Fraudulent underpinnings

Andrew McCarthy writes at National Review about the NFL kneeling protests. He thinks they were an appalling fraud.

...given that the NFL does not hesitate to suppress expression to which it objects — its decision to allow the exhibition of contempt for symbols of nationhood is a free choice, an implicit endorsement.

If the commissioner and the owners are now made uncomfortable because President Trump pointed out that they need not tolerate the exploitation of their forum by athletes who insult the nation and slander its police, good.

It is beyond cavil that the president’s impetuous remarks, his at times reckless and even offensive blathering, often make things worse, including for the president himself. To take just one example (there are numerous we could cite), his tweets accusing President Obama of tapping his Trump Tower phone lines were not just ill-informed and indecorous; they detracted from what may be a real political-spying scandal. They gave the media a rationale for focusing on Trump’s misstatements to the exclusion of indications that the Obama administration abused its foreign-intelligence collection power in order to monitor the opposition party’s presidential campaign.

But the spiteful public debate over the NFL’s kneeling protesters? He didn’t make that worse. He drew attention to its fraudulent underpinnings.

Was that his intention? I doubt it. Trump is not adept at governing, but he is a master culture warrior. He is president because he knows his Middle American, working-class supporters, what angers and energizes them. He also seems to get, in a way his Beltway betters do not, the chasms between elite opinion and grassroots sensibility. His antennae detect when the former is woefully out of touch.

I don’t think Trump has given much thought to what the kneeling exhibition has been about. I believe he saw and exploited an opportunity to put himself on the side of America, the flag, the anthem, and the police and soldiers putting their lives on the line. In other words, to put himself on the right side of a debate against millionaire left-wing athlete–activists, the left-wing media (including its sports-journalism cohort) that is driving its audience away in droves, and Democrats — especially in the mold of New York City Council crackpots. Last seen demanding the release from prison of FALN terrorist Oscar López Rivera (later honored at the city’s Puerto Rican Day parade), the Council reacted to Trump’s comments by, of course, protesting the Pledge of Allegiance.

...The higher incarceration rate of blacks (particularly, young black males) versus other groups is a straightforward function of their higher crime rate — which also explains why black populations are inordinately victimized by crime and need active police protection. Though just 13 percent of the population, African-Americans committed 52 percent of homicides between 1980 and 2008; they are responsible for well over 90 percent of the homicides committed against other black people. In 2015, nationwide, 258 black people were killed by police gunfire (the number of white people killed in police shootings was 494). By contrast, according to the Daily Wire’s Aaron Bandler, nearly 6,000 black people were killed by other black people.

The NFL well knew what the kneeling protest was about. It was a claim that police were hunting down black men and other people of color. As we’ve seen, Colin Kaepernick could not have been clearer about that. That same year, after five Dallas cops were slain by a sniper, the Dallas Cowboys requested permission to wear small “Arm in Arm” decals on their helmets, in honor of police killed while serving and protecting their community. The NFL said no, that message would not be permitted. Free speech, right? If we’re going to make a list of people who made this controversy worse, there will be a lot of names on it before Donald Trump’s.

Read more here.