To Kneel or Not To Kneel-That's Not the Question

Source: Weekly Standard | September 26, 2017 | Matthew Betley

Instead of arguing about NFL players kneeling during the national anthem, we ought to be trying to understand one another.

I deployed to Iraq from 2006 to 2007, during a time when every single day you worried that a random IED, rocket, or mortar attack would take your life. (Al Anbar province was a bad place to be in those days.) Yet Sundays were special. Because on Sundays, the Armed Forces Network would broadcast as many NFL games as possible.

Each of us watched, knowing that in some small way, deployed to a hostile combat zone, what we did helped preserve the American way of life that we all hold dear, including the NFL and our favorite teams. The games gave us something to cling to during a time when everything else was uncertain, including whether or not you would see the next day. Even when nearly everyone around you wanted you dead, you always had Sundays with the NFL to make you feel like you were home for a couple of hours. That might sound extreme or irrational—trust me, it was an extreme and often irrational place to be—but the morale boost and patriotic significance of those Sunday games cannot be overstated.

Today, I’m a former Marine officer, and when I think about those Sundays and my time in the Corps, the national anthem takes on an incredible amount of personal and patriotic significance to me. It’s important, not just as a symbol, but as something real and tangible and part of me.

Which is why I was kind of outraged last season when Colin Kaepernick started the kneeling controversy. “How could anyone think it’s acceptable to kneel during the anthem?” I thought. “It’s unpatriotic, disrespectful, and offensive to every single one of us who wore a uniform and stepped up to serve our great nation.”

The only kneeling I saw during my deployments was at memorials for fallen Marines and soldiers. To me, the question of whether or not Kaepernick was being disrespectful was easy. Or at least it was easy when it started.

Then on Friday, the president of the United States, a man I fully supported in the last election, attacked the NFL players who’ve been kneeling, and did so with abusive language. The players—indeed, the entire league—responded in kind, because that’s what men in the NFL (and in the military, I might add) do when attacked. We hit back. And since yesterday, the hits have kept on coming. The president has doubled down on his position; the players and the league, theirs. And the media, of course, seems to relish in the chaos.

And so I started to ask myself a simple question: Why? Why now, in the middle of the most serious tensions we’ve had in years with North Korea, attempts to fix healthcare, multiple natural disasters, and the most divisive political and cultural landscape I can remember? Why is this the number one issue of the day, overshadowing things that could literally end our lives? (I’m looking at you, Nuclear Armageddon.) And this morning I realized that it’s for the same reason I had 11 years ago in Iraq: Because it’s personal for every single one of us.

Unless you’ve walked in my shoes, you don’t know what it’s like to be a Marine officer in a combat zone, a recovering alcoholic, or a writer struggling to break out. Those conditions are unique to me, and you can’t tell me how I should feel about them or about things that I perceive to be attacks on them. But on the flip side, I can’t tell you what it’s like to be a young African-American who now plays for the NFL, but who grew up in an adverse environment. I can’t know what your life experience is like, because it’s unique to you.

……

Which is why I believe we all need to take a step back, regroup, and figure out how to do the most difficult thing of all: find a middle ground and move forward to meet in it.

…….

I don’t have the answers. No one person does. But someone needs to start acting like an adult and try to bring civil discourse back to this country and our favorite game.

It’s not just what’s best for the league, the players, and the president—it’s what best for all of us as fans, Americans, and human beings.

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