice isn’t “thumbing your nose” at it.
It’s the whiny soapbubbles who refuse to pay any attention to the actual issues involved who are disgracing their country, not the athletes who are using a humble and respectful posture as a gesture of protest against injustice.
ETA: Full disclosure: While I stand behind every word I wrote in this post, I can’t actually figure out where the post I quoted and replied to came from. Is it somewhere in this thread?