Colin Kaepernick is going to continue sitting during the National Anthem.  Of course he is being lauded as brave for this disrespect of America and her National Anthem.  I have read a number of OpEds about how courageous  Kaepernick is for his protest.  I even read an article about why Jews should support Kaepernick – nothing incenses me to anger like ultra-left wing liberal Jews.

So allow me to wade into this issue and explain why Colin Kaepernick and the rest of the Progressive left is wrong on this.

I am not starry eyed about America.  I love my country, but as a student of history I know about her faults.  I also know about the history of the rest of the world and know that at every single point in American history, we have been more righteous and morally superior to  every other nation during at the same era.

If you want to talk about American exceptionalism, you need to start with the American Revolution.  The most startling aspect of the American Revolution was just how peaceful it was.  Yes, America was born of war.  But when the war was over, how many mass executions were there of Loyalists by Revolutionaries?  How many mass graves are there of Tories slaughtered for their beliefs?  The answer: ZERO.

Contrast that to the French Revolution, which started in 1789, the same year that the United States ratified the Constitution.  The French Revolution ended with the Reign of Terror and mass executions under the guillotine.  The Russian October Revolution brought about mass murder during the Red Terror.  The Khmer Rouge of Cambodia committed a genocide of over a million people in the Killing Fields.  Communist China came to power with a mass murder of 50 million in the Great Leap Forward.  I could do this all day long and this post would never end.  America’s tradition from colony to country by war is unique and exceptional in its complete lack of mass murder, torture, political reeducation, and dearth of civilian casualties.

Yes, America treated the Native Americans badly (to say the least), but as indigenous people go, the attempt to relocate native tribes and put them on reservations was mild and progressive for the time.  I am not excusing what was done, but we need to see what the rest of the world was doing to see just how mild our abuse of the natives was in comparison.  We don’t acknowledge the British genocide in India.  We don’t talk about the British mass murder in Africa or British atrocities in general.  We overlook the Belgian enslavement of Africans on rubber plantations, where if African slaves did not meet their quota of rubber, they would have their hands chopped off.  The west has overlooked the crimes against humanity committed by Imperial Japan in South Korea or China.

Yes, Britain abolished slavery in 1833, before the United States did in 1863.  But that only applied in Britain.  Forced labor of Africans in the colonies and forced labor of Indians wasn’t “slavery,” it was indentured servitude, which was OK by British standards until the 1940’s.

Kaepernick and Black Lives Matter are, of course, focused on the treatment of African Americans.  Democrats will state loudly and often that requiring a government issued ID to vote is voter suppression of blacks.  If you want to see black voter suppression, look at the history of the Sierra Leone where the Revolutionary United Front would chop off the right (and sometimes left) hand of people who wanted to vote against the RUF warlords.

This is what voter suppression looks like:

The athletes of the Oppression Olympics never talk about the atrocities of Sierra Leone, or the Congo, or the Congo again, or the Congo for a third time, or the torture of white farmers in Zimbabwe, or the Genocide of the Tutsi in Rwanda.  Again, this list could go on for days.

Of course, liberals often threaten to move to Canada when a Republican looks like they are going to win an election.  This is probably because Canada seems so nice and polite and progressive.  They don’t know or care that the Canadian government engaged in treatment of aboriginal Canadians that is just as bad if not worse than how America treated the Natives.  Canada also interred citizens of Japanese origin and did so until 1949, and then never paid restitution to them.  Oh, Canada.

This is where this post goes from the academic to the personal.

I grew up in Miami.  I attended an Episcopal high school.  I was not the only Jewish kid there.  There was a lot of us.  Also a lot of Catholic students.  Why?  Because the high school I went to was a top tier college prep school with a reputation of sending its graduates to elite universes.   The parochial nature of the school was second to its academic qualifications.

If a bunch of Jewish and Catholic kids going to an Episcopal school because it enhances the chance they will go to a good college doesn’t completely floor you, it is because you take American exceptionalism for granted.

