It was Samuel Johnson who first coined the above phrase. Watch the brief video embedded below to see how germane it is today:
.@POTUS on NFL owners: When it comes to the respect of our anthem and flag, they have no choice. You have to have people stand with respect. pic.twitter.com/ApAuTFjAvY
UPDATE: Pursuant to The Mound's timely observation in the comment section, here is what Mrs. Betty Bowers has to say about the American national anthem:
I think it is indisputable that thanks to the online world of social media, civil discourse has been hobbled. If, for example, one reads comments in newspapers or in public Facebook posts, usually the second or third person will lapse into tired, unimaginative words and phrases such as libtard, social justice warrior, communist, cuck, etc. I, as I am sure many others, have received my share of such insults and even threats when voicing a view that inflames the rabid right. It is all part of the territory.
I have always shrugged off such 'commentary' mainly because I consider the sources of such reactionary vituperation unworthy of my time and emotions. What they lack in intellectual rigour and ideas they try to compensate for in juvenile disparagement. And I am also aware that when one writes publicly, one is 'fair game' for anyone with an opinion, no matter how benighted that opinion might be.
But what about those who allegedly serve the public, our politicians and journalists? Judging by what I read in the paper, the latter receive such abuse regularly and simply accept it, however odious it might be, as the cost of doing business. It appears, however, that the political class is starting to feel otherwise, and what they are considering, at least in Britain, should give us all pause.
The British Electoral Commission is suggesting a measure against those who harass or threaten politicians online. It is a suggestion with quite disturbing implications.
Banning social media trolls from voting could help reduce the amount of abuse faced by politicians, the election watchdog has said.
The Electoral Commission says legislation around elections should be reviewed and new offences could be introduced.
“In some instances electoral law does specify offences in respect of behaviour that could also amount to an offence under the general, criminal law. It may be that similar special electoral consequences could act as a deterrent to abusive behaviour in relation to candidates and campaigners,” it states.
Make no mistake about it. The abuse politicians are subjected to can be horrendous. Here are but a few examples:
Diane Abbott, Labour
The MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington receives sexist and racist abuse online on a daily basis.
Writing for the Guardian, Abbott said she had received “rape threats, death threats, and am referred to routinely as a bitch and/or nigger, and am sent horrible images on Twitter”.
The death threats include an EDL-affiliated account with the tag “burn Diane Abbott”, she said.
Luciana Berger, Labour
The MP for Liverpool Wavertree has been subjected to repeated antisemitic and misogynistic abuse online.
A man who harassed Berger was in December jailed for two years after a trial at the Old Bailey. Joshua Bonehill-Paine, 24, wrote five hate-filled blogs about Berger, calling her a “dominatrix” and “an evil money-grabber” with a “deep-rooted hatred of men”. In one, he claimed the number of Jewish Labour MPs was a “problem”.
Stella Creasy, Labour
Creasy, MP for Walthamstow, has been subjected to repeated misogynistic abuse.
Peter Nunn, 33, from Bristol, was in 2014 jailed for 18 weeks for bombarding Creasy with abusive tweets after she supported a successful campaign to put the image of Jane Austen on the £10 note. He retweeted menacing posts threatening to rape the MP and branding her a witch.
None of the above assaults on public servants can be either condoned or countenanced. However, in my view, the suggested 'cure,' removing an offender's right to vote, is in many ways worse than the disease. And given that legal remedies already exist (fines, jail terms) for the worst offenders, it is an overreach of gargantuan magnitude.
I won't insult my readers by discussing at length the obvious here, but can you imagine such a sanction taking hold and spreading to other jurisdictions? I wonder how a demagogue like Donald Trump, for example, would feel about the voting rights of those who openly question his sanity or oppose his agenda? Would he deem them abusers who should suffer the ultimate sanction against democratic free speech? Or what about those who 'show disrespect for the flag' by taking a knee during the anthem?
In other jurisdictions, would those who oppose neoliberal government policies such as austerity find that their online criticisms have rendered them impotent citizens? Could environmentalists who oppose pipeline expansions be deemed 'enemies of the economy' and thus unfit to cast a ballot? One only has to use a bit of imagination here to come up with an array of scenarios that ultimately could render societies far more dystopian than many are today.
While such concerns as the above might be dismissed by some as ludicrous, just consider how badly real democracy has suffered in the last few decades before dismissing them out of hand.
Many say that creeping fascism is on the rise today. The suggested British initiative, if it ever takes hold in the western world, will surely take us down a path so dark that any sane person would seek to avoid it at all costs.
Nothing says more about the American political establishment's attitude on health care than this video of the handicapped being manhandled and ejected during a protest at a Senate committee hearing yesterday:
Continuing with yesterday's theme, here are some scenes from Sunday's sports contests that show increasing numbers of players refusing to stand for Donald Trump and America's racism by either taking a knee or linking arms in solidarity.
The New England Patriots:
The Oakland Raiders:
The Jacksonville Jaguars:
Perhaps Bruce Maxwell, the first MLB player to take a knee, said it best:
The point of my kneeling is not to disrespect our military. It's not to disrespect our constitution. It's not to disrespect our country. My hand was over my heart because I love this country. I've had plenty of family members, including my father, that have bled for this country, that continue to serve for this country. At the end of the day, this is the best country on the planet. My hand over my heart symbolized the fact that I am and will forever be an American citizen, and I'm ore than forever grateful for being here. But my kneeling is what is getting the attention, because I'm kneeling for the people that don't have a voice. This goes beyond the black community. This goes beyond the Hispanic community. Because right now we're having a racial divide in all types of people. It's being practices from the highest power that we have in this country, and he's basically saying that it's O.K. to treat people differently. My kneeling, the way I did it, was to symbolize the fact that I'm kneeling for a cause, but I'm in no way or form disrespecting my country or my flag.
