Take the Knee, or Stand...

I am going to attempt to bring unity consciousness to one of the most divisive cultural and political issues America faces right now. As a Canadian, I have some distance and objectivity on this matter and may not be able to fully empathize with everyone's perspective, but I will do my best to try to understand and offer solutions to help us move forward in a more constructive manner.

The crux of my argument is that everyone is perfectly free to kneel for the anthem, stand for the anthem, and everything in between. Similarly, everyone is free to disagree with those who do not behave as they would like during the anthem. That's it.

This is a perfect example to bring up free speech and freedom of expression to see how it applies all across the board. If we look first at Colin Kaepernick and his successors that choose to kneel, we see that they are perfectly within their freedom to do so. How do we know? Because they are doing it. It's that simple.

We now take people including President Trump who express something to the effect that these people should not be allowed to kneel, that they should be fired for doing so. Great, that is within the realm of free speech as well. If players get fired, or if NFL officials also choose to kneel, we see freedom of expression in both cases.

We can extrapolate this point ad infinitum to realize the absolute nature of free speech and freedom of self expression. The clear and important distinction we have to make needs to be made perfectly obvious: acts of actual or intended violence against another person.

Of course, this is where we get into the whole crux of the protest. Acts of violence perpetrated by police officers and the controversies about racial profiling, systemic racism, and what justice ought to look like in each individual case. This is far beyond my jurisdiction to talk about with any authority; I can only offer heart-felt sympathy for all those affected.

The point I am trying to make is that Americans who are allowing themselves to be divided by the anthem issue or any other polarizing topic is distracting them from recognizing deeper, underlying issues.

The biggest underlying problem is the very division itself. If we ask, "Who benefits from a country so divided unto itself?" We put ourselves on a good trajectory to begin unraveling the deeper aspects of all this.

We all want a world in which we feel safe, where we are treated with respect, and where we are free to thrive. It is easy to start fighting each other based on these differing perspectives and political agendas. As we see, the realm of sports and entertainment can no longer distract people from the deeper issues society faces. Those of us just wanting to relax and watch football cannot get away from the sociopolitical realities that need to be addressed collectively.

As always, we are free to protest, free to speak against the protest, and free from needing to "pick a side." Why not stand with humanity as a whole? The entire world is increasingly coming together so we can mutually work out our differences and finally stand united. In the end we will realize that no one truly benefits from all this division. Best we realize it sooner rather than later, and with the least amount of pain necessary.