Keep in mind that the Irish, Scottish, and English had waged a near continuous war since the 1550’s when King Edward VI made England a Protestant country, while Ireland and Scotland remained Catholic.  The Troubles – violent uprisings by Irish Catholic rebels in Northern Ireland. part of the United Kingdom – officially ended in 1998, but are starting to heat up again.

The Thirty Years War was between Catholics and Protestants in Germany.  French Catholics vs. French Protestants vs. French Huguenots was a series of wars that lasted for the better part of 500 years, on and off.

There is a whole Wikipedia entry titled: European wars of religion.

The question: does the wine and bread represent of blood and body of Christ, or does the wine and bread transubstantiate into the blood and body of Christ?  Resulted in Europe tearing itself apart over and over again for more than half a millennia.

In America?  Nope.  That the Protestants of English descent haven’t massacred the Catholics of Irish and Italian descent in NYC is antithetical to the whole of European history.

By every measure, Catholic Massachusetts should have invaded Quaker Pennsylvania and conquered it.  But they haven’t.

Of course, for us Jews, we should have been driven out of every state and massacred.  But we haven’t.  More than that, we have integrated into America and allowed to become successful.  My grandparents own (now just my Grandmother)  a delicatessen in Hallendale Beach, FL.  Not just have our Catholic neighbors not try and kill us or forcibly convert us, they buy our food.  Seriously.  There is nothing more American than a Jewish deli catering First Communion.  A bunch of Catholics sitting around on a Sunday eating bagels and lox.

This is why I love America.  This is why Kaepernic should to.

For all the horrors of Jim Crow, and even the lynchings of Southern Blacks, the United States has experienced nothing in comparison to the violence, religions, and tribal warfare seen across Europe and Africa in the last hundred years.

Kaepernick, and his $114 Million dollar contract, is taking a knee on a field that from 1933 to 1962 wouldn’t have allowed him to even play the game, in a league that is now 68% black.  It should be noted that the states which are lambasted to heavily for being irredeemably racist are also huge football states.  The truly amazing fact that nobody ever seems to notice is just how much money is spent by these supposedly white racists in support of predominately black teams.

But if you understand America, if you realize that in their hearts Americans value achievement over anything else, it shouldn’t be surprising in the least.  Unlike the rest of the world where professional athletes will fake injuries or just be outright unsportsmanlike to avoid contact with another player of a different religion.

Kaeperick himself should recognize how he benefited from American exceptionalism. Born to a poor white woman and abandoned by his black father, Kaepernick was adopted and raised by a white couple.

Kaepernick tired to justify his actions by with the statement: “I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color.  To me, this is bigger than football and it would be selfish on my part to look the other way. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.”

Kaepernick has decided instead to show disrespect for the American Flag and the National Anthem, and in doing so, disrespect for America herself.  This is where Kapernick gets it all wrong.  Because American history is all about overcoming the tribal, ethnic, religious, and other identities that have torn the old world apart and uniting under the banner of the Stars and Stripes.  By disrespecting the flag, he disrespects the notion of American unity.

The proper attitude should be “we should focus on bringing more of black America into the national conscience, so that black America doesn’t feel otherized.”  Instead Kapernick looks at the American flag and says “that’s not my flag, that’ the white man’s flag.”  That is a segregationist attitude.

The nature of American exceptionalism is that it’s not the we were ever perfect, but that we’ve always been better than everybody else at the time and that we continuously strive to be better than our past.  All that we ask is that people throw off their tribal and sectarian differences and unite under the common cause of America.  E pluribus unum.

The more Kaepernick and other players disrespect the American Flag, the more they demonstrate that there is Black America and a White America that can’t see eye to eye on anything.  This is diametrically opposed to the aims of black activists like Martin Luther King, who wanted more integration into American society.  They were successful precisely because they wanted the opportunity to be successful in and contribute to America.

A campaign to raise awareness of black issues by picking open old wounds and effectively saying the symbol of American unity does not apply to black  (not to mention that in an era where Jim Crow is long gone, the Civil Rights Act is enforced, and the POTUS is black, using the term “oppression” seems a little histrionic) makes everything worse.  It is divisive where it should be uniting.

