I was rather astonished that the Vice-President -- I forget his name -- decided to leave a football game today because he could not endure attending an event where some performers had supposedly failed to honor all those who had died on behalf of the American flag.
I suppose I'm not smart enough to know what all the fuss is about. My ultimate trial came during Desert Storm, and, frankly, it ranks very low compared to whatever others endured during the invasion of Iraq. As a veteran, I do not see my identity as particularly tied to the US flag. I understand semiotics and symbolism; I acknowledge the value of a symbol. That value, however, exists only as a product of contention: a negotiation among the people it represents. Some people revere it as they would the limb of some dead saint; others call what it symbolizes into question. That is how it necessarily must be, and it doesn't offend me one way or the other.
What is bizarre, however, is this notion that merely kneeling rather than standing during the national anthem (a strange, arguably racist hymn) somehow desecrates the flag itself. I suppose that this must be what the Vice-President meant when he departed the football match in a patriotic huff. No, I don't get it.
Kneeling, if anything, is probably in historical terms one of the more significant gestures of loyalty. One normally kneels to one's superior. A Catholic kneels before the crucifix to signify reverence. What might be arguably unique is the notion that kneeling signifies a kind of protest. In the here and now, however, kneeling is fundamentally a sign of reverence, but reverence to what? Reverence, perhaps, to an American ideal that the United States has failed to realize? Maybe. Let's go with that. Let's go with the notion that those football players are saying with their gesture that they reverence an American ideal that remains unrealized. There are many good arguments -- actually, they require little to no argument at all -- to the effect that the United States has failed to live up to its principles when it come to a lot of matters, but what does matter is here is race. The US -- all of us -- do not live up to our principles when it comes to race. And so some football players kneel during the playing of the national anthem to signal this fact. Nothing else.
Of course, the willingness to engage in this has increased since the President called those kneeling football players sons of, well, whatever flows off of his tongue too easily for a President. I'd suggest that the increased willingness to kneel is related to a desire to defy the President. The underlying symbolism remains: to signal America's failure to live up to its ideals. Police killing black folks. That's what it was about. All politics simplify, so I accept that this is simplifying, reductionist in some sense, but it still rings true. And that is enough.
So here comes the Vice-President, the supposed honorable balance to a vulgar and evil President. Wrapping the flag around himself, the Vice-President claims that he cannot bear to attend a football game in which some men, mostly black men, kneel during the national anthem because this dishonors veterans and those who died for the flag.
I hear this and I wonder what kind of world am I living in. Mere kneeling does nothing to dishonor my own service, let alone the sacrifice of anyone else. I truly fail to understand that. Kneeling, if anything, has always meant the exact opposite: honor to something higher. Moreover, I wonder this about the Vice-President: does he truly feel that black men, or, more broadly speaking, anyone concerned about the ability of the United States to live up to its ideal, should just shut up? What is the supposedly proper means of voicing concern? Should folks confine themselves to humble letters addressed to the occupant of the White House?
Has Mike Pence truly sold his soul to the presidency he serves? That really is the question. I have read in various news feeds that people think Pence is some kind of principled man. The supposed adult in the room. Well, what is to be seen? Is there any evidence that Pence has been anything but a complete Judas who, for 30 pieces of silver in the form of an office to be valued as nothing more than a bucket of warm piss, has with ever increasing enthusiasm sold himself to the President's vague purposes.
My point is that with this kneeling business, the Vice-President's duty really should have been to offer a message of unity. What would it have cost him to watch the game and either say nothing about the kneeling or say that it was part of the American tradition. Instead, his approach has not been honorable as the hopeful expected who knew him before he succumbed to the moral sewer that is this Presidency with its flow of excreta, but rather his approach has been to be at one with the leader from whom he apparently draws new meaning and purpose. Power is intoxicating, I suppose. Morals and principle, less so.
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