Only the supremely naive would think that the extollment of athleticism is a central operating principle in professional sports. While at one time there might have been some purity to the contests, today it is all about making money, often obscene amounts, for the owners and agents of these present-day gladiators, or, as some have called them, slaves, albeit well-compensated ones.
Slaves, of course, are regarded as property, and one only has to look at the more violent sports to see that the analogy holds true. Football, despite the increasingly well-known risks of CTE (chronic traumatic encephalopathy) caused by repeated concussions, continues apace, as do hockey, boxing and a myriad of other sports that leave a legacy of early dementia, violent behaviour, and even suicide.
None of these facts will change the nature or the practice of these sports. Business is business, violence is violence, and fans would not have it any other way.
But in light of the great physical and mental consequences of such contests, it occurs to me that players can make their shortened lives and intellectual diminishment mean something. They can all take a stand by taking a knee. They can all be Colin Kaepernick and much, much more.
There are a few hopeful signs on the horizon. A few weeks ago, in a preseason game between the Cleveland Browns and the New York Giants, a white player, for the first time, took a knee.
As the anthem sounded, several Browns players knelt in what they later said was prayer. Among them was Seth DeValve, who is white and whose wife is African-American.
"I wanted to support my African-American teammates today who wanted to take a knee," he said in a post-game interview. "We wanted to draw attention to the fact that there's things in this country that still need to change."
Up to this point, taking the knee has been an act, not to disrespect the American anthem, but to protest the racism Blacks regularly experience at the hands of the authorities. Now, in light of Donald Trump's absolutely disgraceful remarks about sports figures, both at his Huntsville cult-gathering, and his childish and ongoing tweets afterwards, I believe the gesture needs to spread to all altheles and take on new meaning as a protest against the toddler in the White House whose only mission seems to be to spread division and discord.
And there are some hopeful signs in that more and more athletes are starting to speak out. Lebron James, in response to Trumpian tweets about NBA champion Stephen Curry's refusal to join his team at the White House, had this to say in a tweet directed at the Trump:
U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain't going! So therefore ain't no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!
Sports have often been looked upon as helping to unite countries. The fact that little unity exists in the United States is ample testament to the simple-mindedness of that idea. But, I believe there is a window of opportunity here in which athleticism can transcend itself.
What I have written here is probably mere wishful thinking and will likely, for various reasons, never have a hope in hell of being realized. Nonetheless, can you imagine the effect that such demonstrations of cross-cultural and cross-racial solidarity might have? At the very least, it could provoke some much-needed discussion about the state of America, and at the most, it could help increasing numbers understand that the madman they put in the White House has no place there.
This is a cost-benefit analysis surely worth undertaking.
UPDATE: Bravo, Steve Kerr. The Golden State Warriors' coach had some harsh words for Donald Trump yesterday:
“The idea of civil discourse with a guy who is tweeting and demeaning people and saying the things he’s saying is sort of far-fetched,” Kerr stated. “Can you picture us really having a civil discourse with him?”
“How about the irony of, ‘Free speech is fine if you’re a neo-Nazi chanting hate slogans, but free speech is not allowed to kneel in protest?'” Kerr added. “No matter how many times a football player says, ‘I honor our military, but I’m protesting police brutality and racial inequality,’ it doesn’t matter. Nationalists are saying, ‘You’re disrespecting our flag.’ Well, you know what else is disrespectful to our flag? Racism. And one’s way worse than the other.”
When Kim Jong-Un recently labelled Donald Trump a "dotard," not only did it demonstrate that the North Korean madman has a better vocabulary than the American Toddler-in-Chief, it also served as an apt description of a man intent on making the world in general, and the United States in particular, an increasingly perilous place to reside. Here is a man whose stream-of-consciousness tweets and rants serve only the interests of chaos and destruction.
Take, for example, Trump's 'thoughts' on Colin Kaepernick, the NFL quarterback that I recently wrote about. Because he chose to kneel last season instead of stand for the American national anthem to protest American racism, he has been subjected to a form of economic terrorism as punishment. After declaring himself a free agent after last season, he has not been hired by any other team.
Not content to bring the world closer to nuclear war, Trump now has Kaeperniak in his sights. Here is what the dotard had to say at a rally in Huntsville, Alabama last night:
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘get that son of a bitch off the field right now. He is fired. He’s fired!,'” Trump shouted to a cheering audience.
Trump's contemptuous message is simply: Americans have nothing to apologize for, and they need not examine either their past or their present racism, because all is right with the world as long as you respect the flag.
As my old literary friend, Hamlet, said,
Lay not that flattering unction to your soul
That not your trespass but my madness speaks.
It will but skin and film the ulcerous place
Whilst rank corruption, mining all within,
Infects unseen.
In other words, to ignore the cancer of racism and to simply see Kapernik's taking the knee as egregious disrespect for a national symbol ensures only that the cancer continues to grow and ultimately destroys the body politic.
To aggravate matters, Trump exults in the role he thinks has has played in Kaepernik's stalled career:
“It was reported that NFL owners don’t want to pick him up because they don’t want to get a nasty tweet from Donald Trump,” Trump told a cheering crowd in Kentucky this July. “Do you believe that? I just saw that. I just saw that.”
I will leave the final word here to Minnesota Right Back Bishop Sankey, who last night tweeted:
"It's a shame and disgrace when you have the President of the US calling citizens of the country sons of a bitches."
