They Fought For Our Flag

I just heard President Trump, at a press conference, tell the world that he had visited Walter Reed hospital and saw some of the wounded troops.

He explained that soldiers have fought and died for our country and for our flag and for our national anthem, and that any football player who refuses to stand at attention should lose their job.

Well, he may have a point. Now you and I may think that a flag is not worth fighting for, that it is only a piece of colored cloth. Or that a song is not worth defending with our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.

Well, the Yalies and the Harvard folks have battled for generations over whether Bright College Years is better than Fair Harvard. And, there are arguments to be made over whether America the Beautiful is a better national anthem than God Bless America.

But, when it comes to football, I think the President may be on to something. A flag and a song can mean a lot. By a lot, I mean $5.4 million.

That - according to a report by NJ.Com - is how much the Department of Defense paid 14 different NFL teams over four years in exchange for patriotic displays at football games. Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz) rapped the New Jersey Army National Guard for its spending, which paid for a segment at Jets’ home games where soldiers were featured on a big screen and thanked for their service.

So, who got the money? The Jets, Falcons, Ravens, Bills, Bengals, Browns, Packers, Colts, Chiefs, Vikings and Steelers all got multiple payouts, while the Cowboys, Dolphins and Rams were each paid only once.

The team that got the most money - almost 20 per-cent of the whole program - was the Falcons, who got it in five separate payments.

But football is a big sport in America, and what the president may be on to is that we should all get together at public events and support our flag. It’s only proper.

But, not just the players, of course. Everyone.

That means that every man, woman and child who is sitting in the stands is as responsible as the players for standing at attention, with their hand over their heart, when our national anthem is played.

And everyone who gets up during a seventh inning stretch at a baseball game when God Bless America is being played had better do the same thing. If you go to the bathroom or a concession stand while the song is being played, you should be picked up by team security and be thrown out of the building. If you have a season ticket, you should lose it.

Let’s face it. Respect is respect. When I was at Ft. Knox, they played retreat at the end of the day, every day. Everyone on the sprawling base stopped and faced the flag and stood at attention.

There were common-sense exceptions. Doctors, for example, did not stop operating on patients.

But civilians stopped as well as soldiers. And it’s time to show some real respect to the flag. Whole squads of detectives should be looking at the tapes of the crowds at sporting events every day, looking for people who are talking or scratching their heads or trying to handle their unruly kids. Fire them all,

Other officers out on patrol should start writing tickets whenever they see a worn-out flag, its edges frayed and ragged, waving in the wind instead of being disposed of properly. And, they could start enforcing flag etiquette, which bans the use of an American flag in advertising and on clothing. Hey, respect is respect.

And when Congress is in session, CSPAN should be scanning the house at every opening ceremony where the national anthem is played. Now I know you can’t just fire a member of Congress for not properly respecting the flag, but perhaps they could be sent to tour five or six army bases in war zones and maybe to the north or south pole.

They could be fired for a second offense.

I’m not quite sure what we should do when the President fails to show proper respect to the flag when the national anthem is playing. But, I am thinking about it. Long and hard.

Can you see me smiling?

Little Things Say a Lot

One of the bigger stories of the past week or two - it was well-covered in the newspapers and on TV and shouted about on social media - was President Trump’s anger over football players who refuse to stand and salute during the playing of the national anthem.

In a speech and some tweets, he urged football team owners to just fire any player who refuses to stand up and salute, then added that the game is in decline because referees are calling too many penalties.

A lot of the coverage has been, to coin a phrase, fair and balanced. Stories tell what Trump said and what the players said. When he disinvited NBA star Stephen Curry from coming to the White House with his winning team, the Golden State Warriors player pointed out that he had already said publicly he would not be going. LeBron James chimed in, tweeting to his followers “going to the White House was a great honor until you showed up...”

The New York Times, ever accurate, pointed out that James has twice as many twitter followers as the president.

