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It matters because of the question of who introduced the politics. If something was introduced when it wasn't controversial, it isn't "Introducing politics". If it later becomes controversial, that still doesn't mean that anyone has introduced politics.
The actual scenario isn't really "plastic grass is controversial". It's "a couple of noisy people suddenly decided that they don't like plastic grass and assigned political meaning to it". "A couple of noisy people" isn't "controversial"; it doesn't go by "at least one person doesn't like it so it's controversial".
It was always politics, there was just only one side no? If they were wearing pro-democracy armbands it's not non-political just because everyone is (hypothetically) in agreement with the same position.
It doesn't make sense to count that as politics. If that counted as politics, then everything is politics. "Don't introduce politics" would be meaningless.
After reading this comment’s context up to this point, I’d like to remind people “partisan” and “political” have separate but oft-conflated meanings. If explicated, this distinction might benefit this conversation.
Usually it’s partisanship which is decried amongst polite company, under the euphemism of “politics” which more properly describes who does and doesn’t have power. Noticing people with specific shared attributes tend to accumulate and sometimes monopolize certain forms of power is what makes politics partisan.
Standing to honor the flag has always been political, since flags are by their very natures political objects. It used to be we Americans would scuffle over who better represented the sacred flag. Colin made the flag itself partisan by making its sacredness partisan.
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Exactly. What people seem to mean when they say that is "Don't do things I think are political but it is ok to do things I think are so correct they are obviously not political"
Singing the national anthem is clearly political. If the NFL decided to stop doing that before games they would be removing politics, but it would be seen by many people as introducing politics. In reality the politics was introduced when singing the anthem was, just nobody cared because they were all on the same page.
Just to be clear I am not saying that being political is bad, or that taking the position that singing the anthem is bad. I think it is both political AND probably good from a building a national and civic identity point of view.
But if someone is arguing that kneeling during the anthem is introducing politics then I think it is fair to argue that playing the anthem itself is also politics, when it was introduced is irrelevant.
That doesn't mean either the kneeling or playing the anthem is good/bad in and of itself.
I just told you what I meant. It's controversy, not correctness.
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