American Nazis

I am sickened by the escalating chorus of American cultural authorities croaking out their cruel mindless nationalistic rebuke over Colin Kaepernick’s First Amendment freedom of expression decision to remain seated for the ubiquitous national anthem ritual at football games.  This man has hurt no one. He’s totally innocent of any wrongdoing. He’s merely sitting down. Yet the cultural Gestapo police are after him. They won’t be satisfied until he is punished.

I’ve listened with disgust to Bill O’Reilly, Eric Bolling and many other good Americans who I like, admire and respect, admitting on the one hand that Kaepernick enjoys a fundamental right to express his protest in that manner, but then calling for his substantial punishment on the other.

Today I heard Bolling opine at length on the O’Reilly Factor that if Kaepernick doesn’t want to stand up and respect the national anthem he should get out of America and go play football somewhere else. What does he think good Americans are supposed to be – a bunch of goddamned Nazis? 

That’s how Nazis think. That’s what Nazis do. They were all expected to stand up, salute and worship their nation; worship their swastika flag; and worship all that it stood for. Those who chose to do otherwise were punished severely.

I thought America was different than that. I thought that good Americans respected our Constitution and the Bill of Rights a whole lot more than a piece of cloth and a lousy poem written 200 years ago by a slave owner and anti-abolitionist.

That’s right. Francis Scott Key, the guy who wrote the Star Spangled Banner in 1814, was a slave owner – he actually owned black people and kept them as slaves – and he used his position of government authority as a U.S. Attorney to suppress abolitionists and the abolition of slavery movement.

In 1833, for example, he secured a grand jury indictment against Benjamin Lundy, editor of the anti-slavery publication, the Genius of Universal Emancipation, and his printer, William Greer, for libel after Lundy published an article that declared, "There is neither mercy nor justice for colored people in this district [of Columbia].”  Key held despicable ugly prejudices against Black people, once insisting that free Black men and women be sent back to Africa.

Now, I don’t agree with Kaepernick’s protest and his reason to remain sitting during the anthem, but never-mind that. I personally don’t like the national anthem either. It has horrible lyrics my opinion, and is set to a horrible tune which grates upon my ears every time I hear it. I feel no obligation to stand for it with my hand over my heart. Does that make me anti-American and unpatriotic? Hell no, it does not, nor does it when Kaepernick sits it out.

Be honest; how many of us only stand for the national anthem and that fascistic loyalty oath, the pledge of allegiance, so that the mob of cultural Nazis won’t get mad at us and make a scene? That stigma that they attempt to smear good Americans with is really nothing more than their inflated ideas of patriotism and nationalism of the kind that can, and often does, turn to mob violence.

Mindless nationalism of this kind – instilling blind rituals of patriotism in the minds of the masses -- is a means for the government authority to manipulate public opinion, solidify their power, and brainwash the populace. The same object is accomplished with instilling blind rituals of religion, e.g. our government God – the “In God We Trust” motto, and our “Nation Under God.”

Force fed nationalism, patriotism and religious ritual is dangerous to our rights and freedoms. Colin Kaepernick is simply expressing himself and bravely holding firm to what he believes in spite of the consequences; the ridicule, vitriol and prejudice thrown at him by the Nazi mob. That is truly what the United States of America stands for.

It’s the mob’s conduct that is un-American; not Kaepernick’s protest.

He’s just another victim of American Nazis.