Considering that a cop’s knee in Freddie Gray’s back in Baltimore two years ago was likely a contributing factor in his death — and considering the utterly disgusting, profane insults from the mouth of this person we call POTUS 45 toward the mothers of the Black professional athletes who have taken a knee during the playing of the national anthem before sporting events — I could tell you a place I’d like to place a knee, but I won’t …
Suffice it for me to repeat the words of basketball superstar and champion LeBron James: “U bum @StephenCurry30 already said he ain’t going! So therefore ain’t no invite. Going to White House was a great honor until you showed up!”
James tweeted that in response to Donald Trump’s remarks about a declined White House visit by fellow NBA superstar Stephen Curry and his champion Golden State Warriors.
Before an audience of elderly whites in Alabama on Sept. 23, The Donald angrily unloaded a profane verbal assault against NFL players, 70 percent of whom are Black.
“Wouldn’t you love to see one of these NFL owners, when somebody disrespects our flag, to say, ‘Get that son of a bitch off the field right now. Out. He’s fired. He’s fired!’ Wouldn’t you love it?” Trump said.
The audience chanted in response: “USA! USA! USA! USA!”
A posse of volunteer night riders will form immediately after we adjourn.
The current president of the United States is beneath contempt. What’s worse is we’re learning there’s an entire cadre of creepy people just like him who are in positions of authority, all over the government and in corporations.
If an owner were to fire a player for protesting during the Star Spangled Banner, he’d “be the most popular person in this country, because that’s a total disrespect of our heritage,” Trump boasted. “That’s a total disrespect of everything that we stand for, OK?”
While there is merit in denouncing the pro-slavery third stanza of Francis Scott Key’s anthem, the “take a knee” protest started by Colin Kaepernick, who won two division championships and appeared in one Super Bowl in his career, is not about “the troops.” For one thing, the flag belongs to all Americans, not just to the military. The protest is not about the flag.
But 45 and those who think like him have a “Massa” mentality, that sees themselves and all white people as superior, and all other racial identities as inferior beings who should be so tickled to live in a world with such wondrous gifts from the good hearts and good nature of white people, that we ought to be willing to do anything and everything said, wonderful white people want them to do — in perpetuity.
Those days are long gone, and never to be seen again.
This Dude — 45 — with his George Armstrong Custer, blonde-is-better, gung-ho insanity, thinks the whole world should pay obeisance to him, even forsaking what’s in the best interest of their own people, apparently just so they can say they made “a deal” with The Donald. He reasons that when he eventually does pick a fight with one country or another, all the people in this country will rally around his bankrupt leadership. Not.
Trump insults friend and foe alike with his cheap Don Rickles-type — no Rodney Dangerfield-type — gutter jokes and profanities. He figures everyone is so enamored over him that opposition will just crumble at his feet.
But when the time comes for that “all hands on deck” struggle which 45 goads this country into, I’m reckoning that many, many, many Black people, Latinos, and even right-thinking White people will refuse to heed the call, if it’s sounded by 45.
Sports, I believe, are a metaphor for life. Today, we see much of the drama of real life acted out in the side-drama of competition among elite athletes. Black Lives Matter, Take A Knee, those crusades are evidence that Black people will continue to demand Freedom, Justice, and Equality in every area and endeavor of their lives.
The days of Donald J. Trump-ism, are numbered. Providence is just not in his favor. He cannot win. His worldview cannot prevail.
As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. often said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”