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Nine words. That's what this is about, really.

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

People will burn their Nike gear, because of those nine words. The super patriots, the ones who elect to see affront where none is being given, have already fired up #boycottnike on Twitter. They will cost the most corporate of entities market share because of those words, though it's doubtful such a monolith will be very much shaken by that. Our Only Available President, inconsequential though he is, will be sure to weigh in with some adolescent bloviation that distorts and distracts, because distortion and distraction are all he's got to offer.

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

That's what shows on the screen over a black-and-white image of Colin Kaepernick in Nike's latest "Just Do It" campaign.

 

That's what will have OOAP and his ilk up in arms, even though it's exactly the sort of message they'd be glad to impart to their own children, and one no thinking human could see as anything but noble and right. Especially in a nation born on the belief of so many who did sacrifice everything.

 

But not this time. Not with Colin Kaepernick delivering the message, Colin Kaepernick who in his own small way has also sacrificed much for something he believes.

 

He's not right about all of it, mind you. He's said and done things he shouldn't have. But when he knelt with his head bowed during the national anthem because he didn't think it was right people of color were being killed in situations where they shouldn't have been, and receiving prison sentences white people do not for the same crimes, he was displaying exactly what is best about this country. And what has always been one of its guiding principles. 

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

No sentiment is more American than that one.

 

And yet ...

 

And yet, because it is Kaepernick, and because what he is protesting is beyond the experience of those who don't look like him, it will be seen as something alien. It will be an occasion for outrage.

 

How dare Nike allow That Guy to deliver that message! How dare they!

 

And yet. And yet.

 

And yet, what he knelt to protest is happening. It is real. Just because it's not happening to you -- because  you were lucky enough to be born with a different pigmentation -- does not make it less so. 

 

We can debate the causes, and they are many. But we can't debate the fact that, if you are white, you're probably not going to get shot while reaching for your wallet. You're probably not going to get shot or beaten or choked to death simply for arguing with a cop. Your child is probably not going to wind up on a slab because he was playing with a cap gun in the park.

 

And if it does happen, you're probably going to get justice.

 

Kaepernick, and all those who followed suit, saw a fundamental unfairness in that. They saw a broken place in the American ideal. It's fair to debate whether or not the way they chose to protest  that is the right way, although doing it in the full glare of an NFL Sunday afternoon would seem to be the perfect way. And although OOAP's narrative -- that they were disrespecting America -- is as false as virtually everything else he says.

 

If the goal was disrespect, after all, there were a million better ways to do it: spitting in the direction of the flag, flipping it off, cursing loudly while the anthem is playing. But kneeling quietly with a bowed head? And in some cases with one hand over the heart?

 

Please.

 

Believe in something. Even if it means sacrificing everything.

 

Well, Colin Kaepernick does believe in something. And, if not everything, he has sacrificed a career worth hundreds of millions. And, as have so many of his peers, he has spent millions to back up his Sunday afternoon symbolism with real Monday-through-Friday activism.

 

You don't have to see the America he sees, simply because it's not in your realm of experience. And you don't have to respect the way he's gone about trying to make that America great again, as OOAP and his acolytes are so fond of saying.

 

But you do have to respect his instinct to do it. And acknowledge that he's as fit as anyone to deliver this particular corporate message.