By Michael Henry

The NFL players who take a knee during the national anthem should put their other knee on the ground as well, and thank God they were born with incredible athletic ability and live in the greatest country in the world with a populace that places a very high premium on their talent.

The fad began with San Francisco quarterback Colin Kaepernick in the 2016 season, the eighth year of the Obama presidency. Kaepernick was no longer the Forty-Niner’s starting quarterback, so he had plenty of time to think and listen to his radical girlfriend, radio host Nessa Diab, who later put the kibosh on his football future when she compared via Twitter the Baltimore Ravens ownership negotiating to sign Kaepernick as a free agent to the slave plantation owner in the movie Django.

Cherchez la femme and cheese are two things the French got right.

Kaepernick said during the 2016 season, “I am not going to stand up and show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color…. There are bodies in the street and people getting paid leave and getting away with murder.” In September 2016 he referred publicly to the police shootings of Terence Crutcher and Keith Lamont Scott as “a perfect example of what (his protest) is about.”

The War on Cops, Heather Mac Donald’s 2016 book, provides definitive research and statistics to prove that the police are at much greater risk of losing their lives to someone motivated by racial animus than non-police. She debunks the main narrative of Black Lives Matter, that racist cops are the greatest threat to young black males.

But, as is so often the case in 21st Century America, facts don’t really matter. The sports media leans further left than the mainstream media, and together they have facilitated the NFL’s alienation of its fans by couching the “protest” in terms of the First Amendment. They say the twenty-three percent of the players who took a knee on a recent Sunday did it to point out “social injustice” in the U.S.

It’s not clear what “social injustice” means. If the players are protesting the treatment of blacks in the United States, then how about including in their job action the hatred involved in the many ambush murders of black (and white) policemen?

And how about considering affirmative action to get more whites, Latinos, and Asians on the NFL and NBA rosters? African-Americans make up 13% of the United States population, but constitute 70% of the NFL players and 74% of the NBA players. By affirmative action standards, how unfair is this?

Some might argue (correctly) that blacks are better at football and basketball,  and that’s why the percentages are so skewed. But cannot the same be said about whites or Latinos or Asians who dominate other professions? The statistics seem to bear out that whites are more likely than blacks to be neurosurgeons, corporate CEO’s, or jet pilots.  If admission to Harvard and Stanford were on SAT scores alone, Asians would probably make up 90% of the student bodies.

In 2016, Brock Osweiler, a backup quarterback for the Denver Broncos, signed a four-year, $74 million contract with the Houston Texans. $37 million to be paid in the first two years was virtually guaranteed, regardless of how much or how well he played.

The average salary for a good high school science teacher in the United States is approximately $58,000.

Multi-millionaire football players who complain about “social injustice” are similar to George Soros, a Hungarian-born multi-billionaire who made his money by investing and trading currencies. Now, Soros funds the most radical groups in America and Europe, whose expressed goal is to destroy capitalism, the very system that made him wealthy.

Soros should take two knees, too.

Michael Henry is a writer in Oxford, MS. He can be reached at mhenryauthor@gmail.com.