Silent Stance

The Colonel as Reviewing Officer for a Graduation Parade at MCRD,
Parris Island, shortly (no pun intended) before his retirement from active duty.

Everyone else has weighed in on the professional athlete protest during the National Anthem, so here's the Colonel's take:

The Colonel has been on record, from a time early in his adult life, as a very high risk to do serious jail time if he ever catches someone intentionally desecrating the national colors. That commitment has not changed, even though the swiftness of the Colonel's inevitable retaliatory strike may have lost a step or two with the passage of years.

The Colonel has saluted our Republic's colors thousands of times in uniform and out, at the sound of morning colors, at the playing of the National Anthem, at their passing on parade, and at the playing of taps for fallen warriors. The Colonel has even knelt on a couple of occasions and presented the folded colors of a fallen warrior to his widow. Not many things move the Colonel, but he is moved to tears nearly every time the National Anthem or Taps play -- particularly the older he gets.

Oh, how old and tearful he feels this morning. He must say that the current kerfuffle over kneeling players -- stoked by the self-aggrandizing current temp-help in the Oval Office -- is symptomatic of a loss of national vision... on both ends of, and throughout, the political spectrum.

The Colonel fears the people of our great nation -- made "great" not through the actions of our elected representatives, but by the sacrifices of its liberty-loving citizens -- have gouged bloody battle lines of civil strife down the middle of America's soul. We take vehement vocal issue at every perceived slight, at every utterance of our political foes, and at the actions of those who choose to exercise their American liberties in a manner with which we disagree.

What moves the Colonel this morning is the dawning realization, in the pea-sized collection of cognitive goo lying fallow in the bony recesses of his follicully-challenged brain housing group, that we Americans are standing sightless and deaf behind self-built battlements of individual indignant self-righteousness, screeching epithets at fellow Americans.

The Colonel almost wishes that we were mute, as well as blind and deaf.

But, that's the point. We Americans don't have the right of sight and hearing, but we do have the right of free speech.

Sight and hearing is the responsibility that comes with free speech.

The Colonel gets it -- and feels it -- the sight of pampered, overpaid actors and athletes using their publicly-paid-for stage to exercise their right of free (if misguided) speech is infuriating at first sight. But, in our fury we should not close our eyes and ears to the viewpoints of others -- no matter how misguided we feel they may be.

Our fury only feeds their mistaken belief.

The Colonel hasn't watched an NFL game in nearly a decade -- for reasons completely unrelated to the current situation. Frankly, the Colonel believes fantasy football has tainted the NFL experience (the Colonel is a dinosaur, he knows) -- but that's grist for another post. Anyway, the Colonel has far more pleasurable pastimes for his Sunday afternoon -- long, mouth-agape, snore-filled naps, chiefly.

So, please join the Colonel as he continues to rise to the position of attention and tearfully salutes the banner of patriots' dreams and widows' pride.

Or not. That's your right.