#BlackSunday

     It was a thrilling day for Patriots Nation (if, by thrilling, you mean coronaries every time the Texans were on the move with the defense unable to stop them). Down 33-28 with a few seconds over two minutes to go, Tom Brady engineered one of his patented two minute drills and led the Patriots to a 36-33 win over the Houston Texans. But that wasn't THE story of the day, was it? No. No, it was not.
     The real story was Donald Trump having yet another epileptic seizure on Twitter this morning and pre-emptively warning NFL players not to take a knee during the National Anthem and, if they did, Trump's billionaire buddies should fire or suspend them. It was the second time Trump egregiously violated federal law by trying to suppress free speech guaranteed to us in the First Amendment.
     The Patriots-Texans game began with many Texans across the gridiron taking a knee during the national anthem and Tom Brady himself, yes, Trump's #1 fanboy in the NFL, the one who figuratively took a knee and decided not to meet Trump when the Super Bowl champion Patriots went to the WH, Tom fucking Brady, he who had a MAGA hat in his locker, linked arms with his teammates in solidarity.
     So let us call today #BlackSunday (with apologies to Thomas Harris).
     Because Trump essentially tried to put out a grease fire with water and what happens when one does that? You make the fire spread. The Daily Mail in the UK, of all papers, was quick to pick up on the movement and show of solidarity for the excommunicated originator of this movement, Colin Kaepernick. And, don't forget, the UK is famously indifferent toward American football. But this wasn't about football, was it? Again, no. No, it was not.
     The statistics, including Tom Brady's late 4th quarter heroics, will dutifully be entered into the books and the wins and losses faithfully tabulated and the records adjusted. But the real story today, that 130 NFL players, including white players such as Tom Brady and even one or two of Trump's white billionaire buddies who's even chipped in a cool million bucks towards his tiny inaugural, stood behind their players and teammates.
     While Trump is now strutting around like a pigeon that just shat on a chess board and pretends it won the game, Trump was publicly humiliated by the entire NFL from the owners down to players and even a referee or two to the British newspapers. It's laughable that Trump called for a boycott of the NFL should Kaepernick's quiet, peaceful protest spread to other players. Yet, if Wembley Stadium is any indication, Trump couldn't even keep Londoners from attending the Raven-Jaguars game.
     Just as he's waged a war on the federal judiciary, women, late night comedians, the mainstream media and just about anyone of consequence who has officially or unofficially disagreed with him, Trump has lately waged war against the sports world. The man who'd been denied the chance to buy the Buffalo Bills (later making Trump, of course, disparage them on Twitter- Aesop would call it "sour grapes") was just humiliated not by one club but every club in two nations and on two continents.
     It all started when Stephen Curry, the NBA star of the world champion Warriors, floated the idea that if they go to the White House to meet Trump, it would be a great opportunity to make a statement. Well...
     When his Umber Umbrage heard that, well, he couldn't have that, a black man causing him embarrassment, So, naturally, he took to his shit stained blue perch once again and rescinded an invitation to Curry and the entire team that the Warriors front office said had never been made.
     Of course, Trump is ludicrously framing this for the benefit of his mouth-breathing, knuckle-dragging MAGA maggot supporters as an insult to the American flag and the nation as a whole. Whether he's deliberately misinterpreting this growing movement or, like a typical out of touch white billionaire, he actually believes his own tweets, one fact is clear- Trump's heavy-handed and ham-fisted attempt to bring black players to heel blew up in his fat face like a prank cigar the size of Long Island.
     Of course, as any fairly well-informed child can tell you, Colin Kaepernick's quiet protests just prior to 49er's games last year was in protest of African Americans, especially the unarmed ones, getting killed by overzealous police. It had nothing to do with disrespecting the flag or the nation. If anything, Kaepernick's silent, seminal protests (that appear to have cost him his playing career) showed respect for the flag and an even better ideology than those which guided the Founding Fathers in the 18th century-
     Kaepernick did not wish for the flag to be synonomized with unchecked, racially-driven brutality and animus visited on African Americans on a daily basis, that those ideals ought to be rejected when paying fealty and allegiance to a flag and a nation.
     Trump doesn't get it either way, whether he deliberately misinterprets Kaepernick's stand or if he really believes that in his orange hamster ball at the White House and Mar-a-Lago, But black people as a whole do not like him, they never did and they never will. Trump showed his true color (because he recognizes just one- white- which, ironically, is all colors) after Charlottesville. He had a golden opportunity, several, to repudiate the white nationalist movement and he chose not to.
     The fact remains that Trump has gone after Colin Kaepernick, Jamele Hill and Stephen Curry with more viciousness and vitriol than he ever did the Neo Nazis, the KKK or white nationalists (that he called "very fine people.").
     And, to any right wing nut case reading this, let me close with this salvo: If you have much more of a problem with black players taking a knee during the national anthem than white Baltimore cops taking a knee on Freddie Gray's back, not only do you have a problem, this entire nation has a problem.
(Addendum: Next time Trump tries to wax pious about patriotism, the flag and the national anthem, remind him of this now infamous moment after a GOP debate.)