Donald Trump goes to (culture) war
In mid-June of 1970, I happened to be walking along East Main Street in Uniontown, when I encountered a man walking in my direction.
As he approached, he said, “Hey, Boy.”
I’m black.
He was white.
I was 21.
He was middle-aged.
I glared.
He looked perplexed.
I turned and walked away.
After all, that man had no idea that three days earlier I’d boarded a jetliner heading out of Danang Air Base in Vietnam, after serving him and this country for a year. I was on my way back to Uniontown, Pennsylvania. A place where a middle-aged white man could casually call a young black man a “BOY,” and expect him to smile as if he appreciated the acknowledgement.
Moments like those, and there have been many, are why I have a boulder-sized chip on my shoulder.
You might not like what I’m about to say, and you might not like ME by the time I finish it, but I’m going to say it anyway!
Any President of the United States, and especially the one we have now, is on razor-thin ice, when they try to define patriotism; how it should be expressed; or where or when – for that matter.
Whenever Donald Trump knowingly ignited a countrywide controversy, by calling people names because they don’t fit his definition of patriotism, it’s as if he’s really calling them “Boy.”
For more than a year those people he’s now called “sons-of-b—s” have been fighting to “Make America Great,” in ways he refuses to understand.
Trump claims they’re being unpatriotic by simply placing one knee on the turf at a football stadium.
He refuses to acknowledge the reason for their actions. That one NFL player, Colin Kaepernick, initiated his silent protest to shed light on the ever-growing number of people of color who’ve died at the hands of police officers. And, worse, the number of those officers who’ve been tried, but exonerated.
It’s just that simple.
“If a player wants the privilege of making millions of dollars in the NFL, or other leagues, he or she should not be allowed to disrespect our Great American Flag (or County) and should stand for the National Anthem,” Trump tweeted.
Mr. Trump should be told that if those millionaire athletes were day laborers making minimum wages, they wouldn’t get any national attention.
That is, unless their legitimate anger boils over onto the streets of Ferguson, Missouri or, recently, St. Louis.
And besides, it takes a special kind of tone-deafness to tell professional athletes engaged in non-violent civil disobedience to be obedient.
Trump should also engage in a little self-reflection when he talks about privileged millionaires.
If it hadn’t been for his father’s millions, there’s a chance he may have served in Vietnam alongside millions of poor and middle-class Americans.
Instead, his five deferments allowed him to escape doing what Jack Nicolson as Col. Nathan Jessup in “A Few Good Men” called for, to “Pick up a weapon and stand a post.”
Trump fought his war at discotheques.
He is a warrior now.
He’s the Commander-in-chief of the Culture War.
His preferred armaments are words shouted with viciousness at campaign rallies.
His goal isn’t to win this war, but to set American against American.
It’s less bloody than Vietnam, but fought with verbal toxins injected right into the nation’s core by a man who takes delight in finding ways to divide us.
“The kneeling has nothing to do with race,” he tweeted last Monday.
Yes it did. It was always meant to be about race. Nothing else.
But now, it’s about much more.
Many of those people who ply their trade in stadiums on Sunday afternoons across this county, now can clearly see that it’s about the freedom to stand at odds with a president who doesn’t seem to value them.
One person took a knee. Then a dozen. Now hundreds.
Don’t get me wrong.
I would never question Mr. Trump’s patriotism.
I know he loves this country.
Just not nearly as much as himself.
Edward A. Owens is a multi-Emmy Award winner, former reporter and anchor for Entertainment Tonight and 20-year TV news veteran. E-mail him at freedoms@bellatlantic.net.