The unity thing

 It's not about the song. It's not about the flag. It's not about The Troops.

Man, am I tired of writing that. Man, are you tired of me writing that.

But a certain segment of America needs to hear it and keep hearing it, I've decided, until they hear it. They can boo when players kneel with their arms linked during the National Anthem, claiming they're disrespecting America even though the act of kneeling has never been associated with disrespect. They can even tell those kneeling to "get the hell out of the country," as Mike Ditka did the other day, dredging up the oldest refrain in the book for those who don't want to be reminded that America can always be better than it is.

I get where those folks are coming from. I do. Especially in matters of race, an area where America could always be better, they do not want to be reminded that the Greatest Nation On The Face Of The Earth still hasn't solved the problem after 400 years.

Much easier to deny there is a problem. Much easier not to be made to feel uncomfortable, which is what happens when all those players kneel. 

So they boo even the most innocuous gestures of unity. They haul out the tattered old "America, love it or leave it," refrain, never considering that perhaps it's the folks who want America to live up to its cherished ideals who are actually the ones who love America most.

They want their dancing minstrels to dance. They don't want them to think, or to make anyone who watches them think.

It's a theory. It may not be a wholly accurate theory, but it's mine and I'm stickin' to it.

Been thinking about this since other night, when the Chiefs and Texans didn't kneel but stood, and not just the Black players but all of them, and not during the anthem but after it. And they still got booed.

Then I read this on Deadspin. And it made me wonder how all those folks I've just been writing about are going to take the news that the players might understand more about America and what makes it Great than every person who ever donned a MAGA hat. 

See, they didn't care if Jonathan Isaac or Meyers Leonard or Gregg Popovich or Becky Hammonds stood for the anthem. They cared where their hearts were, not their knees. And if Isaac, a Black man, and Leonard, a white man, got abuse from the left wing of the Outrage Brigade for doing what they did, they got nothing but support from their teammates.

"His being out there with us, as out brother, it's still showing strength, it's still showing unity, it's still showing we're coming together for a common cause," Udonis Haslem, Leonard's teammate on the Miami Heat, told the Associated Press. "People will question, 'Why isn't he doing it their way?' Well, he's standing by us. He's supporting us. He's with us."

And Leonard, who donated $100,000 to Black areas of Miami hit hard by COVID?

"I believe in my heart I did the right thing," he said. "Our world right now is black and white. There is a line in the sand, and it says if I don't kneel, then I'm not with Black Lives Matter. That is not true."

So he stands, with a teammate's arm locked around each of his knees. And what does the love-it-or-leave-it crowd do with that? Do they boo Meyers Leonard anyway, because he's not standing for the right reason?

And do they then not reveal what we've long suspected, which is that it's not about the flag or the song or The Troops for them, either? 

Do they then not reveal it's the politics -- the legitimacy of systemic racism -- with which they have a problem?

As if they haven't already revealed that.