If he legitimately belies that he should not “show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people” than he doesn’t understand America’s history of coming together and EXPANDING rights under the banner of America.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” is an aspirational statement.  Our Founding Fathers wrote those words for later generations to achieve.  They set the bar high.

The future is to be owned by those of all races, who with the certain unalienable rights of Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, unite with the common identity of American.

The American flag flies for all Americans.  The goal is to make everyone born and naturalized within our boarders to be wholly invested in America.

Kaepernick seems more interested in sewing resentment and creating division.

Last night I took the wife and boy to a fair.  Fun times were had by all.

It had been a long, hot day at work, I had a indulged a little at the biergarten, and then had a walk around the fair until I was in condition to drive.  Needless to say, at the end of the day, I was a bit dehydrated.  I made the executive decision that as soon as I found a convenience store outside where the fair was, I was going to stop and get a Gatorade.  Where the fair was held was … not on the nicest side of town.

As soon as I got to the main road, I was greeted by two gas station/convenience stores,  One was a sketchy looking, nameless place that looked like the only thing holding the building together was hepatitis.  The other was a Citgo station.

I chose the Citgo station.  I parked the car, my wife locked the doors, and I went inside.  There was more OE 800 than Soft Drinks.  The place was rundown.  The register was behind an inch of ballistic glass, and that was the only clean surface in the place.

One of the customers had spilled a big gulp something on the floor.  There was some sort of argument going on with him.  There were a couple of women in the store buying a large volume of artificially fruit flavored malted beverage, and a man in a filthy tank top hitting on them and trying to invite himself to whatever they were going with that much booze.

I started counting to 60 in my head.  If I didn’t get to the counter and pay for my beverage in the next 60 seconds, I was going to abort the mission.

No, I was not carrying.  The fair was on government property that forbade the  presence of guns by unauthorized persons at all.  Couldn’t even have one in your car.

One of the two clerks behinds the counter says something to the other clerk and then goes out the back door of his bunker.  He then enters the store through the service door pushing a mop bucket by the mop.  He turns to face the guy who is spilled the drink and is still griping about something and *BOOM* strapped to his hip is a Lipsey’s Exclusive, Vickers gray Glock 17 (can’t mistake the color) open in a Kydex holster.  A cold and sobering wind blows through the store.  Everybody shuts up and forms an orderly line to pay.

Yes, this place had the look of the quintessential Stop-n-Rob.  Doubtlessly it had been hit several times before.  It was in an area were police response times can be described as “we’ll send the coroner in the morning.”

This particular clerk looked like he wasn’t about to put up with that type of BS on his shift.

I payed for my refreshment and left with a very a knowing grin on my face.  Remembering a time when I was the guy working in the convenience store with a gun on my hip.

Back in 2011, Obama blames America’s poor recovery on that fact that we have “gotten a little soft.”

Just recently in Laos, he said that Americans are “lazy.”

According to Obama, the reason that America is having a sluggish recovery and people are generally unhappy about the economy is not the fault of HIS policies, but because we just suck.  It’s not that Obama is letting down America, it’s that Americans are letting down Obama.

Hillary is tanking in the polls.  Nobody likes her.  So comes along a writer from BoingBoing to explain to us how it’s not that Hillary is just terrible at being likeable, it’s that we are just terrible at knowing how to like her.

Late night comedy is doing poorly, as comedians are taking sides in this election, and they are overwhelmingly taking Hillary’s side.  The comedy pitch is all the same, Hillary is awesome and those of us that don’t like her suck. The Daily Show’s Trevor Noah feels like he has to sacrifice himself to “save America” from Trump.  David Carr dismissed the population of about 37 states as “the dance of the low sloping foreheads.”

I know the Hollywood and Washington elite won’t listen to me.  According to them, I barely know how to read, can’t think, have no education, and spend my days drunk on Coors, shooting at gays because my preacher says to, taking the occasional break only to pork my sister in a double wide.

But occasionally one has to yell into the wind.

My patience has run out.  I am tired of wealthy and influential people in Hollywood and Washington thinking that they are better than me.  I am tired of them thinking that they are better than the majority of Americans who go to work every day and work to power the economy of this nation.  I am tired of being told that terrible politicians are wonderful, brilliant people, and that the problem is that We, the American People, are just to lousy to measure up to their expectations.

