Two Ships

The Kaepernick kerfuffle is a great example of the mistake people in the media and elsewhere make over and over again in talking about 1st Amendment freedom of speech rights: Conflating freedom of speech with freedom from criticism of one's speech. The first amendment right to free speech insulates us from government interference with our right to say what we want – government being the key word here. Government, under the constitution, cannot use its power to either prohibit or punish speech. In other words, you can’t go to jail for what you’re thinking or saying.

It absolutely does not insulate us from the consequences of what we say, or render us immune from criticism for it. It doesn’t insulate us from being told by our fellow citizens that we’re full of you-know-what when we flap our gums about this or that. If it did, then calling Donald Trump a jackass for the things he says (as just one example) would be a violation of his constitutional right to free speech. Freedom of speech says you can stand on a street corner and rail for the deportation of all left-handed people, but it does not protect you from being booed off your soapbox or pelted with rotten tomatoes for doing it. You can advocate for a whites-only policy at your workplace and not be put in jail for it. But you will be fired for it, and that’s not a violation of your free speech rights under the constitution.

Yet we see this scenario played out repeatedly in the Kaepernick Caper: One guy says he thinks Kaepernick is dead wrong; the other guy comes to his defense by citing his free speech rights. Two ships passing the night. No one -- except perhaps the wingnuts who see lack of sufficient devotion to mom and apple pie as treasonous -- questions Kaepernick’s right to do and say what he did. But that doesn’t mean he can’t or shouldn’t be criticized for it. It doesn’t mean that the content of his free speech can’t be disagreed with. And it certainly doesn't mean that criticizing him or disagreeing with his content or tactics equates to questioning or attempting to abrogate his rights.

As for the substance of his complaint: Although I assume his intent is to do his bit to keep the spotlight on the problems/conditions he is concerned about, I think his criticisms would be better directed at the individuals who perpetrate the conditions he deplores, as opposed to “the country” which, by way of its constitution and its ideals, is on his side in this issue. It’s not a country that does the things he rightly deplores. It’s people.  Kaepernick might avoid being accused of grandstanding and of calling attention to his moral superiority if his criticisms were more carefully targeted.  The notion that all of this is more about calling attention to himself than it is about expressing anguish over a serious social ill was reinforced when he showed up in public wearing clothing that seemed to pay homage to Fidel Castro, whose regime routinely murders political opponents and would not hesitate to throw Kaepernick in jail if it did not like the content of any public stance he might care to take.

Which brings us to the larger, and somewhat touchier, question of why it’s felt necessary to even have these displays of patriotism before sporting events – why sports at this level are so tied up with patriotic sentimentality. There’s nothing wrong with it, I suppose, but there’s nothing particularly right with it, either. There’s no natural connection between patriotic theater and large sporting events. We don’t do these things – wave the flag, play the national anthem, put color guards on parade – before movies or church or kids soccer games or algebra class. Why big-time sports? It’s a mystery. For more on this subject, here’s a link to an article by Sam Borden in the New York Times…

Senator McCain?

Donald Trump has now said he will not support Senator John McCain's re-election campaign in Arizona. And Senator McCain has not said, as of this writing, he does not support Trump's candidacy for president.

Wow.  What's it going to take?

By now, we are all drearily familiar with the spinelessness of figures like Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, both of whom, in the service of their own political survival, have said in effect, “I consider Donald Trump an ignorant fool and I want him to be president of the United States.” One is tempted to again quote Joseph Welch who inquired of demagogue Joseph McCarthy back in the 50’s if, at long last, he had any sense of decency. But that would be of little use because they have clearly demonstrated -- by their continued support of a man they consider to be a danger to our democracy -- that they do not, and that their allegiance is to their political careers.

If this pair have set some kind of record for profiles in cowardice, what to make of John McCain, who has said essentially the same thing and more about Trump, and, in addition, has been personally insulted and mocked in the most egregiously cruel and supercilious manner by him and yet continues to lay supine before him and urge the voters to make him president.

McCain was an American flyer on a combat mission over North Vietnam in 1967 when his plane was brought down by enemy gunfire, a surface-to-air missile. He came down in a lake in the middle of Hanoi, breaking both arms and one leg. When he was pulled from the lake, his left shoulder was broken by a gun butt and he was bayoneted in the foot. Unspeakable horrors followed over the next five years in Hoa Lo prison including beatings, disease, and solitary confinement. He was repeatedly offered his freedom in exchange for saying positive things about his captors and their cause but refused unless the other American POWs were also freed.

Donald Trump, who dodged the draft during that era with student deferments and one medical deferment for bone spurs on his heel, who did not serve in the armed forces let alone in combat, and who claimed the expensive military-themed high school he attended gave him more training than many people who served in the actual armed services, called McCain a loser, and said, “He’s not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren’t captured.”

McCain’s response: Trump should retract statements about preferring military veterans who weren’t captured. “What he said about me, John McCain, that’s fine. I don’t require any repair of that.”

That’s fine?

More recently, of course came the Khizr Khan business in which McCain was again personally if indirectly insulted and belittled by Trump, by way of Trump’s dismissal of another casualty of war, Khan’s son Humayun

But instead of withdrawing his endorsement of Trump and/or demanding he withdraw from the race for this seeming last straw and for the vast and growing collection of other lies and stupidities of which he is guilty, including the recent suggestion that a foreign power spy on the U.S., McCain paid homage to Humayun Khan’s sacrifice, and said Trump ought to set a better example.

“It is time for Donald Trump to set the example for our country and the future of the Republican Party,” he said. “While our Party has bestowed upon him the nomination, it is not accompanied by unfettered license to defame those who are the best among us.”

He should set a better example?

"I claim no moral superiority over Donald Trump,” McCain went on. “I have a long and well-known public and private record for which I will have to answer at the Final Judgment, and I repose my hope in the promise of mercy and the moderation of age.”

Well, if John McCain thinks the pearly gates are going to open wide for him because he supported for president a person whose ideas and policies he despises and who he knows would be bad if not disastrous for America, all in the service of his own re-election in Arizona…well, I can’t speak for St. Peter, but I don’t see it happening. Nor is this the first time McCain has put his own electoral interests ahead of those of the country. Remember, it was McCain who would have put the airhead Sarah Palin a heartbeat away -- not because he thought she would make a good vice-president or president, but because he thought her presence on the ticket would help him get elected.

The ultimate irony and insult: Trump's announcement that he will not back McCain in Arizona. So the question is: At long last, Senator McCain, what’s it going to take?

Who knows? Maybe the people of Arizona will show more courage in this election than their senior senator has, and do the right thing.