But, the rules and restrictions of journalism put one really important thing down towards the bottom of the Times long, long story about the Trump outburst. It had to.

There often isn’t much flexibility in writing a newspaper story. It may seem that way when you start, when the paper or the computer screen is blank. But, the minute you write that first sentence, you are getting locked in. Fast.

This happened. So, that happened. And where did it happen or why did it happen? Who did it, who reacted to it, what are people saying about it? What does it all mean? Who gets hurt? What does it cost? What does it say about us? Question after question after question, and the story soon ends up following one sentence after another like a train on the tracks.

Pretend it’s a chess game. The starting player can make any move they want - dozens of good ones, hundreds of oddball ones and a lot more stupid ones. Just like a story can start wherever you want, then follow any path you pick.

 But after you and your opponent make a few moves, the wide-open game has become a  Kabuki dance of thrust and parry. And the wide open path you started down when you wrote the first few paragraphs of your story has become the only path it can follow.

Most of the coverage I have seen on this controversy has focused on Trump’s suggestion that owners fire players who do not stand up during the anthem, and the owner’s response - including owners who supported Trump during the election - that he was absolutely wrong, disrespectful of the game and its players, and perhaps unaware of the meaning of a contract.

This, of course, put a small but interesting nugget of the story down towards the bottom of some newspapers and left out of others and out of most 60-second broadcast stories. That was Trump complaining that referees were ruining the game by trying to control rough tackles.

“They’re ruining the game. They’re ruining the game. That’s what they want to do. They want to hit. They want to hit. It’s hurting the game,” the president was quoted as saying.

That’s the little thing that says so much.

It says that the president is unaware, or does not care, about the risk - we could actually call it a near-certainty - that most of today’s pro football players face the likelihood of brain damage. Many already have it, although how serious it may be can’t be determined. Yet.

The most comprehensive study to date, done by Boston University and the VA Boston Healthcare System, lasted eight years and looked at the brains of 202 deceased former football players. One of the worst kinds of brain damage, chronic traumatic encephalopathy, can only be verified by an autopsy of a player’s brain.

(Now if I were following traditional journalistic standards, there would be several paragraphs here about CTE and the difficulty of detecting it, or perhaps a sidebar on the disease if the paper had enough space. But, since I am retired, I am free to let you look it up yourself)

Anyway, that study of the brains of the former players - at all levels - showed 177 of them had CTE. It also showed three of 14 people who only played high school football had CTE, and 48 out of 53 college players had CTE.

There are other studies, opinion surveys actually, that show a lot of teenagers would be willing to trade the last 10 or 15 years of their life if they could instantly get fame and fortune right away. Being 80 or 90 and living on social security doesn’t look as good as having a couple of big houses, beautiful girls on your arm and the applause of millions of people, not to mention seeing dozens of people wearing your jersey whenever you go out in public.

No, as our president says, “they want to hit.”

I wonder how much money there is to care for the brain-damaged in his new health care bill.

The Way of The Leader

By way of apology, I have not been blogging for a while. That’s because I got so distracted by the events of the day, and the week, that I had trouble putting my finger on what has been missing in the ongoing debate over our president. But, finally, I think I got it. - Mitch

So, what makes a good leader?

Well, there are a lot of ways to answer the question, as many different ways as there are different kinds of leaders.

We’ve seen a lot of them without giving much thought to the question. Those are the leaders that people follow, and who get the job done, whatever the job may be. It all seems so obvious.

There are military leaders, leaders on football teams, leaders in the world of business. Strangely, there aren’t too many leaders - try to think of just one - in the world of science or art or drama. Not just those fields either. No great leader writers, no great leader accountants, no great leaders in charities.

That’s because leaders have to point in a direction and take their followers there. It;s why we have so many religious leaders and so few poetry leaders. Which, in many respects, is probably a good thing.

There is room to quibble, of course. I can think of some saints who might be considered leaders, just as I can think of some great baseball players who would never be called a leader. But, mostly, it’s the nature of the job that gives someone the opportunity to lead.

