Hillary Clinton has asked for the Navy to be sent to devastated Puerto Rico, which is part of America.
Trump, by contrast, diverted the country's attention from his malgovernance by picking a stupid fight with some football players -- who, in my view, did nothing wrong. And even if they had done something wrong, football is of trifling importance compared to what's going on in Puerto Rico. Football is a game. Puerto Rican disaster relief is a matter of life and death for thousands of people.
Trump wants us to believe that certain football players showed insufficient patriotism. I say that if Trump were a patriot, he'd devote his efforts to saving Puerto Rico.
Where do these Trumpers get the idea that they have the right to lecture us on patriotism? They're all half in love with the idea of secession. Many of them hate the majority of their fellow citizens with a burning, unreasoning passion.
On some pro-Trump boards, I've seen expressions of vehement hatred directed against the United States -- against the very concept of the USA. I've never seen such zealous anti-Americanism on any left-wing website. One can only hope that the Alt Right fulminators are actually Russian trolls.
And they dare to speak to us of patriotism? They claim to care about the flag and the anthem, but these things are just symbols. A symbol is not the Thing-In-Itself. The Trumpers don't like democracy, and they aren't willing to aid the destitute. That's not patriotism.
9 comments:
Sadly, I don't think it's Russian trolls (though I'm sure they are jumping on this opportunity as well). I've see a few people on FB that I'm "friends" with complaining loudly about those "disrespectful" and "unAmerican" players. As if anything is more American than protesting injustice. Of course, they all seem to think they are protesting America and the flag, not injustice, because it takes a sports controversy to rouse them from their ignorance and smug, fact free love of Der Fuhrer......um, I mean Trump.
Protesting injustice is American? Trumpers can't think. Why would they care about the Yankee flag anyway? Agreed that what they dislike is the public display of disrespect to Il Duce, especially when it's participated in or led by black people and it happens at stupid cult-of-strength sports events that they consider to be their own domain.
Trump praised NASCAR and its fans for standing up for the flag and the country.
The Confederate flag is a common sight at NASCAR races. Maybe Trump thinks NFL games show the Confederate flag and that the South won the Civil War?
NASCAR star has already sided against Trump. Whatever topic Trump is grandstanding on WE should hound him and the media to focus on the issues instead. We are complicit in this if we do not.
Prowlerzee is correct: Trump deflects and distracts when the political games curve away from him, be it failure to shepherd in a major piece of legislation, poor polling numbers, thundering silence on how to recover Puerto Rico (hello, American citizens), or the unsavory, increasingly heated info from the Russian investigation. He's gone so far as to rile up additional racial furor with the NFL shout out, acting like an adolescent bully to match North Korea's adolescent bully. Trump is all about misdirecting the public's attention to something else, hoping the glare of sunlight passes over him. It's worked brilliantly for him in the past.
It's the job of the media and the public to keep the skylights wide open. It's the only Trump antidote: facts and the continuous glare of public scrutiny.
Peggysue
Partly right, Peggysue. Trump distracts from political issues and any personal focus that might cause others to reject him. But if he can garner the right attention from a major sector of the public then he is willing to initiate controversy and make himself the public focus. A case in point is the NFL. Trump was seeking to hijack the mantle of the guardian of patriotism. Had he been successful with the teams and the NFL leadership then Fox News would have carried the theme. Many of the public would have fallen in line. Later, he could have found ways to debase those who had supported him. This is his style: find a motherhood theme that many can agree with, enlist their support, and then degrade and debase those people as he has done with so many others. It's all about feeding his narcissistic need to control and abuse people. In order to enlist those people so he can later abuse them he has to adopt a high public profile. Yes, he's distracting from embarrassments elsewhere but for Trump the only game in town is psychologically capturing people so he can own and abuse them. The public policy issue is almost irrelevant to him.
Since no-one else has mentioned it here, Trump has history with the NFL. He tried to muscle in, and he was stopped. Knowing what we know about Trump, it's safe to say he has long harboured a hatred against them for that reason.
Who controls the NFL? I know with the National Hockey League it's supposed to be the Russian mafia. Are they in US "football" too?
Differing attitudes towards patriotism can and do get used by competing business interests.
b, gavan -- I think what stunned me most in all of this was Trump's declaration that the sport was being "ruined" by new rules designed to lessen the possibility of head injury. He wants players to shut up about politics and -- literally -- to kill themselves for his entertainment. I think that the racial component to this is undeniable.
My first instinct was to compare Trump to the mad Roman emperor Commodus, who loved to see gladiators in battle. But there's an important difference: Commodus, on occasion, would actually enter the arena and do combat personally.
Trump's personal mental problems work so well in his role as front man for the push by big business for an ever more brutal society, less regulation, let the "losers" eat dirt, etc. This is also assisted by the truly foul show "Game of Thrones" which has become an unprecedentedly influential cultural force for a TV show, and also by Google and Yahoo which practically ever day run headlines saying "Baby filmed falling on railway tracks" and the like. Meanwhile these hugely influential companies describe the SITE-okayed headchopper etc. videos in schizoid fashion, inciting a psychotic mix of disgust, prurience and enjoyment.
What is fact and what is fiction? How many youngsters with their smartphones, living in Facebook world, in which concepts of "liking", "friendship" and "sharing" have been degraded through the floor, can even ask the question? I'm sure if football players start to get killed in these "games", the media will run stories that combine an encouragement to watch gory, obscene, horrific footage with the superficial (ever more superficial) incitement of "caring" thoughts, references to how the dead athlete left a young family, etc. Until the next real-life video comes out that is even more brutal.
The envelope is being pushed. Something must be done. Sooner or later Pope Francis will weigh in, has got to weigh in. He is about the only person in an established office of leadership who at the moment can.
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