You can't fix stupid. Is it too late to try to prevent it?

The above sign is being "shared" on Facebook.  That is like sharing brain cancer.   First of all, I don't know if it was really posted in a store window, where it was originally posted, or just what Randy Eckman owns, if he is actually a person.  He may be just a figment conjured up by some brain-dead organism.  We cannot but note that if Eckman exists, he has literacy problems.  The period in the middle of his message, should be a comma between the introductory clause and the declarative assertion.  Eckman or his creator does not understand the purpose of grammar.

Nevertheless, this sign is gravely offensive.  First of all, because it is so determinedly stupid.  Whoever subscribes to the idea that the football players who kneel during the national anthem are insulting to members of the armed services is totally and, most likely, willfully ignorant.  The act of kneeling is an act of reverence, supplication,  and, in this case mourning, not of insult.   The football players are kneeling to mourn the deaths of unarmed black men gunned down in the streets by the police.  They are kneeling in remorse over what the American flag and national anthem have come to stand for.  They are kneeling in sorrow that America has become a country that practices atrocities as depraved as herding Jews into gas ovens.  And they kneel in sorrow that so many Americans have chosen to support such atrocities as an act of patriotism.  

That sign supports everything that Naziism stood for--the right for people of one ethnic group to arbitrarily oppress and exterminate another.  

That sign and people who support its contention are the real insult to veterans.  

In 1948, President Truman issued Executive Order 9981 to desegregate the armed services.  That order was the result of much examination by civilian and military leaders.  Political pressure was mounting,  Almost a million African Americans served during World War  II, most in units that were limited to providing domestic services to high ranking officers.  There were only a few black combat units.  There were some, and field commanders who needed relief troops to carry out their battle orders.  Some black units were available, but the segregation rules did not allow them to be deployed in combat.

Another aspect is that when black soldiers, some of whom had seen combat, returned to civilian life, they returned to the inequality status by  being subjected to Jim Crow rules and a, pervasive racial discrimination throughout the nation.  Military leaders realized that the abilities of black soldiers were being wasted and then were insulting demeaned when returned to civilian life.  Studies of the situation by commissions saw that segregation created dangers for the country and the pressure to change it mounted.  President Truman issued the desegregation order and much of the implementation of it was carried out by his successor, Dwight Eisenhower.

Eisenhower was the commander-in-chief during the time I served in the Army.  It was during the most tense years of the Cold War, but the biggest battle was against racial prejudice. The unit I was assigned, which went to guided missile school and then was sent to Germany to install and operate air defense guided missiles was composed of about 30 percent of men who were black or Latino.  During our training, few racial; issues came up, but when we went to Germany to convert an anti-aircraft gun battalion to guided missiles,  there were troops who resented and resisted desegregation.

 I was sort of was prepared for it.  While on leave in my home town before being shipped to Germany,   I ran into a high school classmate who was in the Air Force.  While exchanging service stories, he bragged about how he and some buddies encountered a lone black man on a barracks stairwell and, for no reason, beat him up and threw him down the stairs.  Although  I am skeptical about the story, because military units take action against criminal assault, my high school acquaintance was expressing a racial attitude and intention.  

When I got to Germany, my bunkmate was a black man.  One night at the enlisted men's club, a group of men started taunting me about being a "nigger-lover" and making threats about what they would like to do about it.  Someone reported the incident to the orderly room and the officer-of-the-day sent the guard mount to shut down the EM club and escort me to the barracks.   The incident was the subject of some orders during the formation the next morning and the men who expressed their racial hatred were soon transferred out of the unit.  The battery commander said that our work was too important and sensitive to be jeopardized by racial discord.  There were numerous incidents of racist attitudes, and aggressive measures were taken to eradicate them.

The service of many veterans involved providing equality and justice to all the members of the military services.  Desegregation of the military led the way for the civilian population.  Although racism has not been eliminated, the services have for the most part made clear that expressions of racism will not be tolerated. 

The athletes who kneel during the anthem are not disrespecting veterans or the flag.  They are respectfully mourning the fact that the flag no longer represents what veterans once fought and worked for.  The country is becoming what they served to defend it from.

The definitive case that demonstrates America's slide into Naziism is the Philando Castile case.  On a Wednesday evening, two days after the Fourth of July in 2016, Philando Castile and his girl friend were returning from grocery shopping.  Her four-year-old daughter was in the back seat.  
A police officer thought the occupants of the car looked like those described in a police bulletin after a bank robbery.  He stopped the car and asked Castile for his driver's license and proof of insurance.  Castile informed the officer that he was armed, and the officer told him not to pull it out.  He said he wasn't, but was reaching for his identification, at which point the officer pulled his gun and fired seven shots into the window of the car.  Five of them hit Castile.  The girlfriend, who was the  ordered to her knees and handcuffed, captured it all on her phone.

The officer was charged on a number of counts in a trial a year later, but was acquitted on all of them.  The prosecuting attorney made the following points: 

"Philando Castile was not resisting or fleeing."

"There was absolutely no criminal intent exhibited by him throughout this encounter."

"He was respectful and compliant based upon the instructions and orders he was given."

"He volunteered in good faith that he had a firearm – beyond what the law requires."

"He emphatically stated that he wasn't pulling it out."

"His movement was restricted by his own seat belt."

"He was accompanied, in his vehicle, by a woman and a young child."

"Philando Castile did not exhibit any intent, nor did he have any reason, to shoot Officer Yanez."

"In fact, his dying words were in protest that he wasn't reaching for his gun."^[80]

Castile's mother said, “The system in this country continues to fail black people and will continue to fail us.”

Governor Mark Dayton asked, “Would this have happened if the driver were white, if the passengers were white?”

The police officer's attorney said the officer  "wants to get on with his life,"  as if Castile had done everything humanly possible to end his.  

Human stupidity knows no bounds.  In that regard, The Displaced Plainsman raises the question of whether America has been struck with a severe epidemic of the  Dunning-Kruger effect.  That is the effect of when profoundly stupid people think they are smart.  

The contention by Trump and his loyal morons that kneeling during the national anthem insults the military is profoundly stupid.  It is made with total ignorance of what the kneeling is all about.   It is merely a Trumpism, a mindless utterance.   Trump cannot make a complete, coherent sentence, which reflects his stupidity.  The sign over the name of Randy Eckman is a Trumpism--a factless statement in a fragmented sentence.  

What we call the culture war is in fact a confrontation between the obstinately stupid who suffer delusions of intelligence and those who have some working brain cells.  Our education system was devised by the founders to avoid rule by the stupid.  However, education  has been attacked by the advocates of dumb and mean and they have elected a president.  The Displaced Plainsman seems to accurately present the state of the nation:  " Americans are on the verge of making themselves too stupid to matter."