A comparison comes to mind, one that strikes a cord in me. Colin Kaepernick, at the time, is an NFL quarterback with the San Francisco Forty-Niners. He takes a knee during the playing of the national anthem in protest of the rash of incidents where unarmed black men were fatally shot by police authorities. This form of expression(taking a knee) is constitutionally protected as free speech under the first amendment. You can disagree with this tactic but I believe you can understand his motivation as an advocate for racial justice and his support of the ‘black lives matter’ movement. Kaepernick’s protest produced a firestorm throughout our nation. Many people deemed him disrespectful to our flag and thus unpatriotic. The National Football League agreed and officially castigated him by blackballing the quarterback. Kaepernick’s support for racial justice left him jobless. Trump chimed in at one of his cult rallies calling him a son of a b---- who should be fired for disrespecting our flag.

Now comes Trump. He hugs the flag at his cult rallies yet denigrates the very American values our flag represents. He discredits our democratic institutions we hold dear, the FBI, the CIA and free press. He continuously claims voter fraud in the 2016 Presidential election without any evidence only because he lost the popular vote. Impressionable minds may lose faith in the election process as a result. Trump casts doubt on special prosecutor Mueller’s findings that Russia conducted a ‘sweeping and systematic’ cyberattack on the 2016 Presidential election; clear and uncontested evidence of Russian meddling that supported Trump’s campaign. For me here is the proverbial straw that breaks the camel’s back: In an interview on national TV Trump claims there is nothing wrong with him receiving helpful campaign information from a foreign country, even an archrival. Trump, with the weight of his words, rolled out the welcoming mat for nations abroad to meddle in our elections ! Free elections are the cornerstone of our democracy. Our nation’s electoral democracy is now ‘open season’ for its integrity to be compromised by foreign powers.

Kaepernick is punished and should be fired for his right to protest, in his view, for a noble cause while theoretically I know who really should be fired!