American was founded on the principle that all men are created equal.  But scratch a Hollywood or Washington liberal and you will find underneath someone that believes in a caste system to their very core.  We, everyday Americans, are the untouchables, and they resent that our political system means that we have a say.  They make it clear that they hate that they are shackled to us.  Only if we just learned to obey their vision, how great this national would be.  Except… not.

What they don’t get, and this will be their down fall, we don’t believe in a caste system.  We don’t accept that we are just peons who should obey our betters.  Right now, we’re just to busy maintaining our lives to really give a s#!t what putz on TV has to say.

But every people has a breaking point.

The French had enough when they were told by some out of touch queen to “let them eat cake.”

At some point, some late night comedian is going to do a bit about how Hillary Clinton’s economic plan was pure genius and we knuckle-dragging, cousin humpers just couldn’t make it work, and it will be one straw too many.

In a Wal-Mart parking lot (what’s with all the attacks at Wal-Marts recently?) in Fairfield, California, a man attacked, dragged from his car, and beat up a 64-year-old-man after the old man yelled at the attacker’s girlfriend for parking in a handicapped zone without a permit.

A number of bystanders stood around and videoed the attack.  The attacker turned on at least one of the bystanders recording the scene.

One bystander, Susan Fowler had a pit bull in the back seat of her car, but nobody else was armed.

Yes, it was California so CCW permits are about as rare as truthful statements by Hillary Clinton.  But let’s say that this didn’t happen in CA.

What would you do?  Intervene in the beating of an old man?  How about if the attacker advanced on you after just beating an old man?

Opinions?

Tyree King, age 13, was shot to death by racist white police officers who kill unarmed, young black boys for fun in Columbus, Ohio.

The police were responding to a report of a group of people who had committed and armed robbery.  The police approached King and another youth as part of their response.  The boys fled down an alley.  The police pursued them.  Cornered, King drew a BB gun from his waist band and was shot nine times.

Here we have another case of a black teen, shot by a cop.  A black teen who in this case drew a BB gun form his pants.  A black teen who fled from the cops before questioning, down a dark alley at night.

This was an unfortunate event, but from the news report, it seems like a justifiable shoot.

So far, there have been no reports of unrest in Ohio, but this just hit the wire.  I expect there is going to be some unrest when this story gains traction.

If there is one lesson to be learned from this: don’t draw on the cops with a BB gun.  You will lose.

It is now September 12th, so I can say some stuff about September 11th that I couldn’t yesterday.

Buzzfeed posted this piece of shit article, which is supposed to make patriotic Americans who make a remembrance of 9/11 feel bad.

People Are Using #AfterSeptember11 To Share Their Stories Of Discrimination

Ever single tweet covered is by a young Muslim who suffered some sort of taunting following 9/11.

Now I’m not going to justify any of that, because it’s wrong.  But allow me to respond to them, to Buzzfeed, and to the liberals that hold this shit up high for everyone to see.

Boo-fucking-hoo for you!

You know why?

Because for 15 years, I can’t turn on the TV or go to YouTube, or browse the internet without seeing accusation after accusation that Israel and/or the Jews were responsible for 9/11.

Yes, some of the people saying that are kooks.  But in their group are influential people like Louis Farrakhan, and former Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, educators like Oberlin professor Joy Karega, and other minor academic fuckwits who teach this bullshit in class.

There was a trending hashtag yesterday #JewsDid911 which just reinforced the 9/11 blood libel.  Did Buzzfeed stop for one second to condemn that shit?  Hell no.

What really is the twist of the knife in this article is that overwhelmingly the major parties pushing the Israel/Jewish 9/11 conspiracies are Arab media and Islamic  leaders, as well as antisemitic Social Justice leftists and liberals.

Want some fucking proof:

This is clipped right from the Buzfeed article:

So I went to Twitter and look what I found:

Yes, allow me to be totally sympathetic to your plight while you desecrate the symbol of my religion.

