Thirty-four years ago,
President Ronald Reagan stood on the very spot on the northern coast of France
where Allied soldiers had stormed ashore to liberate Europe from the yoke of
Nazi tyranny.
In 1944 free nations
had fallen, Jews cried out in Nazi concentration camps and millions more cried
out for liberation.
President Reagan asked
why these men, who were hardly more than boys with “the deepest joys of life”
before them, would “put aside the instinct for self-preservation and risk their
lives to take those cliffs.”
He noted, “…We know the
answer. It was faith, a belief; it was
loyalty and love.”
During yesterday’s “Celebration
of America” ceremony which replaced the celebration intended to recognize the
Philadelphia Eagles’ Super Bowl victory, President Trump told those assembled
on the White House lawn, “I want to take this opportunity to explain why young
Americans stand for our National Anthem. Maybe it’s about time that we
understood. We stand to honor our military and to honor our country and to
remember the fallen heroes who never made it back home. We stand to show our
love for our fellow citizens and our magnificent Constitution. We stand to pay
tribute to the incredible Americans who came before us and the heroic
sacrifices they made. America is a great nation—a community, a family. And
America is our home, and we love our home. So, we stand together for freedom.
We stand together for patriotism. And we proudly stand for our glorious nation
under God.”
The New York Times’ Michael
D. Shear wrote,
”President Trump doubled down on his war with the Philadelphia Eagles on
Tuesday, hosting a short celebration without the team as his spokeswoman
accused the Super Bowl Champions of turning their White House invitation into ‘a
political stunt.’”
It was indeed a
political stunt. White Press Secretary
Sarah Sanders defended the President’s decision to cancel the Super Bowl
celebration declaring, "The Eagles were the ones that tried to change
their commitment at the 11th hour and the President frankly thinks that the
fans deserve better than that and therefore we changed the ceremony to be a
focus on celebrating our great country. Look, if this wasn’t a political stunt
by the Eagles’ franchise, then they wouldn’t have planned to attend the event
and backed out at the last minute."
The Eagles, according
to Sanders, tried to reschedule the event to a time when President Trump would
be in Singapore negotiating the vital denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
There is a portion of
Ronald Reagan’s speech commemorating the 40th anniversary of D-Day
that, to my mind, connects President Trump’s staunch defense of disinviting the
Eagles:
“You all knew that some things are worth dying for. One's
country is worth dying for, and democracy is worth dying for, because it's the
most deeply honorable form of government ever devised by man. All of you loved
liberty. All of you were willing to fight tyranny, and you knew the people of
your countries were behind you.
The Americans who fought here that morning knew word of the
invasion was spreading through the darkness back home. They fought─or felt in
their hearts, though they couldn't know in fact, that in Georgia they were
filling the churches at 4 a.m., in Kansas they were kneeling on their porches
and praying, and in Philadelphia they were ringing the Liberty Bell.”
The Eagles were the
first to interject politics into this visit.
They abandoned the fans who wanted, just once more, to hail the heroes
who outmatched New England and pretty boy Tom Brady to instead demonstrate
their loathing of the President.
The Liberty Bell has
been a unifying symbol for Americans. Yesterday,
it was silent.
Tyler Tines, a writer
for SBNation and whose bio on Twitter says he’s “another black boy from the
forgotten blocks of Norf Philly”, posited this screed:
To stand next to a figure like Trump on the South Lawn is
to dishonor the very people, the unprivileged and oppressed, that athletes have
traded their careers for.
[SKIP]
The point was to rebuke the protesting athlete’s efforts.
The president wanted to unnecessarily gloat and put forth a mandated national
thinking after singing to God and having him bless America. He wanted to tout
his steady dismissal of the beautiful, black protest that has overtaken this
land. Such a flaunt can only be seen as laughable.
[SKIP]
The face of such pomposity deserves a righteous reaction —
not commonplace answers. War has been declared here, and our basketball and
football stars are being pitted against Americans, and in the middle there is a
president, using the best of his policy and political wherewithal to attack
their might.
[SKIP]
The understanding must be that this will not end. The
presidency will continue its attack on the soul of the black athlete. Trump
will always attack black athletes because they pose a threat to his
form of white power. To strike back, to scold men he believes to be uppity and
selfish, is to reassure his base.
