Oh, say can you see the absurdity?

He has done it again. As Oliver Hardy might say to Stan Laurel, here's another fine mess you've gotten us into. Who is this man who has gotten us into another fine mess? Why, it is President Donald Tweet, whose attempts to make America great again have made it absurd.

Consider: Just as the world held its breath about a possible nuclear conflict with North Korea, just as millions of worried Americans searched for a pulse in the health-care system, just as residents of Puerto Rico struggled to survive after being made orphans of the storm, the president of the United States was obsessing about ... football players protesting racial injustice by kneeling during the national anthem.

If anybody out there finds a sense of proportion wandering about lost, please return it to the White House.

Racial justice is important. And reverence should be shown to the nation's symbols. Indeed, I am one of many who would prefer that protests, however justified, not be held during the playing of the national anthem.

I must admit that I never played in an athletic competition significant enough for any anthem to be played. "Send in the Clowns" would have been more appropriate for my teams. But if the anthem were played, I would have stood at attention. That is what most of us believe is right.

But I was never a member of an abused minority group either, which should give pause. The injustice that certain National Football League players have been protesting is real and has existed in some form forever. While racial attitudes have improved in recent years, today racism is alive, well and resurgent.

One reason odiousness is fashionable again can be linked to a bumbling and clueless president, himself in the comedy business like Ollie and Stan, but less funny. His joke is on all the rest of us.

In any situation that calls for sensitivity and understanding, he applies the slap and stick. He likes to stay on the good side of avowed racists, even though they do not appear to have a good side. He saves his anger for those who would protest the very injustice the alt-right mob promotes.

Only a few NFL players were protesting at games before President Tweet went before one of his adoring audiences and called out these players as lowlifes who should be fired. Then he started a tweet storm with the effect that last Sunday, the few protesters became many.

If he had only just shut up, the protests might have eventually taken a different form. But tweeting fools rush in where angels fear to email. We are supposed to believe it was pure coincidence that condemnation was directed mostly at black players while NASCAR participants, overwhelmingly white, were praised. Happily for the president, this mess changed the subject from his own failures, undoubtedly his game plan all along.

This unnecessary tweet storm has made me much more sympathetic to the protesting players. Donald Trump made it personal. Once again he does not lead; he panders. Once again he does not bring together; he divides. Once again, his message is not real; it's fake. Peaceful dissent is an important American value, not something to be mindlessly condemned.

Something else needs to be noted: Kneeling down is not the greatest insult anyway. The kneeling players keep silent; they do not shout or make obscene gestures.

As it happens, bending the knee has long been considered an act of subservience to a greater power. Most Christians bend their knees to God. If the Almighty is not offended, why should America? In a free country, no one should be forced to perform prescribed patriotic rituals. The day we are so required is the day we are no longer free.

What the protesting NFL players have been doing is something very similar to flying the U.S. flag upside down, the traditional and approved sign of dire distress. The self-declared patriots of the tea party did this during the Obama administration, except that their protest was based on imaginary wrongs — unlike the NFL players now seeking racial justice.

Still, as everybody has now made their points, I hope the pre-game protests and the tweets end and a meaningful conversation begins. The fact is that racism also disrespects America. Fine mess. If only it were fine.