When Donald Trump once again waded into the waters of the never-ending national anthem crisis late last week, he did so for obvious reasons.
After another stretch of Twilight Zone-level chaos that saw the thrice-married president connected to yet another woman from the pornography industry, throw the intelligence community under the bus to the delight of Russian President Vladimir Putin and indictments handed down for 12 Russians in connection with special counsel Robert Muller’s ongoing investigation into Russian tampering in the 2016 presidential election, Trump needed something to divert attention from the metastatic malignancy his presidency has become.
So after the NFL an NFL Players Association agreed July 19 to halt the idiotic enforcement of all national anthem rules while they moved toward a solution – the league established fines for anthem protests a few weeks back — Trump began tweeting about how the national anthem issue is “alive and well again.”
Actually, it’s not, particularly since the NFL and its players have until Sept. 6 to figure this out before the NFL season officially begins. However, unless remedied – any policy is wrongheaded — it will again gain steam as midterm elections approach. However, if players want to neuter the man who referred to them as “sons of bitches” once and for all, they should comply — with a slight twist added — like they have never done before in their lives.
So, what is the twist?
In a show of confrontational solidarity and a refusal to back down, every player in the NFL Players Association, which is 70 percent African American, should learn and sing the third stanza of the anthem, as loudly and impassioned as possible, before each game. If you don’t know it, the third stanza highlights the bloodlust of American soldiers to kill the players’ ancestors.
We’re not talking about “rockets red glare” and “bombs bursting in air” giving proof through the night that the flag was still there. I’m specifically referencing, “no refuge could save the hireling and slave from the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.”
By singing those lyrics, players would seamlessly bridge the salient connection between the hunting down of slaves in 1814, when Frances Scott Key penned the song as the British Royal Army attempted to take Fort McHenry during the War of 1812, and present-day America, when police officers continue to gun down unarmed African-American men and boys pretty regularly. That is, after all, what the protest was about before Trump hijacked the narrative.
Do this with your hand over your heart. Do this while standing, not while taking a knee. Don’t allow the president an inch of wiggle room to blow his dog whistle and contort this into the anti-military, anti-flag canard he did the first time this issue dominated the news cycle. And while you’re at it, manipulate the liberal media as well. Play the mind game. They hate Trump – honestly, they do — and will jump at the opportunity to make anything negative about him go viral.
At that point, what recourse does President Twitterstorm have? Where he once had the ability to gin up lies, that space would no longer exist. There is only the players’ perfect compliance, their reasoned and integrous stream of thought, not his, dominating news cycle after news cycle.
When the media floods the locker room after every game asking why players sang the anthem the way they did, give a uniformed and patriotic answer: “In the words of Patrick Henry, give me liberty or give me death. Now, let’s talk about the great American game of football.”
So there’s the blueprint for one of the very predictable fights the president is going to to pick as midterms draw nigh. Its not a response infused with the fervor, sass and Pentecostal flamboyance that African-Americans are so convinced must be a part of protest. Rather, it is imbued with unimpeachable logic that is too often ignored in modern resistance.
And logic is Trump’s kryptonite.
John N. Mitchell has worked as a journalist for more than a quarter century. He can be reached at jmitchell@phillytrib.com and Tweet at @freejohnmitchel
https://www.phillytrib.com/commentary/mitchell-a-game-plan-for-nfl-players-to-defeat-trump/article_3e44a34f-3b9f-5db2-9515-725157376415.html
