Count Gabe Kapler as another Bay Area coach speaking out against the mass killings in Buffalo and Uvalde, TX.
Like Warriors Head Coach Steve Kerr, Kapler wants stronger gun control laws in the hope of preventing the next massacre. Unlike Kerr, Kapler has opted to sit out the National Anthem in protest.
Kapler said he’ll continue “until I feel better about the direction of our country. I don’t expect it to move the needle necessarily. It’s just something that I feel strongly enough about to take that step.”
That choice presents some issues. (Never mind that it can be a distraction to a team that’s in a tight divisional race, or that many MLB players, perhaps even some he manages, might oppose further gun control.)
At first glance, Kapler seems a free thinker in a conformist baseball world so this latest action can hardly come as a surprise. But what is a surprise is the moral emptiness of the gesture itself.
If we extend Kapler’s moral reasoning we could soon use this to sit out virtually every time the Anthem is played or the Pledge is presented. Don’t like ___________, opt out. Don’t agree with the current President, sit out.
The fundamental problem with this posturing is that it neglects a whole other realm of thinking about traditional symbols and gestures of American patriotism. We don’t stand in reverence at these moments because we agree with everything that’s happened in this country. That’s impossible and has never been the case.
Revering our flag before a baseball game carries great meaning. It says that while we may disagree with all sorts of things about our country we are willing to stand together, united in the belief that America, which we call home, still represents something much greater than its shortcomings.[1]On that we should agree. Yet I wonder sometimes: Do we?
The problem these days with the American Left—of which Kapler himself seems a rather conformist adherent—is that it presents America as a glass more-than-half-empty enterprise. Seen from this perspective—one where sins take center stage and suggestions of greatness are ignored, even ridiculed—America, until it cleanses itself in the ways demanded of it, can never be great.
And yet this is the crux of our current culture war. No congressional rapprochement can cure us of it.
We may have different ideas about gun control, or racial matters or abortion or what wars to fight or avoid. We can survive that.
But millions of Americans, rest assured, will not accept attention public admonishments that neglect any hint of respect for what our flag on the whole represents.
“I have great respect for him personally,” said White Sox manager Tony LaRussa said of Kapler. “I like him. And I think he’s right. But it’s not the flag. And it’s not the anthem.”
The flag and the anthem after all point to something much bigger than one tragedy—however devastating that tragedy is—and certainly much bigger than ourselves and our opinions.
It’s time to consider what some of those other things might be. Ignoring them comes at our national peril.
Notes, etc.
| ↑1 | On that we should agree. Yet I wonder sometimes: Do we? |
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