***The following is a restored version of the original piece I wrote on this. The updated version is chronologically next, titled ‘Losing the First Amendment to Putin’s Trolls’*****
When did the First Amendment become a wedge issue and what’s the point of having it if you can’t exercise your rights freely?
The narrative has been successfully changed from NFL athletes taking a knee to protest racism to them hating America, the Flag and First Responders.
I am FLABBERGASTED – fucking flabbergasted – at people buying into the meme of football players making too much money to protest. This is a Fox News ‘politics of envy’ gambit. Where was their outrage at the overcompensated game show host who became president? Beyond that, WHY is it a problem for well compensated people – athletes or otherwise – to speak up for the oppressed?
The fact is: People who have succeeded have a moral responsibility to help those who are oppressed, and not pull the ladder up before they get their turn. It’s the same reason I donate to the food bank: Because I needed it once and I’m in the position to help, and feel morally obliged to put my hand out to lift up those I left behind.
What kind of horrible people would successful athletes be if their attitude was ‘Fuck you – I got mine, you get yours’? That’s EXACTLY why I hate the current iteration of the GOP, with their bootstraps and prosperity gospel.
This issue has Russian bots all over it. It reeks of the bullshit from the election. Did you think Trolltopia in Macedonia – the city of 10,000 hackers, trolls and spammers who do Putin’s bidding – was going to go away when Trump was putsched in?
America is literally fighting over our First Amendment rights! How can this be?
How can it be that so many people have been manipulated into saying folks have no right to have a political opinion because of the amount of money they have? How long until we don’t have ENOUGH money to have an opinion?
The other false narrative I’ve seen pushed is that the flag is more important than the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, itself. I’m sorry – What?
Soldiers don’t swear to defend the flag, FFS.
This issue isn’t about the Flag – It’s about our inalienable First Amendment rights as Americans and our Constitution. The Flag is nothing more than a physical representation of the rules and instructions on how to operate the Republic, and that which we hold most dear.
In the 1943 U.S. Supreme Court decision of West Virginia V Barnette, Justice Robert Jackson wrote: “If there is any fixed star in our constitutional constellation, it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception, they do not now occur to us.”
The only thing we can do is speak up, speak out and protest. We’d all better start using our First Amendment rights before it’s just a ghost of the past that we daren’t even whisper about.
The First Amendment: You’d better use it before you lose it
This About That 