Spencer Shifs:
Kneeling can be seen as disrespectful to the flag, but I don’t believe it to be disrespectful to the troops. Our military fights for our freedom including the freedom to kneel for the anthem.
The message the players are sending is a good one because it is about police brutality against African Americans which is statistically proven to occur. Some have made it anti-Trump which is just a position of personal politics, but I believe that at the end of the day they have the right to kneel and freedom to do so.
I don’t believe the president has handled this well. He turns it into an anti-military stance which first of all, it isn’t, and second of all, Trump has been consistently anti-military. Football players kneeling in support of proven police brutality shouldn’t be his focus in my opinion.
There are alternate ways to express their feelings. They all have big social media accounts that they could post their views on, but this seems to be the most effective way at mobilizing people and spreading their message. Obviously there are going to be plenty of ways they can protest, but they have chosen a controversial one to spread their message further.
Connor Moylan:
I do think kneeling for the national anthem is disrespectful. Coming from a military family, I know what the flag means and it means a lot to my family and to many other military families.
Players get interviewed after games all the time, so if they want to protest problems that go on in our society, that should be their platform to speak on, not when we take time to remember those fallen, those injured and those that fight for our freedom to be able to kneel for the flag. All these people have millions of followers on Instagram and Twitter. Why not use those instead of kneeling during a time of respect?
I think what the message has turned into is hate towards President Trump. I think it is a bad message because we should respect the president since he is giving up a lot to serve our great country. It started off as a problem about police brutality, but has turned into much more.
I think everyone is handling the controversy with emotions, which is really all you can do. You feel one way or the other. The fact is that the players are allowed to kneel, but that doesn’t mean they should. I think President Trump shouldn’t have made such a big deal about the issue, but I am glad he said something because it is very wrong to kneel while we honor our heroes.
