I think it captures it quite well. It's like spitting on someone's traditions to them.
What I’ve heard most is, because the protesting players are being disrespectful. They’re disrespecting our flag. Disrespecting our country. Disrespecting our servicemen and women who’ve died defending our country and our flag.That’s what people say. But maybe there’s another reason.
Deep down what people really don’t like, whether they know it or not and whether they can admit it or not, is the players’ disrespecting them.
We love our country. We love our flag. We love what it stands for. We have a tradition of standing before the game to show that honor. It’s people’s own showing of respect that they don’t like being disrespected.
The fact is, though Americans are taught (used to be taught?) to revere the Bill of Rights, we don’t like protests. Especially not while a song glorifying our country is being sung, or a big flag being unfurled, or our military flying mightily overhead.
We may be willing to acknowledge generally that our country has made mistakes, but we don’t want to have to see, don’t want to have to think about, our specific imperfections, past or present. We don’t want to think about the implications of those imperfections, now or in the future. We know precisely the mistakes and imperfections these particular guys are protesting and a lot of people particularly don’t like seeing or thinking about that.
If we see, we might just see some things that aren’t good.
If we see, we might have to admit some things should change.
If we see, we might ourselves be changed. That’s what scares us.
This is why we don’t want protests where 75,000 of us are gathered on sunny Sundays celebrating our team and – in those singing, flag-waving, fly-over moments – our country’s greatness.
We like protests to happen at appointed places and times, off in some designated someplace we are not. Makes it easier to not see them.
We like protesters corralled into approved areas that are often called, cynically, “First Amendment Zones.†Makes it easier not to hear them.
Here’s something we might try at the next game. As our hearts fill with patriotic pride and our voices rise in that final crescendo about the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave – let’s see if we’re free enough and brave enough to risk seeing the things about our great country that challenge us.
That might make us uncomfortable.
That might rattle us in a different way than the jets flying overhead.