Does this mean he can play now?

Now that the athletes and the owners of the NFL have stood up to Trump, which team will break the logjam and sign Kaepernick?

That's how it happens folks. Someone decides to cross the line. Someone does the right thing.

I'm sick and tired of the right defining the debate and the left being pussies. If I have to hear one more nitwit say the NFL ratings are declining because Kapernick took a knee I'm gonna spread the canard that the Beatles ruined music. Yup, that's what they said back then. If you think the diehard blowhards who are spreading this fiction can give up their football, you probably don't believe in addiction. Come on, a league wherein the players get maimed for life and the games are rotten is failing because one man made a protest? If that was true, NFL ratings would have bounced back now that Kaepernicks's been excommunicated, but they haven't, they're declining further.

It's sad that it took the bloviations of the head of state to get the rest of the players to take a stand, but now they have, and the owners too, they've cooked their own goose, if that's possible, but the truth is the longer it takes you to do the right thing the longer it takes you to get back on the right path.

We keep sitting by. Thinking it will be okay. That someone else will do the work. That we have too much at risk to protest, to take a stand.

But that time has passed.

I lived through the sixties, which began with blacks in the back of the bus and ended with integration. And today African-Americans rule the culture. But the endangered whites want to put blacks in the back once again, want segregated schools, this time called "charters," while they want the government to pay for parochial schooling in a country founded upon religious freedom, and the truth is rust never sleeps.

Unless it's in the music business.

I don't want to work on Maggie's Farm no more, and neither do you.

First they came for our unions. That's why the NBA players are so strong, because of their union. Because the fat cat owners have all the money. That's right, you bitch about some athlete who makes millions without looking at the faceless owner who's got billions and is doing his best to keep players down.

But you can't criticize a corporate winner these days, not an entrepreneur, because they EARNED IT!

Oh yeah, right. Where would they be without us buying their products? Facebook is worthless without our participation. But we get bread and circuses at best.

I don't know where the breaking point is. We've been watching this Trump movie for half a year and the dam hasn't burst yet. And all we keep hearing is to forget Russia and let him rule. As if we can believe in the government after Russia invaded the voting booth and the right did its best to prevent people from voting. You can only push it so far before there's a reaction.

I'm frightened of what's happening with North Korea, but is the country we're now living in worth saving? Where science is ignored and we've seceded from the international landscape?

This is the event of your life, never forget it. It's not about Trump, but what he represents. A combination of the haves and the have-nots, fighting progress.

You remember progress, don't you? Where we're all in it together to put a man on the moon?

Now these same people want to hobble electric cars, want to preserve a way of life that's already in the rearview mirror.

Change happens one step at a time.

And what we've now learned is Colin Kaepernick was standing up for us all. Pointing out the injustice. You focused on him, he focused on the problem. Martin Luther King was imperfect. Curt Flood sacrificed his career to break baseball's treatment of players as serfs. Imagine if Wal-Mart workers had a union. Imagine if prices went up and you had the wherewithal to pay them. Imagine if the downtrodden and depressed were lifted up by you, the person with more. It's incumbent on the rich and powerful to make change. It's time to stop denigrating the youth and start putting yourself in their shoes, with a lot of debt and little future.

Today the NFL banded together and took a stand.

It's your turn tomorrow.

P.S. Ignore the haters. We had them in the sixties too. If we just rally the silent people on our side we'll overwhelm the vocal minority.

"No, I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more
Well, he hands you a nickel
He hands you a dime
He asks you with a grin
If you're having a good time
Then he fines you every time you slam the door
I ain't gonna work for Maggie's brother no more"

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