Last evening, Fox News Channel’s Kimberly Guilfoyle hazarded that if you asked each of the 200 NFL players who took a knee or linked arms this past Sunday what they were protesting, you might get 200 different answers. Guilfoyle’s point was that the motivation for dishonoring the flag and national anthem have become diffuse and more widely focused since the president’s remarks in Huntsville, Ala., last Friday.
Prior to that, the protests, initiated by the now larger-than-life figure of Colin Kaepernick, were aimed at America’s men in blue, whom the half-black former San Francisco 49ers quarterback equated last June with “fugitive slave patrols.” He also clarified at that time:
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.
Understanding that his crusade was decreasing his prospects of getting signed for the 2017 season, he announced in March of this year that he would stand during the playing of the national anthem, explaining that he believed he had brought about the desired change in the treatment of blacks by police officers. The announcement coincided with another expressing his intention to opt out of his contract with San Francisco and become a free agent.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
When September still found him wearing a 49ers uniform and still warming the bench, he was back wearing his practice socks emblazoned with cartoon-like pictures of pigs wearing police hats.
In short, the Kaepernick saga, to the extent its been about a cause and not a desperate bid for attention from an athlete unable to find work, has always been about the police, who in recent years have become targets of armed disenchanted blacks. This trend reached a tragic zenith in July of 2016 when five members of the Dallas police force were ambushed and cut down by a black sniper, who himself died in a subsequent standoff with police.
In the light of all this and all that has transpired since, what on earth possessed two black Chicago police officers to pose for this picture?
https://www.instagram.com/p/BZbxm-rnNv0/
Do these men not understand that there people in this country who would gladly and without a second though murder them where they kneel?
According to Fox Chicago affiliate WGN (via the Associated Press), the two officers are facing reprimands because the department’s code of conduct prohibits officers from taking part in a “partisan political campaign or activity.”
That’s it? The department couldn’t come up with a more meaningful or relevant reason for disciplining the men?
