Kneeling. Patriotically

ITS WORTH MENTIONING that people who kneel during the national anthem are showing disrespect for neither the anthem or the flag. They are showing disrespect for something much larger and more important than mere superficial symbols: American, history, culture, and society. The anthem and flag are merely symbols, vehicles to attract attention to the protesters, and their cause,. the elimination of racial injustice, and its persistent existence. This is what symbols are for; to attract attention to whatever they symbolize, for those  whovenerate that which is being symbolized. What is interesting is that the ostentatiously patriotic people who object most strenuously to showing disrespect for symbols never utter a word of indignation or complaint about the real object of disrespect; history, culture, and societal norms, specifically racism. If "America the Beautiful", or "Stars and Stripes Forever", or We Shall Overcome', or "Hey Jude" were the national anthem, the kneelers wouldn't care, they would simply kneel. They would knee to whatever song or whatever flag was being used as the symbol. The Star Spangled Banner, an old English song set to improvised lyrics by Francis Scott Key, became the national anthem in the nineteen thirties. Over the course of American history, no fewer than forty versions of the flag have symbolized the nation. Songs and flags come and go. But the fundamental evils with which American society is and always has been infected are more enduring, stubborn, resistant to reform. All solutions to all problems begin with the identification of the problem, and that is the necessary service rendered by those who kneel. Those who hate the kneelers actually hate their own shame and cowardice for failing to help reform society, for accepting its evils. They hate those who remind them of their own shame and shortcomings. Notice how the piously patriotic hide from the shameful truth about themselves behind a flag and a song, mere symbols, and how they hate those who kneel  for disrespecting symbols, but never express hatred of the kneelers for their disrespect of their country's history, culture, and society, and never express any disrespect of their own for their nation's corrupt history, culture, and society. It is they who deserve disrespect.