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From a veteran: Grow up, America

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Mark Jefferson Paraan

I have seen two posts over as many days saying ‘we don’t care about the kneeling’ or ‘you’re a rich NFL player and kneeling is disrespectful to those who served and fought yada yada yada”

What’s happened here in America with the rise of racism and would be fascist dictatorships and authoritarianism, is happening all over the Western World.

Germany’s Chancellor Angela Murkel was just reelected for her fourth term. That’s great!

The bad news, the far right party, which is equivalent to the Nazi party got 13 percent headway into the new government.

The U.K has Nigel Farage and Theresa May, etc.

First off, if you don’t live in this country and you comment about what’s going on in this country – watch your lane. You need to check your own.

Secondly, the reason the whole kneeling thing is happening by the NFL, WNBA, NBA, MLB etc. is due to dead people in our streets murdered without due process of law. The majority of them being black.

So black athletes – starting with Colin Kaepernick starting making this issue visible using their platform.

See we like black people when we’re bumpin their music, when we’re watching their movies, when they go out and win championship titles, and trophies, and boxing matches, and super-bowl rings.

Black Athletes have brought home the gold in Olympic sports representing this country. They’ve fought and died for this country’s freedom.  (By the way, how did service members and the military get white washed?)

We like our black folks, then.

But when they kneel and we know what it is they’re kneeling over it makes us uncomfortable.

So to deal with that uncomfortablness of your country not being all sunshine and roses, instead of dealing with it – you want to put that off on the flag, or over the anthem, or best of all on veterans and current service members.

Stop putting your bullshit off on us. Because quite frankly, the majority of the responses from vets to the black community and those who are kneeling has been supportive.

Why? Because like major sports, the United States Military integrated successfully. They make it work, everyday.

See, the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights is the Beatrice to our Dante. Do you understand?

Of course you don’t.

See, when you sign up to serve, you need something grandiose to hang on to. A reason. A deep abiding faith in more than just looking good in a uniform. Because once you sign over that blank check you know you could die and dammit you have to have a reason to die and an even better reason to live.

That reason is that one day the words of our forebears would be actualized and not just conceptualized.

That oath we swear to uphold and defend, regardless of selective incorporation, regardless of federalism, regardless of SCOTUS decisions – we stand for life, liberty, and all of what it entails.

We stand for the right of the Klans member to march and for fuck sake – we stand for the black man (universally speaking) who was brutally discriminated against for 300 years – to make a statement about his freedom.

Because at the end of the day – our money is not on those who can’t take three minutes of a wake up call. Our money is on someone who’s suffered and died for over three hundred years and still —AND STILL —- remains.

Slavery didn’t wipe them out
The Civil War didn’t wipe them out
Jim Crow never wiped them out
Organized and racist religions didn’t wipe them out
The Rise of the religious right didn’t wipe them out
The war on drugs didn’t wipe them out
These killer cops aren’t going to do it either.

They have 300 years of this, you have three minutes.

I don’t see black people as the problem. I see you as the problem. You’re lazy. Intellectually slothful, hanging on to something your grandpappy put in your head, hanging on to the war of northern aggression, hanging on to dead ideas and death culture, because you’re whiteness somehow equates rightness.

I can’t speak for the rest of my brothers and sisters in arms but quite frankly all of this is the reason why we really don’t like civilians.

You’re children. Spoiled rotten ass children. This country has kept you this way. Your faiths have kept you this way. You’ve refused to leave your colloquialism behind. You refuse to travel the world and see and experience other people. Hell, most of you won’t leave your neighborhoods.

It is 17 years into the 21st century.

It is well passed time for you to grow up.

Personally, I think a mandatory 2 year enlistment for all citizens in one of the service branches would do a great deal toward working out the issues this country has with race among other things.

3 thoughts on “From a veteran: Grow up, America”

  1. An excellent post, but I believe it goes for all races. I have nothing against any American, but to be fair you must realize that there are black people and many are racist too. As far as protesting every single American has the right to protest in a nonviolent way. I don’t think this protest has anything to do with the American Flag or the National Anthem. There are many black Americans that bravely fought in all the wars for freedom. I think it is a protest against violence and bigotry in law enforcement. And, is targeted against all, no matter what race they may be.
    As far as grandmothers and grandfathers, I am a grandmother, age 74, I raised three children, My daughter married a black man and I have two beautiful granddaughters and my son-in-law is a loving father, husband, and son-in-law and is loved and respected as part of our family.

  2. Personally, I think a mandatory 2 year enlistment for all citizens in one of the service branches would do a great deal toward working out the issues this country has with race among other things.

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