Among the liberal millennials Obama's eight years have brought to Washington, few cultural talismans are considered more woke than a "Notorious RBG" shirt. But the Supreme Court justice's personality cult deflated a bit when she called Kaepernick's protest "dumb and disrespectful." While it's nice that this is evidence that her legal politics are more complicated than retweeting the party line, it also marks another item in a list of Ginsburg's misunderstandings of how political power is effectively built and exercised outside the court.

San Antonio Spurs coach Gregg Popovich, one of the best NBA coaches of all time, offered a characteristically cerebral response supporting the strategic value of player protests while also calling for broader movements. After several WNBA teams joined protests, the NBA seemingly began efforts to tamp down public relations risks associated with protests during the upcoming season.

Pop is famous for his singleminded focus on winning championships, but police violence has affected that, too. His former assistant Mike Budenholzer, now coach of the Hawks, lost his best defensive player for the 2015 playoffs after an incident escalated by police who seemed more intent on goading him into a fight than keeping order.

Remember when an NBA player missed the playoffs because the New York Bees Department kicked the shit out of him and broke his leg? https://t.co/Y2hM6dnFUz

— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) September 28, 2016

When their coach kneeled, so did the entire team. Woodrow Wilson High School in Camden, New Jersey is 85% black or Latino. Their coach's brother and team members have been lost to gun violence. Now insults arrive from across the country, aimed at the coach who gave up his dream of playing in the NFL to work with the kids he felt needed it.

Diverging statements arrive from Seattle athletes: Mariners catcher Steve Clevenger tweets that protesters need to be treated like animals while Seahawks receiver Doug Baldwin calls for attorneys general across the country to investigate police training.

Seattle, known for Sub Pop and Microsoft, is a predominantly white city, but it's also home to one of nation's most diverse ZIP codes, Rainier Valley. What diversity remains, though, is increasingly threatened by gentrification, with tensions flaring recently over a white-owned dispensary moving into a previously black neighborhood.

Notably, Clevenger is having a terrible season.

"Kaepernick alone could have been cut and blackballed, but with a dozen or so players, many of them stars, behind him, the league has been forced to bend in his direction," Deadspin writes, and Dave Zirin agrees. 

That's a remarkable achievement in a league hostile to individuality, much less the kind of outspoken social activism the 49ers quarterback embraced: "When a player takes a stand the way Kaepernick did, the tangible impact around the league isn’t just that he pissed off a former Texans backup or some Twitter eggs. It’s that he chipped away at something larger and much more frustrating: football’s brassbound culture about players speaking their minds." League owners are so fragile when it comes to team image that one exec said front offices haven't despised a player so much since Rae Carruth. Rather out of proportion, considering Kaepernick hasn't hired a hit man to kill his partner and their unborn child like Carruth did.

Kaepernick's gesture finds muted but audible echo during 9/11 slate of Sunday NFL: "Two team-wide solidarity displays, only a handful of kneelers."

Kaepernick's gesture—kneeling, rather than standing at attention, during the national anthem—communicates in symbol, but it can also be understood literally.

The anthem's third and fourth verses, rarely sung, are widely held to indicate Francis Scott Key's delight in the prospect that winning the War of 1812 would keep the institution of American slavery alive. As Jon Schwarz writes at The Intercept: "The reality is that there were human beings fighting for freedom with incredible bravery during the War of 1812. However, 'The Star-Spangled Banner' glorifies America’s 'triumph' over them—and then turns that reality completely upside down, transforming their killers into the courageous freedom fighters." 

It's an argument so convincing that even Dilbert creator and alleged idiot Scott Adams agreed (kind of). 

Kaepernick's right to protest has its clear roots in Constitutional law. What's more interesting is how the justice system shapes the attitude of reverence in American civil religion that Kaepernick and other protesters have violated.

FWIW: NFL players didn't even attend the national anthem until 2009. 

Last week, women's national soccer team superstar Meghan Rapinoe said she would kneel for the anthem. Her protest was precluded when the owner of her opponent, the host Washington Spirit, ordered the anthem played while the teams were still in the locker room, a move members of the Spirit said they disagreed with and which Rapinoe attributed not only to his racism but also to his homophobia against her outspoken support of LGBT initiatives.