Are the Make America Great Again Hats Made by Nike?
Commentary
The MAGA Lid Is Not Campaign Swag. It's An Emblem Of Hate
Like others, I dismiss sure gestures as "symbolic:" meaning merely for show. Nevertheless it's undeniable that some symbols scrape our nervus endings. The original American flag, representing for some our noblest aspirations and for others the era of slavery, provoked Colin Kaepernick into convincing Nike to go along its flag-emblazoned sneakers on the cartoon lath.
Others spar over the morality of flying the Confederacy'southward flag and maintaining statues exalting Amalgamated leaders. And why do skinheads (or history-insensitive punks) deface synagogues with swastikas, other than to trigger outrage, or anti-Semitic applause, over memories of the Holocaust?
A recent court conclusion, buried in the barrage of grim news virtually mass shootings, bolstered the example for mothballing that keepsake of Trump-mania, the Make America Great Again cap, forth with those symbols of evil.
U.S. District Gauge William Bertelsman dismissed a libel arrange by parents of a Catholic teenager against The Washington Post for its reporting of his January staredown with a Native American at the Lincoln Memorial. In the winter face-off that got more attention than its summer denouement, Nick Sandmann and Nathan Phillips stood olfactory organ-to-nose, the latter chanting and drumming, the former's smirk beaming from beneath his MAGA cap.
Sandmann and fellow students from Covington Catholic High in Kentucky were in Washington for an anti-abortion rally. Extended video and Phillips'due south testimony after suggested that members of the Black Hebrew Israelites, some of whom found a hate group, had taunted the students every bit "dogs" and "incest babies"; Phillips said he intervened to pacify the state of affairs.
But Sandmann'due south and other students' MAGA caps bled anti-Trumpers' sympathy for them, justifiably: Unless you've been marooned on the International Infinite Station, you know that Trumpism is racism, blatant or latent (here'southward a summary of the voluminous prove). That makes the cap no different than a Confederate flag. It's racial animosity woven in cloth, unwearable without draping yourself in its political meaning. Information technology would exist like donning a swastika and expecting to be taken for a Quaker.
The courtroom ruling reinforced the cap's unsavoriness by reminding us of its defenders' propensity to manufacture mythology near themselves. That's washed likewise by those who display other symbols of hate and past our president himself, who has spewed about 12,000 untruths or misleading statements during his tenure.
In Sandmann'due south example, he alleged that the Post libeled him with no fewer than 33 statements, spread over seven articles and three tweets. The "gist" of ane article, he claimed, was that he "assaulted" Phillips, "physically intimidated" him, and had "engaged in racist comport." But Bertelsman, a federal judge in Kentucky, would have none of it. "This is non supported by the manifestly language in the article, which states no such thing," his 36-folio ruling said.
Many of the allegedly defamatory comments either referred to the students as a group and not Sandmann specifically, the guess found, or else relayed Phillips's feeling intimidated by the students. Even if his fears were groundless, Bertelsman wrote, they were opinions, to which Phillips is constitutionally entitled and which the Post is constitutionally protected to impress.
The variance from reality that the judge found in Sandmann's allegations reminds usa of the bedtime stories concocted around other hate symbols as well. Defenders of the Amalgamated flag insist, in the words of ane, that "it has nothing to practice with slavery." If such people had taken U.S. history, they would have learned that no less than the breakaway nation's vice president declared its founding premise to be the inferiority and merited subjugation of African Americans.
Meanwhile, some debate for leaving Amalgamated statues up as monuments to history. In fact, they were erected not as history lessons just rather Jim Crow tributes honoring the Lost Cause. A museum is the appropriate place to display and written report such bigotry, not the public square.
Every bit for the swastika, it inspires defenses that would be risible only for the thing'south grisly history. Before the Nazis hijacked it, it was a millennia-old good luck symbol in multiple nations, incorporated even into synagogue designs. For reasons I don't pretend to understand, some want to hopscotch backward over the clan with six million slaughtered Jews to that less poisonous past.
Gas chambers, ovens and firing squads will do that to a symbol. Some things but are beyond redemption.
The commonsense response came from a writer who said that fifty-fifty pro-swastika types "can't seem to talk about the symbol without mentioning Hitler — possibly proof that it is nearly impossible to divest a symbol of its meaning, even when its meanings are multiple." Gas chambers, ovens and firing squads will practice that to a symbol. Some things merely are beyond redemption.
That doesn't include Nick Sandmann'south case, according to his parents, who vowed to appeal the estimate'south determination. "I believe fighting for justice for my son and family is of vital national importance," Sandmann's male parent said. "If what was washed to Nicholas is not legally actionable, so no one is safe."
I've no thought whether Sandmann Sr. is a Trump supporter. But hyperbolized dangers to national rubber inhere in the outlook of the president and his base. (The "invasion" on our southern border, for case.) Coupled with Nick'southward MAGA chapeau, the family's grievances against the Postal service, deemed made-upwards by the judge, requite this case a stench.
Equally a Catholic, I hope Covington'due south teachers refer their students to the church building's teaching about the equality of all humans. It may have been disregarded by parents who should tell their children to have the caps off their heads and donate them to a museum.
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Source: https://www.wbur.org/cognoscenti/2019/08/29/covington-catholic-video-make-america-great-again-hat-rich-barlow
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