Respect

Well, it is evident that Mr. Trump “knows more about ISIS (he uses all of their demonic tactics:  denial of truth, doublespeak and overtalk, secrecy and boasts of expertise, harassment, cursing and conjuring, diversion and demoralization) than the generals do.  Believe me.”  Why does he always add the phrase, “Believe me,” to almost everything he says?   Be that as it may, he has accomplished what he intended to do last Friday night with his tirade about the disrespect of flag and national anthem by certain (actually very specific) NFL players.  He must be a really smart guy.  He says he is, “Sorry losers and haters, but my I.Q. is one of the highest—and you all know it!  Please don’t feel so stupid or insecure, it’s not your fault” (May 8, 2013).  

What has he done?  He has turned what was an African-American protest against police brutality and racial injustice into a “disrespect” or “unpatriotic” response to the flag and the national anthem.  There is much more talk today on the cable networks and social media about what it means to “stand” than there is about Anthony Lamar Smith, who was killed in 2011 by a former St. Louis police officer (recently acquitted).  Did any of us see any news clips about what was going on in the streets of St. Louis over the weekend?  The “Cause” for the kneeling got lost in a whirlwind of 19 Tweets from a wily guy about how “unpatriotic” it is to kneel during the national anthem, how disrespectful such kneeling is to our service men and women, how it debases our “heritage” and “everything we stand for.”  The original motivation for Colin Kaepernick’s sitting/kneeling was to protest systemic racism in our society. But who will think about that now?  Who paid any attention to Mr. Trump’s comments reported just a year or so ago:  “Donald Trump said Monday he believes the Black Lives Matter movement has in some cases helped instigate the recent killings of police officers, and suggested he might direct his future attorney general to investigate the civil rights movement.” 

Let’s ponder the word “disrespect.”  The flag is an object.  The national anthem is a song.  These are things, not persons—and race, creed, nationality and all the other labels—make no difference.  A person is a person with certain unalienable rights.  I think one of these rights is to be respected.  This “respect” for a person is more important to me (and by the way, to the Constitution of the United States) than anything!  Mr. Trump has been disrespectful of many groups of people and individual persons—Mexicans, Muslims, Gold Star family, Black Lives Matter, his fellow GOP candidates, Colin Powell, John McCain, Asians, the Mayor of London, North Koreans, women, the former president—and  the list goes on and on—and there will be more today and more tomorrow.  Don’t ask me to respect a “thing” and disrespect people!  It goes against the grain of my Christian faith and my conscience. God help me, I cannot be impartial when it comes to this flagrant “disrespect” of persons.