Is all this fuss over the flag warranted?

I was actually surprised that the Packers didn't pick up Kaepernick after their quarterback broke his collar bone last Sunday. "At this point, what difference does it make?" (I just love using that line) But, it's doesn't, not really, does it? The whole league is bowing and scraping in petulance because the President called the players SOBs. The original intent of Kaepernick's demonstration has been lost in all the mess that followed. [BTW, spellcheck wants to change "Kaepernick" to "Innkeeper". Isn't that curious? Oh well, that's another story]

I got to thinking about this as I've been rereading Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad, a humorous travelogue about a group of Americans touring the ancient civilizations of the Mediterranean. One passage occurring at the time they are passing Gibraltar piqued my interest...

"...but while we stood admiring the cloud-topped peaks and the lowlands robed in misty gloom a finer picture burst upon us and chained every eye like a magnet - a stately ship, with canvas piled on canvas till she was one towering mass of bellying sail! She came speeding over the sea like a giant bird. Africa and Spain were forgotten. All homage was for the beautiful stranger. While everybody gazed she swept superbly by and flung the Stars and Stripes to the breeze! Quicker than thought, hats and handkerchiefs flashed in the air, and a cheer went up! She was beautiful before -- she was radiant now. Many a one on our decks knew then for the first time how tame a sight his country's flag is at home compared to what it is in a foreign land. To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols, and feel a thrill that would stir a very river of sluggish blood."

I suspect that those of us who have fought in foreign wars or even been posted overseas, understand this feeling. That flag is the anchor that tethers us to home, and civilians, not even pampered civilians playing at a game, can be expected to understand.

Also, note the last part where Twain observes "To see it is to see a vision of home itself and all its idols..." Well, if your version of that home is hateful, then the flag itself is a hateful vision, correct? Thus, I would be inclined to sympathize with Kaepernick and those who still remember what his demonstration connoted but I also understand that his complaint is founded on little substance.

I grew up in a time of institutionalized prejudice. Bigotry was memorialized in the very law itself. Maryland, where I was born and raised, still forbade mixed racial marriages and prosecuted offenders. Blacks ("Negroes" in those days) were directed to separate schools and public facilities, even to separate drinking fountains. All that is in the past and blacks were enjoying a faster rate of economic development than whites. Unfettered, they thrived. Then something happened. They were recaptured and returned to the plantation, bound by government gifts rather than chains. Black males became superfluous as black mothers were paid to become free of them. The black family ties that I had grown up envying, were rent asunder. Sadly, Kaepernick's demonstration missed the point, that point. He became a stooge of those who would keep his people in chains.

This is why I still feel chills at the sight of our flag. There are other emblems that I kneel before in protest. I wish Kaepernick and the others would join me there.