We’ve now reached the stage where white reporters are grilling black players on whether they truly care about black lives if they don’t kneel for the National Anthem. Yes, things have gotten that ludicrous.

Jonathan Isaac of the Orlando Magic chose to stand during the anthem last night, prompting him to be asked one of the more disgusting questions I could imagine asking a black man.

More from @JJudahIsaac after his decision to stand for the national anthem and not to wear a #BlackLivesMatter shirt for the first Magic game inside the #NBABubble

"I'm black. I grew up black. I have a black little brother that lives in America. I'm not for racism." pic.twitter.com/rsyqXh7Zws

— Daren Stoltzfus (@DarenStoltzfus) July 31, 2020

Part of why Isaac didn’t kneel is because he doesn’t believe it fits his religious viewpoints. That seems like a perfectly reasonable explanation, but he shouldn’t need an explanation. What kind of country makes a black man answer whether he cares about black people for not kneeling to disparage his own country? And let’s be clear, we are well past the “it’s just about police brutality” lie at this point. The admission now is that it’s about “systemic racism,” which is a vague indictment of the entire nation and the systems that undergird it.

In another corner, ESPN decided to grill Gregg Pappovich for not kneeling as well.

SpotsCentet just aired an interrogation of Greg Poppovich for **standing during the national anthem**

— Drew Holden (@DrewHolden360) August 1, 2020

Poppovich is a hardcore left-winger and apparently not even he is woke enough for the new standards being bandied about.

Back to Isaac’s case though, it’s just gross that the country has reached a place where we are going to make kneeling for the anthem a requirement to care about black people, to the point where a black person is being essentially accused of being an Uncle Tom who doesn’t care about his own race. It makes no sense and it’s a complete perversion of the real concerns people may have about discrimination. It’s also exactly what many predicted would happen when others were saying the kneeling protests were no big deal several years ago. Progressivism never stop. It only “progresses” toward more left-wing, more ridiculous dogma.

Here’s the reality. You can care about black lives and injustice without believing that blatantly disrespecting the nation is the right way to show that care. What the media are perpetrating and doing to our culture is profoundly damaging. But they don’t care. It’s all about the narrative and their ratings. Eventually, the alligator will reach them.