Kerby Anderson

I think it is fair to say that our culture has managed to politicize just about everything. The last two weeks of NFL football are merely the latest vivid illustration of how everything has become political. This didn’t begin with Colin Kaepernick refusing to stand for the national anthem. And it certainly began long before Donald Trump became president and intensified the debate with his speeches and tweets. And it even began before ESPN decided to act more like a political talk program rather than a sports channel. Last week the editors at the Wall Street Journal explained why we need some areas of our life that are not dominated by political thought. “Healthy democracies have ample room for politics but leave a larger space for civil society and culture that unites more than divides. With the politicization of the National Football League and the national anthem, the Divided States of America are exhibiting a very unhealthy level of polarization and mistrust.” Politics has also been a part of education, especially higher education for some time. Political correctness led to attempts to prevent certain professors from gaining tenure and kept certain speakers from even being allowed to speak on campus. Universities may say they believe in free speech, but I think we all know that certain religious views and political views are essentially banned from the academy. Politics has now become part of the business world. Certain social and political views are not allowed. Just ask employees at Google and Mozilla who lost their jobs because one wrote a memo about gender and diversity and the other gave a donation to support traditional marriage. No wonder America is so polarized. Everything has become political.