#takeanknee

[gsosa4realty]

#Repost @realdlhughley with @get_repost ・・・ The fact is... it’s NEVER comfortable speaking out. It takes courage and convict! #Salute @randygmoss for being a real one!! ✊🏾#TeamDL #randymoss #nfl #blacklivesmatter #imwithkap #policebrutality --- #takeanknee #takeastand #randymoss #salute

[megrimlocke]

Manhood, Flags, and Football

Football is a complicated sport.  Not in terms of what happens on the field, that part is distressingly dull in my opinion.  As a cultural phenomenon however it has so many fascinating interactions with masculine identity and matters of race that it bears consideration.

Let’s hit the masculine identity angle.  I know lots of people whose exercise or physical activity pattern could be described as “utterly sedate” or “ recreational in the best of times.”  Even in this new era where the fitness craze of the 80s and early aughts is back in force- each of which by the way interacted with masculine identity in its own way- there are yet many who are yet content to subscribe to athleticism by fandom.

Several years ago I was in the bathroom at work and overheard an exchange that gave me great concern for the state of masculinity as a virtue.

“Standing in front of the urinal talking about baseball, how much more manly can you get than that” the young many pondered.

My immediate reaction was “You could spear a boar in the forest, alone and bearing only your spear and your wits.  My but we’ve come down a long way in terms of rites of passage.”

But we really have come down further in terms of masculine virtue haven’t we.  Somehow athleticism (defined either literally or as a cultural construction whereby one appropriates it by wearing clothing that declares fandom and knowing things about the people who actually do it) and ability to get laid are the celebrated virtues until such time as the more classical ones are needed in an argument.

Consider this kneeling business.  I honestly cannot conceive of a more innocuous way to make a political statement.  I write letters to Rob Portman more aggressive that this.  They are football players.  I cannot think of a more celebrated class of athletes.  I cannot think of a more clear standard for the modern masculinity than the singing of their praises.  They’re both perfectly positioned to make such statements and have chosen a method so tame that the backlash they’re being subjected to is disgusting to me.

I’ve read about a restaurant some 45 minutes north of my hometown where they have decided to boycott the NFL “out of patriotism” and there is a restaurant here in town where if you stand for the anthem and remove your hat, your meal is half-off.  If you are a veteran it is free.

I posed to them the question of how this policy would be reconciled if I, a veteran, felt compelled to take a knee myself.  I’m still waiting for an answer.

Again, masculinity is in play, here as a bludgeon.  The erstwhile exemplars of masculinity that this lazy coward’s culture so idolized when they were merely spendthrift wife beaters and gamblers, adulterers and cheats are now cast aside as false idols since they have taken up the cause of fighting racism.  In a patriarchal system in which degree of masculinity, which these men exemplar, is a means to escape reproach, to what else can you turn to trump their man cards except with those who actually fight wars?

I take the greatest possible exception with being recruited against my will and without my consent to a cause that I detest.  Nevermind my disgust at some penny-ante diner trying to use jingoism as a means to rope people into sampling their shitty two dollar cheese sticks.  If you’re stupid enough to go in for that kind of thing and wave a flag that you don’t believe in in any meaningful way then that shame is on you.  That your “patriotism” needs an all-you-can-eat bargain platter to get you to stand for the anthem is your own filthy truth.

This offer attempts to steal my voice and the voices of all veterans who actively oppose or at the least disapprove of racism and find these protests to be morally praiseworthy.  Indeed in my opinion it may be the only morally praiseworthy thing the NFL has accomplished in my lifetime.  Lord knows it’s not going to be treating players well regarding concussions- which by the way also has interesting racial overtones regarding the ownership of one’s body and the responsibility of people who are literally called Owners.

Further, I’m disgusted by it because it’s just another appropriation by the unworthy.  You weren’t capable of playing football in any decent degree when you idolized them, you’re not patriotic enough or warrior enough to actually enlist now that you turn to us.  Your gratitude for my service is based in your assumption that I was fighting not for our country that we share with black people and transexuals and the puerto ricans an outrageous half of you have casually forgotten are citizens in their time of greatest need, you thanked me because you believed I was fighting for your country, in which my marriage rights do not exist and my friends are subhuman.

For the record, I wasn’t, and if you succeed in sparking the civil war you’re so gay for I won’t be on your side, and I would gladly kill you.  Maybe it’s better to just stick to unsubscribing from the NFL and posting to whatever Dark Web address you have to go to for Stormfront, maybe that’s more your speed.

Hell for my queerness I would be subhuman to you as well except that my whiteness, maleness, and my veterancy silence your disrespectful coward’s tongue.  You will of course appropriate some even more manly identity in your effort to respond to me.  Perhaps you have a friend who was infantry, maybe bringing him up and speaking on his behalf will make you seem like you have anything to say worthy of my ears.

The fact of the matter is that it is not who takes up the cause that gives a cause value but the righteousness of that cause that attract men and women of quality to it.

If I occasionally speak of civilians with disgust, it’s because of this.  More than anything, it’s because the standards of masculinity my life has established for me call for more than last night’s score or the ability to pass out after a progressively larger number of pints.  Because my standards for patriotism call for consistent voting attendance, kindness towards other citizens, and the willingness to put country and people before a quick buck, distaste for other citizens, or moral vanity.

I speak with disgust because you grasp at the shadows of patriotism and masculine virtue and put on the airs of it in order to prop up worldviews and systems that are consistently cowardly and greedy.  You’re not manly and you’re certainly not American to decry the peaceful protest of others, or to accept a form of our union that is less free and equitable than it could be.

Here’s a way to man up with true patriotism.  Make some personal sacrifice for something other than your filthy coward’s vanity.  Forgo some of your beer and shitty half-priced pizzas and instead invest in your fellow citizens who suffer in the Caribbean.

https://www.redcross.org/donate/hurricane-irma-donations