Which, of course, brings us to the President of the United States.

Now, not every president was a great leader. For every Washington or Lincoln, there was a James Buchanan or a Millard Fillmore.

It’s almost impossible to compare modern presidents with the ones who served a century or two ago. The jobs and the technology and our society are just too different.

But, it is possible to look at one or two things that were vital to their leadership ability, and all the men who have held the office of President had to do those things. They had to set a direction for the country, and they had to show how to get there.

Now, being a strict Constitutionalist, I know that the President is the chief executive, and that Congress is the deliberative body that sets national policy. In short, Congress tells the president where they want the United States to go, and the president does the hard work of getting us there. That’s why Congress writes so many laws, and why the president can, at most, give the members of Congress a proposed bill that he or she would like them to pass.

It’s a really good system, which would work really well if Congress hadn’t given up its responsibility to deal with the hard issues a long time ago. It’s hard to pinpoint just when, but a few years after the end of World War II would be a good place to look for the big change.

That was the time of the big Red Scare, when we thought Communists were going to take over the world. We helped create the United Nations to keep a world war from happening again, and we helped create the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to stand up to Soviet expansion.

Then, a few years after approving the Marshall Plan that saved the economic base of Europe, a lot of members of Congress found they could get more votes by talking tough about Communist radicals than by actually passing laws to deal with the threat - things like aid to nations on the border of the the Soviet block, or opening our country to immigrants fleeing Soviet expansion.

And after some unhappy years of blacklisting writers, finding Communists under our neighbor’s couch and in the State Department, we started going down the easy road, where leadership meant talking instead of acting. There were some exceptions, of course, but no road is straight and smooth.

The exceptions - things like dealing with the rabid racism and discrimination at home or the threat of nuclear missiles in Cuba - do not prove the rule. Even John F. Kennedy’s plans for a Great Society (and he was considered a real leader by many) couldn’t get approved in Congress until the job fell to Lyndon Johnson (who was seen as only a wheeler-dealer).

So, who was the last great Presidential leader of modern times? An interesting debate over a glass   of wine. Democrats cab bring up President Obama. Republicans can bring up President Reagan, and we can kill off a good bottle of Riesling or two without ever reaching an agreement.

But, let me propose a simpler debate. Is Donald Trump a good leader?

It’s tempting to say “no, no, no” and follow it up with “Let me count the ways,” but all that does is play Trump’s game. Look at the bright shiny objects. Look at all the things he says. Look at the way he acts. Look at the people he has put in charge of things.

Look, look, look. And look some more.

No, let’s just go back to the heart of the matter. Where is he leading the nation?

There is a commercial being aired as part of Trump’s new re-election campaign that lists his accomplishments. The stock market has gone up. Jobs are being created. America is becoming great again.

Well, in truth, the stock market has been going up pretty steadily since it crashed in 2008, because businesses are doing really well. Not the people on fixed income or the workers who can’t keep pace with inflation, but certainly its been good for people who own stock.

Jobs are being created, but not enough good-paying jobs to make up for jobs being lost to automation, imports and the closing or merging of so many businesses, from mom and pop stores to the office supply stores and the banks. Try to shop at a Sears lately?

So, what has The Donald done to lead us into the glowing future. What is his plan?

That’s simple. His plan is to demand that someone else do it. Let the Generals figure out what to do in Afghanistan (which turns out to be doing more of the same, and which brings back memories of Vietnam). Let China figure our what to do about North Korea. (I know. I won’t go there). Let Congress figure out how to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act.

That last one has a sequel or two. The first is “Let the Governors figure out how to deliver health care with less federal money than we are spending now” and the second is “Why aren’t those private charities stepping up to take care of the poor people who aren’t covered by those heartless governors?”

Remember the test? A leader has to show the nation where he wants to take us, and come up with a plan to get us there.

And the plan can’t just be Let Someone Else Do It.