Super Bowl sea­son is like the hol­i­days — a cel­e­bra­tion shared by peo­ple more accus­tomed to argu­ing than sit­ting down togeth­er. As one of the few transpar­ti­san, mass media events left to our trib­al cul­ture, the biggest TV night of the year can’t help but chan­nel the polit­i­cal ten­sions most of us endure all year long.

Make no mistake — even “non-political” celebrations of veterans are deliberately political.

This year, pop super­star Rihan­na turned town the Super Bowl half­time show, cit­ing the NFL’s crack­down on protests against racial dis­crim­i­na­tion. For the same rea­son, come­di­an Amy Schumer pub­licly swore off doing any commercials.

Mean­while, adver­tis­ers fret that run­ning any ads at all could be read as a state­ment one way or the oth­er. (Last year, Bud­weis­er faced boy­cott calls for an ad mere­ly men­tion­ing that one of its founders was an immigrant.)

It’s a nor­mal thing to want a break from argu­ing. But in a politi­cized envi­ron­ment, even shut­ting up is a polit­i­cal act.

In fact, pro­fes­sion­al foot­ball has been deeply politi­cized for years. Maybe you didn’t notice before Col­in Kaeper­nick took a knee, but the fact that one guy on one knee sparked a nation­al firestorm high­lights the pol­i­tics of the stage he act­ed on.

It wasn’t until 2009, for exam­ple, that NFL play­ers were even required to leave the lock­er room for the nation­al anthem, much less stand for it.

That year, the Pen­ta­gon was gear­ing up for a major troop surge in the Afghan war, which even 10 years ago was already old, unpop­u­lar, and large­ly for­got­ten. It need­ed recruits, and it need­ed a com­pli­ant public.

So where did it look? To sports fans. A Sen­ate inves­ti­ga­tion revealed that the mil­i­tary dumped tens of mil­lions of dol­lars into the NFL and oth­er leagues for PR help. This accel­er­at­ed a post‑9/​11 trend of increas­ing­ly patri­ot­ic — and mar­tial — dis­plays at foot­ball games.

“Con­sid­er the dis­play put on at Super Bowl 50,” recalls writer Stephen Beale for The Amer­i­can Con­ser­v­a­tive: ​“A fly­over by the Blue Angels fight­er jets, and 50 rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all mil­i­tary branch­es singing ​‘Amer­i­ca the Beau­ti­ful’ against a back­drop of a giant flag.”

Some even spec­u­late that the NFL’s nation­al anthem rules were bought by that Pen­ta­gon mon­ey. Either way, warfight­ers are now hon­ored at vir­tu­al­ly every sport­ing event. A vis­i­tor from else­where might won­der what all this has to do with mov­ing a ball around.

Make no mis­take — even ​“non-polit­i­cal” cel­e­bra­tions of vet­er­ans are delib­er­ate­ly polit­i­cal. William Astore, a 20-year Air Force vet, has writ­ten that the ​“post‑9/​11 dri­ve to get an Amer­i­ca pub­lic to ​‘thank’ the troops end­less­ly for their ser­vice in dis­tant con­flicts” amounts to ​“sti­fling crit­i­cism of those wars by link­ing it to ingratitude.”

Astore quotes the late Nor­man Mail­er, who warned dur­ing the Iraq War that ​“the com­plete investi­ture of the flag with mass spec­ta­tor sports has set up a pre-fascis­tic atmos­phere.” (How pre­scient that seems now that the pres­i­dent him­self sets out to pun­ish polit­i­cal speech on the field.)

It was only in this atmos­phere that a sim­ple, silent protest against police bru­tal­i­ty and racism could be con­strued as an attack on ​“our troops” — as opposed to, say, police bru­tal­i­ty or racism. Despite this thor­ough­ly polit­i­cal stag­ing, it was only Kaeper­nick and his sup­port­ers who were attacked for ​“bring­ing pol­i­tics” into football.

The con­di­tion­ing was so deep that even real-life vet­er­ans com­ing out in sup­port of the quar­ter­back were unable to pre­vent him from being demo­nized and black­balled. (In fact, it was vet­er­an Nate Boy­er who advised Kaeper­nick to take a knee in the first place.) Small won­der that rich celebri­ties and adver­tis­ers now have to grap­ple with it, too.

That’s no com­fort to the belea­guered foot­ball fan (or their friend who just watch­es for the com­mer­cials). But even if nobody deigns to kneel dur­ing the anthem, and even if adver­tis­ers and half­time per­form­ers play it safe and bor­ing, you aren’t being spared pol­i­tics. You’re swim­ming in it.

Some­where out­side that bil­lion­aire-owned, tax­pay­er-fund­ed sta­di­um (hey, that’s polit­i­cal too), your neigh­bors are liv­ing with pover­ty, racism, and vio­lence. Far­ther afield, thou­sands of troops remain mired in count­less for­got­ten bat­tle­fields, while inno­cent peo­ple abroad endure anoth­er year of war.

Every­thing we do that affects each oth­er is polit­i­cal — and few acts are more decep­tive­ly polit­i­cal than telling the affect­ed peo­ple to pipe down.

Enjoy the game!

This arti­cle was first pub­lished by Inside Sources.