Here’s a story that will make your brain hurt.

Background:

The U.S. women’s soccer team is getting ready to head off to the Tokyo Olympics. They play a couple of exhibition games to prepare for the tournament, and on Sunday they beat the brakes off Mexico up in Hartford, 4-0. It was at Rentschler Field, where UConn football has stunk up the joint for 10+ years now.

Before the game, a World War 2 veteran did the national anthem on a harmonica, and a Canadian conservative outlet ripped players who allegedly turned away from the guy:

Right, so the U.S. women have been at the forefront of the anthem/kneeling stuff. Megan Rapinoe was one of the first kneelers, along with Colin Kaepernick back in the day. The USWNT has been a hub of sorts for most of the social and political stuff crossing over into the sports world.

But here comes Delran native Carli Lloyd to clarify:

And U.S. Soccer communications disputed The Post Millennial and tweeted this in response:

Not true. No one turned their back on WWII Veteran Pete DuPré during tonight’s anthem. Some USWNT players were simply looking at the flag on a pole in one end of the stadium. The players all love Pete, thanked him individually after the game and signed a ball for him.

If you go through the replies to any of these tweets, it’s an utter disaster. People with no thoughts of their own, just parroting what their political side of choice has drilled into their brain. It’s pitiful.

We’ve gotten to the point with the anthem where these players are sort of ‘fucked if they do, fucked if they don’t,’ for lack of a better term. If they take a knee in protest, they’re crushed by the ‘stick to sports’ crowd. If they turn to face the flag, they are disrespecting the World War 2 veteran. If they face the World War 2 veteran, then they aren’t facing the flag. And if SOME face one way and SOME face the other way, then they aren’t “on the same page” or some other such nonsense. Beyond that, if some players kneel and some stand, then the liberals are crushing the standers the same way as the conservatives are crushing the kneelers. It’s exhausting. Maybe squatting is the answer.

We need a national anthem reset button. Like the Men in Black come in with their memory-wiping devices and we get our brains reprogrammed. Then we can try again with legitimate and reasonable national anthem discourse.