God bless them. Every once in awhile you catch them saying the quiet part out loud. That’s what happened to Justin Lafferty in the Tennessee legislature when he tried defending the three-fifths compromise. According to the mangled synapses in his brain, the compromise was a way forward to ending slavery. It just took 78 years and a bloody civil war to do it. Sometimes it is hard to fathom that people can be this stupid. Then, they open their mouths and end all doubt.

The gambit is akin to those that try to find ways to defend Adolf Hitler. Sure, you can enter any qualifier you like, but you are almost always better off stopping before you start. The results of both end up being the same. We are left wondering whether you are the biggest jackass south of the Mason-Dixon line or whether you are an ardent racist. The answer is usually yes and furthermore we often are left wondering whether the distinction matters. That’s all the commentary I can waste on that one. Everyone enjoy their weekend.

It’s difficult walking the tight rope between pointing out obvious shenanigans and avoiding those shenanigans to keep from giving them oxygen. That’s the life of commentating. Ultimately, we are all part of the same game. The name of the game is eyeballs. Once you get them focused on you then you get the sponsorship dollars, the speaking engagements, and the gravitas that comes with relevance.

The White House has ordered all federal agencies to halt diversity training.  That’s right, folks, Trump has ordered that all training sessions about fighting systemic racism and white privilege in federal agencies, calling it “divisive” and “un-American”.  Russell Vought, the director of OMB, said, “The President has directed me to ensure that federal agencies cease and desist from using taxpayer dollars to fund these divisive, un-American propaganda training sessions.”

Of course, since the money has been appropriated and the contracts let, Trump can’t just arbitrarily cancel them.  So, what will happen is that taxpayer money will be spent and no training will occur.  Why is Trump doing this?  To whip up his last remaining base, racist pigs who hate everyone and everything, of course.  Trump has already pissed off small business owners, large business owners, doctors, nurses, scientists, , public health officials, teachers, and union workers; now he’s alienated members of the military, Blue Star families and Gold Star families.  Apparently all that’s left is Russian gangsters and bigoted mouth breathers waving Nazi and Confederate flags.

He’s finally found his base of last resort.

Americans are weird. No, really; Americans are weird. We play the national anthem, wave flags, and parade active duty military and veterans around before major sports events. EVERY major sports event. Even some little league parks play the national anthem before the little tykes run out on the field to play for 30 minutes.  And we love HUGE flags.  Not just any HUGE flag, cover the entire football field HUGE.  In fact, if you don’t get all weepy when you see that HUGE flag, you’re a reprobate and un-American.  It’s like, “BE PATRIOTIC!  IF YOU’RE NOT PATRIOTIC TO OUR SATISFACTION, WE’LL SLAP IT INTO YOU PATRIOTIC!!! DAMMIT!”

This is a strange custom that is unique to the US. No other country does this Kabuki play every time we gather to watch huge guys beat each other to a pulp.  When did it become tradition to play the Star Spangled Banner before sporting events?  Well, according to an article in Time, the first time the tune was played before a baseball game was during the Civil War in 1862 (before it was declared the national anthem), was played again before the opening game of the World Series in 1918 at the end of WWI, but didn’t really get ingrained in sports until after WWII when loudspeakers replaced live bands and they could play the tune any and every goddam where.

Up until 9/11, it was a tradition with really no controversy.  We’d get up, discreetly sip our beer and wait for the song to be over so we could drink more beer.  However, in 2003, when we invaded Iraq for no good reason,  the US government started using the national anthem before nationally televised games as a propaganda opportunity using veterans and active military as props to whip up all those patriot emotions and tears.  In 2009, the NFL started requiring players to be lined up on the field for the anthem.  The government even started paying the NFL for these displays.  In fact, between 2011 and 2014, the Department of Defense paid over $5 million dollars to the NFL for all the pregame red, white, and blue hoopla.

So, all this televised nationalism is really very recent and has been normalized by bribing the NFL and other major leagues to promote it every week.  It’s not surprising then, that when Colin Kaepernick starting sitting out the anthem as a protest against systematic racism in America, that all the jingoists would go nuts.  After being thoroughly hated on, he was then blackballed from the league even though has has one of the best records in the NFL; he also became the new punching bag for Fox Noise. The whole controversy just kind of rocked along until last week when Tweeto Jesus wandered into the mess looking for something to distract from the Mueller investigation.

Hilariously, the Orange One got more than he bargained for.  Suddenly, the Great Divider actually became the Great Uniter, at least this week, by galvanizing the protest movement.  The pressure on NFL owners is so great now that even THEY are taking a knee on the field, if only just before the anthem than during.  The whole thing is pretty entertaining.

But let’s look at the real issue here…There is a lot of hand wringing by my conservative friends on social media fretting over young athletes daring to disrespect the (flag, veterans, active duty, our country, our patriotism… Insert your descriptor here) _______.  The problem, though, is that they are not doing that.  Not at all. They are exercising their right of free speech – to protest what they see as injustice.

Let’s take other examples of protests:  When Rosa Parks refused to sit in the back of the bus, was she protesting public transportation?  Of course not.  She was protesting institutionalized racism.  The young black men who sat at the Whites Only lunch counter.  Were they protesting lunch counters?  No, they too were protesting institutionalized racism.  There are many examples of civil disobedience for the greater good, and that is exactly what these young athletes are now doing.  They play a prominent role in our modern culture.  They can have an influence on our society, and they, led bravely by Colin Kaepernick over a year ago, are doing just that.  Good on them.

So, for all my conservative buds who are fretting over this whole thing or burning their cheap Made in China replica jerseys in their trashcans in the backyard, maybe they should just think a little bit about this protest.  Even today we live with the scar of the cancer that was slavery.  Even today, over 150 years after it was ended, we still live with the symptoms.  Even today, we still face institutionalized racism on a daily basis.

This is still a free country, and people can express themselves how they please.  That is what’s happening here and the movement has grown with the inadvertent assist from Tweeto Jesus.

We can be thankful for that, even if we are just a little weird.

Burnet County, Texas, Republican District Court Judge James Oakley is a straight ticket Republican who I suspect thought he died and went to heaven when Donald Trump was elected.

Judge Oakley just got a reprimand from the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct because he publicly on damn Facebook commented that a convicted African American defendant needs “a tree and a rope.”

Oh for Pete’s Sake.  A whole big giant reprimand.  But he also got four whole hours of sensitivity training.  Four.  Whole.  Hours.

Thanks to Brian for the heads up.