Snowflakes on the Left, Snowflakes on the Right, Snowflakes in my Face just Picking a Pointless Fight

One reason I don’t paint groups of people with blanket statements is that people who do that are of below-average intelligence and probably don’t change their underwear regularly.

I don’t at all enjoy the hypercritical times we live in. I don’t at all enjoy the suffering of others, whether or not said suffering is imposed by what I believe to be a truly cruel external force. Sure, it’s fun on a prideful level to laugh at that woman who was bawling in the street when Trump was inaugurated. However, when you take a step back and put some softer eyes on the scene you have to admit that she really was in emotional anguish. Emotional anguish is real and sincere, no matter the source. Were I to talk to her, I would be forced as a deist to speak to her from the view that she’s a fellow image-bearer of God. I’d probably leave how I feel about that crying session unsaid. I’d talk with her about how she can still work, love, survive, and thrive in this country no matter how vehemently she dislikes the president. If she listens to me or not, she will at least have spoken to someone who’s not out to make fun of her and bring her even lower. Not as entertaining an outcome as watching a YouTube video compilation of leftist snowflakes when I should be spending time with my kids, but definitely more meaningful.

And that’s the problem. We live in hypercritical times during which many of us are just waiting for the chance to lick the back and slap a sticky pejorative label on the other guy. The political right is better at critical rhetoric. The political left is better at stirring up an emotional ruckus. But they both breed snowflakes of the most obnoxious kind. The right throws this label around like a rapper making it rain at a strip club. To be fair, there are examples aplenty of leftist snowflakes. But they conveniently ignore all the rightist snowflakes. Any hardcore Republican reading this is probably ready to argue this last statement with all sorts of examples and blanket statements. I’ll incapacitate them with two words.

Colin Kaepernick. Boom! Pow! Smash! Thok! Green Pea Soup! Finish him! See them writhing on the ground? They’ll be there awhile. What exactly did this guy do? Did he run an underground dog fighting ring? Take part in a nightclub brawl that ended in someone being murdered? Work his fiance over with some chin music in a hotel elevator? Intimidate and possibly sexually assault a young, attractive female in a restroom? Get drunk and smash their car into another motorist? Break and enter a stranger’s house with the intent of stealing their goods sans the dutiful exchange of legal tender? We gave and will continue give guys who engaged in these transgressions (and more) second chances. But we won’t give a guy who legally exercised his right to free symbolic speech a second chance.

He was very careful and specific with his words. He said he won’t stand for an anthem for a country in which people of color are brutalized by police and dis-enjoy their status as second class citizens. Nothing about troops and the people who died to preserve his freedom of speech. It’s the inferred offense by a people just waiting to be victimized by someone else’s speech and actions. Agree with him or no, I didn’t give his speech more thought than what it was due. I pondered it, decided whether or not I fully or partly agreed, and moved on with my life.

People who served and relatives of those who served were horribly offended, citing the suffering they’ve endured. I don’t deny the suffering. I would say that this suffering was caused by their service, not by Kaepernick’s speech. “It’s disrespectful” you say? Ever raised a teenager? Ever worked in the service industry? Ever had a horrible boss? Ever married someone who doesn’t control their mouth and takes perverse pleasure in verbal brawls? Ever done something stupid around a bully? My goodness, this life is full of disrespect, both intentional and inferred. If you constantly put your emotional reactions on inferred disrespect, you’re bound to not get a lot done, along with giving far too much power to others over your feelings.

See that’s the thing. The flag and the national anthem aren’t sacred and untouchable to me, nor are the people preserving their status in this world above reproach. Things like God, morality, family, and private property are sacred to me. I am (in this order) a Christian, father, son, brother, uncle, business owner, Baptist, aspiring writer, and employee before I’m an American. Yes, I realize being an American allows me to be all those things without too much undue interference. But I could be all those things in a country with fewer freedoms. This country wasn’t set apart by God in the same vein as ancient Israel was. And Israel of the Old Testament has expanded in God’s favored status with His adopted family of Christians; a family which knows no racial, social, gender or intelligence based, economical, familial, or national lines of demarcation.

I know that men fought, suffered, and died for Kaepernick’s freedom of speech. But that kind of proves my point, right? Did they fight suffer, and die for only speech that you like? And he never denigrated the troops. Beyond his explicit words, any offense must be inferred from implicit arguments. There’s no end to where you go when you start stuffing words in others’ mouths and hearing what you want to hear so as to justify your offense.

And that begs the question. He suffered public and professional consequences. Must he do that indefinitely? He lost his job and has been refused to be considered for a job since. Don’t throw at me the argument “He got x number of dollars from Nike, so don’t tell me he’s a victim”. He doesn’t want to do SJW campaigns for Nike. He doesn’t want to be a poster child for social causes anymore. He’s swallowed his pride and owned up to the perceived social transgressions he committed. He wants to be a professional football player, and is wonderfully equipped to do so. Even if he did mean to offend you, you’re morally bound as a Christian to forgive him and let him back into the fold of freedom-enjoying carbon units.

