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Mahboob A  Khawaja, PhD.

Global terrorism is fast assuming to be an entity of normalization for political change and future-making. The few powerful nations enjoin wanton destructiveness of the human societies, infrastructures and essential lifelines under a false pretext of human animosities, economic challenges of survival, military interventions and hegemony for the management of future. The mankind is the net victim of their plans of greed and wickedness against all of the living beings on the planet. The war-torn Arab Middle East is the landscape to occupy the natural resources and human societies. We, the people, We the humanity must be awaken to the precarious challenges and realize the inherent egomaniac policies and practices to divide us and to destroy us by the most sophisticated means of modern annihilation – using ignorance and arrogance as if it were the characteristics of liberal democracy they intend to preach or impose on the 21st century’s human species for change and development.

Mr. Trump is master of diversion. To divert attention from his failure to achieve any legislative victory, especially to repeal Obamacare, he interjected himself in NFL by condemning Colin Kaepernick, ex quarterback of San Francisco 49ers, for kneeling during national anthem to protest police brutality against blacks. President Trump also advocated that NFL should fire any player who kneels during national anthem and people should boycott NFL games until such action is taken.

United States Supreme court has ruled that National Flag burning in protest is protected under freedom of speech. Mr. Kaepernick and others has every right to kneel during national anthem as a protest. But what does this form of protest mean? National flag and national anthem represents the country and all of us, not a specific group or a policy. The protest should be grievance specific and not targeting the whole country. National flag burning or kneeling during national anthem although not un-patriotic, but is counterproductive and sends a wrong message. This form of protest seems misplaced and comes across as if you are made against the whole country rather than against a policy or governmental agency’s behavior. If you are mad against the country itself, then what are you going to do? Move to some other country? If you are mad against certain entrenched policies or governmental behavior, then the right course is to change them by getting involved in political process outside the sports arena.

In general, sport fans love players for their excellence in games and not politics. They come to enjoy the sport and sportsmanship, and hate to see it spoiled by national divisive politics.