I absolutely love this pair of essays by the Washington Post's Elizabeth Bruenig: All Colin Kaepernick ever did was ask and The NFL’s Capitalist Anthem Policy.
there’s something more, something wider and stranger, at the root of all this fury over a few athletes quietly kneeling during their country’s anthem. For one, there’s the straightforward fact that kneeling isn’t a sign of disrespect, and nobody brought up in a country with the faintest hint of Christian culture actually thinks it is. As Luke Bretherton, a professor of theological ethics at Duke University, wrote last year in The Post: “New Testament stories describe people who kneel before Jesus in supplication or lament. With their kneeling, these biblical figures say: Something is desperately wrong, please hear us and use your power to help us. Their act of submission signals their faith that healing will come and their prayers will be answered.”
...
it has to do with the fact that liberalism sort of makes no bones about its contempt for the weak. Simply stating: I’m subjugated, I don’t like it, you’re doing it, and I want you to stop, is met with all kinds of fury because it’s seen as an abdication of agency, which liberal capitalism equates with personhood. This is the weird, loopy way in which those at the bottom of the liberal capitalist hierarchy wind up not only blamed but hated for the situation they’re in.
This is complicated stuff, but I think Bruenig has crystalized it in a beautiful and powerful way.
No comments:
Post a Comment