Many individuals on both sides of this debate are being ridiculous. You have one side treating the national anthem and saluting the flag like it's some sacred religious ritual, then you have groups of people like Colin Kaepernick and other NFL players who think kneeling for the national anthem is actually doing something to solve the problem of police brutality. There's nothing wrong with honoring your country, but when honoring your country's flag and national anthem turns into "State worship" then we have a problem. If someone kneels for our national anthem or burns a flag, it's OK to have an opinion and be disgusted by it but if you're, so triggered to the point where you're talking about throwing people into jail, passing laws, or just punching holes in the wall, then you might be a Statis. But that's a discussion for another time.
Did we really need Kap to bring attention to the problem of police brutality? The Black Lives Matter movement was already in full swing and getting national attention along with some very controversial police shootings. Some of these police shootings were definitely clear cases of police miscunduct, while others weren't so clear on who was at fault, but don't tell that to any hardcore BLM supporters. In their minds, if a black man was killed then it's automatically because the cop was racist and not justified. Facts be damned!
While there can be, and has been many instances of police brutality/misconduct on the Federal level, most protests and issues over police brutality occur on the state and local levels. So, why were Kap and other NFL players protesting a problem of local government by kneeling during the National anthem? What does the national anthem have to do with local police departments? You can kneel all day and night, but until local and state officials start holding bad cops accountable, protesting the national anthem will have the same effect as farting in the wind. What Kaepernick fails to realize is, the national anthem doesn't represent the State or it's agents, the country is not the government. The country is "We the people" and the national anthem is our anthem, not the government's. It's totally possible to love your country without having to love your government. If Kaepernick and other NFL players really wanted to make a difference they should have started a political action committee with a pledge to help vote out every mayor and city council representative who didn't enact policies that held bad cops accountable. That would be a solution which would actually help solve the problem.
