I was raised differently than …well, anyone. I didn’t have any solid structure or anything but somehow I had a very insightful and intuitive mind so the lack of structure suited me, really. I was able to make up my own mind about things. I didn’t swallow the Kool-Aid, so to speak.
Lately, there’s been all this fuss about NFL players kneeling (or sitting) during the Pledge of Allegiance in the US. Personally, I’m more upset about how “President” Trump addressed it than the act of it, itself.
But I’ll save my Trump-Dumping for another time.
Anyway, I posted today on my Facebook account, that I do not feel I should have to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance or the National Anthem or anything else if I don’t want to. That’s the epitome of the National Anthem: freedom.
I have the right to be human and this seems to be lost on all these patriots who are wearing their red-white-and-blue hats with their holsters visible and their “Jesus Is Love” t-shirts. Before we are Americans, we are human.
For me, this is such a no-brainer. Perhaps because of that incorrigible mind I have always had. I simply cannot conform, for conformity’s sake. This is not what freedom is about. Freedom is about the choice to not conform. It’s about the right to protest.
We put a lot of weight on the shoulders of celebrities and athletes. My opinion of sports aside, these “heros” do, in fact, have a high place in Western society (as opposed to, oh I don’t know, teachers) so their actions are extremely scrutinized and valued (or judged).
It sucks that we base our fashion on what hairpieces are being worn on the television. We are more worried about which clothes to wear than we are about the fact that the President of the United States can say “…son of a bitch…” on live TV.
How shallow the US has become, that we are so worried about our NFL players not standing for the pledge that we don’t realize we should be worried about the reasons why they’re not standing.
Just because someone is rich, beautiful and has some kind of celebrity dream life, does not reduce them to being that image. These are regular human beings just like me; just like you.
It’s shameful and sinful in my opinion, to require people to go against their own morality and judgment, for the sake of money and ratings. This is what it ultimately comes down to.
I don’t care what color you are, what job you have, which role you recently played in or what family you belong to: You’re human. Like it or not, you’re not the BMW you drive; You’re not the corner office you work in; You’re not the 3,600-square-foot house you occupy during the winter.
You are not just an American.
You are human.
Don’t let the rhetoric and bullying remove this fact from your life because, in the end, being human is the only thing that is certain. Everything else depends on the weather and who tosses out the first bomb.
Cristina Johnson, Vagabond Writer 