Of course, the #afterseptember11 hashtag coverage in no way indicates that according to the FBI, Jews were the N0. 1 victim of religiously motivated hate crimes, by a wide margin, being 59% of victims.

Much of these hate crimes are coming out of college campuses where they are instigated by the pro-Palestinian BDS campaign, to the point were socially liberal schools in places like California are openly hostile to Jews.

But why should a liberal site like Buzzfeed ever let those pesky facts get in the way of a good narrative.

A little while ago, Miguel made a post about a video titled Never Met Her, which illustrated the absurdity of the “Cocks not Glocks” protest and movement.

Emily Keown, a volunteer with Mom’s Demand Action, went straight to the Austin-American Statesman with a OpEd that claimed the Never Met Her video was a direct threat to her.

In the short film, an actress portraying a leader in the fight against guns on campus at UT-Austin is shot and killed by a burglar after she watches someone interviewing gun violence prevention advocates like myself. Then, after the actress is shot point blank, the camera pans to the wall behind her, where a Moms Demand Action sign is splattered with blood…  Since the video came out, I’ve considered my options. I’m a mom of two. And while I want to fight tooth and nail against the men who made this video to intimidate and scare gun violence prevention volunteers like me, I must put my kids’ safety first. It’s a careful balance.

I doubt that a reasonable person watching the video would consider it threat to any member of MDA.  Nobody in MDA was named.  There was no dialog suggesting that a member of Cocks Not Glocks, or any other anti-gun organization, be killed for their political beliefs.

It expressed, in no unclear terms, that advertising your home as a gun free zone and being armed with only a synthetic phallus is an invitation to and not a defense from criminals.  But “reasonable” is not a word one associates with Social Justice types.  This satirical short film is now something Ms. Keown can use for sympathy support and victim credibility.  Even if she is not a victim.

The vast majority of gun owners support common-sense gun laws, and I suspect that most of them would be just as horrified as I am that the people who claim to be their voice in the statehouse are such a radical, threatening group… I hope that any legislators who watch this video will consider the history of threats and violence against gun safety advocates in our state. I hope they ask themselves how they’d feel if it was their mother, wife, sister or daughter portrayed in this misogynistic and menacing film.

I don’t know of what common sense gun laws MDA has ever supported, we seem to have different definitions of common sense.  Cocks Not Glocks is a childish protest that really doesn’t make any sense at all.  Their message is … ? … I’m not sure.  There really is no parallel with guns and dildos, at least to the thinking person.  Not to mention that I am nearly 100% sure that the same caliber of person who supports Cocks Not Glocks is also a protester of campus rape culture, and that if a fraternity whipped out a bunch of dildos at a party, these same people would work to have the fraternity kicked off campus and the students expelled for a Title IX violation.  The video is not misogynist, at least according to the conventional definition of the term, but they will use any chance to throw out a -ism or -ist to signal some “bad think.”  Of course, the film is not menacing either, by any definition.

But crybullies cry, that is what they do.  Never mind that they impugned the character of every person who supports campus concealed carry.  Never mind that they suggested we’d kill our professors over bad grades, we’d kill our professors and fellow students because they discussed something in class we disagreed with,  we’d mass murder LGBT students who demand we use their preferred pronouns, campus carry would make us into rapists, or we’re just murder happy people who are only held at bay because of a paragraph in a student code of conduct.  Never mind all of that, they are the real victims.  One would think that if everything they said about us was true, they’d suffer far worse than a satirical YouTube video… but they are’t going to question that.

Of course, being a crybully, Ms. Keown got what she wanted.   Outrage and the demand for censorship.

MDA: “You people are a bunch of crazy, racist wannabe rapists and killers.”

CCW: “But I passed a background check and can carry most places in TX, why is a public college in the middle of a city any different.”

MDA: “Here’s a giant rubber penis to make you understand why you are so terrible.”

CCW: “I don’t get it.  Besides, your point is stupid, here’s why (video).”

MDA: “You threatened to kill me.  You should be banned.”

CCW: “Wha…..”

MDA: “We scored a victory for common sense.”

And yet the crybullies say that we will be the death of civil discourse.   They are truly awful people.