Thinking about gestures and symbols
and upbringing.
Colin Kaepernick not standing for
the National Anthem has some people upset. Really upset.
Consider Dale Arnold from WEEI
hoping that Colin never has another good day in his life because as he put it,
he was raised to respect veterans.
Question: How does not gesturing
during a song disrespect veterans?
Also consider this: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/military-jan-june13-suicides_01-15/
“Suicides by active duty U.S. troops last year exceeded the number of servicemen and women killed in combat in Afghanistan.”
Gestures and symbols are powerful.
Dale Arnold wishes ill to another man because he opts not to gesture.
Question: Are gestures and symbols
only as powerful as we choose to make them?
Shouldn’t there be some cognitive dissonance
when the suicide statistic isn’t met with as much disdain and incredulity as a
jock kneeling during a song?
Can’t we begin to question our so-called
values when suicide kills more veterans than warring enemies without public
uproar or even public acknowledgement? Yet some soon-to-be-unimportant athlete chews
up the news media for hours on end and draws out the ire faster than a speeding
bullet when he doesn’t gesture like the masses.
Question: Isn’t it all backwards?
We’ll send you to war and honor you
with platitudes and gestures galore when you die but we won’t think critically,
at all, about sending you to die or even take care of you should you survive
war as you die
waiting in line for treatment. You, yes you.
Isn’t Dale Arnold putting the cart
before the horse, blindly obeying, thinking uncritically, unquestioningly about
what mommy and daddy told him to believe, and in essence flipping epistemology
on its head all in one fell swoop of wishing life-long ill on Colin Kaepernick?
It doesn’t matter if Plato referred
to justified, true, belief; what matters is what mom and dad told you.
Question: Who told Colin Kaepernick
what to believe?
Who is right? Which set of parents?
By what measure?
Ah, questions, questions,
questions.
Again, gestures and symbols are
powerful and used to great effect to influence thoughts and behaviors.
Maybe I’m just saying that the suicides of veterans should
matter to the likes of Dale Arnold and Kate Upton just as much as upright
gestures.
A tidbit from the prez-elect at his 1/11/17 "press conference":
ReplyDelete"One of the coming commitments I made is that we’re going to straighten out the whole situation for our veterans. Our veterans have been treated horribly. They’re waiting in line for 15, 16, 17 days. Cases where they go on in and they have a minor early-stage form of cancer and they can't see a doctor; by the time they get to the doctor, they’re terminal. It’s not going to happen, it’s not going to happen.
via http://www.npr.org/2017/01/11/509137239/watch-live-trump-holds-first-press-conference-as-president-elect
But again, let us not rail against war or against bureaucracy or against systematic negligence...let us rail against gestures...from soon-to-be nobodys.
Thinking about veterans reminds me of a George Carlin bit about abortion:
"If you're pre-born, you're fine, if you're preschool, you're fucked."
Prewar, awesome. Postwar, a pest.
This should offend, not a gesture or lack thereof during a song...
ReplyDeletehttps://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/11/06/562320017/the-texas-church-shooter-should-have-been-legally-barred-from-owning-guns
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6366501/Gunman-shoots-dozens-victims-including-police-officer-opens-fire-California-bar.html
ReplyDeleteDecorated...PTSD...but no, let us be offended by lack of gestures during a song.