Whether or not you want to throw comparative suffering arguments into the cloud, he is still suffering. Emotionally, it hurts with a nagging sort of ache to report for a job every day that you didn’t choose free of other considerations like finances, convenience, familial situation, etc. I’m no longer a teacher because I’m worn down by the system and the lack of fair wage. I didn’t quit because I wanted to. I was sick of educational leadership, their priorities, and the ubiquitous scheme we call modern education that coalesces into tragically gross educational malpractice (a topic for another blog, or about twelve books). I work in logistics now and make more money than I ever did as a teacher. I miss the kids and the work every day of the week. My supervisor is well aware of this and might (reasonably, actually) pass me up for promotion in this company because he knows how much I miss teaching. What makes my situation even more interesting (from my perspective) is that my supervisor is a young man whom I met during my substitute teaching days and got to know him once he graduated from school. That I make good money now because of a relationship I formed when I was a teacher shows what a wonderful undertaking being a teacher is. Long and short, I am not doing what I want to do professionally and I’m suffering emotionally because of it.

That’s not even mentioning the practical side of this Kaepernick argument. Dude can run. Dude can throw. Only thing he lacks is recent game experience. I mentioned that he swallowed his pride. He’s willing to be a backup. Seattle interviewed him but went no further. Seattle has in Russell Wilson what ESPN calls a “dynamic quarterback”. That’s media doublespeak for “black guy who can scramble, buy time, and even run downfield better than white guys, except maybe for Aaron Rodgers”.

Outside of the fact that Seattle’s offensive structure allows for more busted play improvisation, I wouldn’t hire Kaepernick for a team like that. I’d hire him on a team with a club-footed statue of a QB whom opposing defenses would fall down laughing at were he to line up in a run-pass option formation. Having swallowed aforementioned pride, Kaepernick’s willing to be that third-and-long-obvious-passing-situation QB who can break out of the pocket and pick up a 1st down if the man coverage opens up a hole in the middle of the field. He can help a team. Bringing some extra media scrutiny to the locker room and team dynamic is worth a last minute playoff win in my eyes.

Hunker down, fellow Christians. This one’s going to hurt. Having swallowed twice aforementioned pride and willing to be a backup/RPO/wildcat QB makes him better professionally than Tim Tebow. Talk about poster children, right? Remember when he also took a knee expressing his beliefs? Remember when he was cut from Denver, signed, and butted heads with the Rex Ryan-led New York Jets? Remember him pridefully refusing to be a wildcat quarterback? Remember him being cut by the Jets and not landing a job anywhere else? Did Christians and salt-o-the-earth football fans voice their displeasure at these unfair developments, or condescendingly dismiss him as getting what he deserved? The former, of course. Hypocrisy says I.

I didn’t want to rhetorically prevaricate with a self-indulgent treatise on football. This diatribe proves my overall point. A snowflake is immutably delicate and melts easily. There are folks on the right to whom this label is perfectly applicable. Dave Chappelle calls it a “brittle spirit”, concocting a comedically brilliant situation in which he could kill every white person in the U.S. by having a wobbly-legged O.J. Simpson come out during the national anthem before the Super Bowl and taking a knee at midfield.

Speaking of Dave Chappelle, aren’t folks on the right singing his praises for Sticks and Stones; a monumental, archetypal, hyperbolic testament to the clever use of free speech, telling snowflakes on the left offended by his racially, sexually, and gender-based provocative jokes to sit down and stop being so offended? This is somewhat to the credit of white folks who haven’t voiced collective offense to his (once again) comedically brilliant sequence in which he feeds at a high velocity birdshot and buckshot to heroin and crystal meth addicted whites breaking into his house looking for loose change. But were they lifting him up after Equanimity, during which he leans so hard on Donald Trump he nearly falls over? ‘Course not.

Look, I get it. It’s easy to tell the other guy to chill out bro when the village clown is sending up the that guy’s sacred cows. It’s harder to chill out bro when he’s tagging our holy bovine. But we need to. I don’t see anything we humans concoct in this life as above comedy or (more importantly) criticism. Only the holy things of God are off-limits to me. But that doesn’t mean I’ll spend my time and emotional energy imposing limits and consequences on someone who does joke about God or criticize His adopted children. Individual soul liberty leaves that matter between them and God. I’m not their judge, nor will I judge them. I will only discern what they say and do, then decide whether or not I’ll be entertained by it and engage in it myself. I learned too late in life to take a daily dose of Mindmyownbusiness-icillin with a dash of It’salmostneverthatdeep-otrol. Now that I have learned, I’m not going to give power over my emotions to others, nor will I wish removal of gainful employment on them when they run afoul of my beliefs.

Someone should hire him and others should stop melting down at the sight of him. A person outside of your family employed in another industry many leagues away doesn’t have that much of an effect on your life, nor can he very much victimize you with his words.