Echoing the younger son's lack of material concern, Kaepernick has said, "I am not looking for approval. I have to stand up for people that are oppressed. " If they take football away, my endorsements from me, I know that I stood up for what is right."
In response to Kaepernick's audacity, patriarchal authority figures came out of the woodwork not only to denounce his point about cops killing unarmed black people, but to connect his protest with patriotism and the military.
"Many have given their lives defending the freedom and justice the flag stands for," they all repeated. "Kaepernick is slapping all those brave service men and women in the face. If he doesn't like it here, let him move to Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea or Russia. Then he'll come to his senses."
The shrillness of such reaction, suggests that the powers that be might be deathly afraid themselves -- afraid that the rest of us might see Kaepernick's point and start following his example.
What if we all suddenly grasped the BLM message. What if we realized that our military isn't really defending us from anything, but instead is at the service of international corporations intent on stealing the resources of poor countries especially these days in the Middle East? What if we started reading and discussing General Smedley Butler's War Is a Racket? What if we drew obvious conclusions from Fallujah, Haditha, Abu Ghraib, and the fact that the Pentagon can't account for $6.5 trillion of our tax money?
Such realizations might force many of us to remain seated during the pre-game rituals that reek so much of patriarchal machismo and pure propaganda. And that might lead to political rebellion, refusal to pay taxes, and formation of parties representing alternatives to Democrats and Republicans.
In other words, Colin Kaepernick has taken a small step. But because of his courage we're all better off, and our country's false reality is correspondingly weakened.
Imagine football fans all over the country wearing their Kaepernick jerseys and refusing to stand for "The Star-Spangled Banner." That would be a start towards those other more radical measures I mentioned.
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