What Ted Cruz fails to understand about Colin Kaepernick

Ted Cruz, clinging to relevancy like a ship-wrecked sailor to a life-vest, took aim at Colin Kaepernick on Thursday, calling the NFL quarterback whose peaceful national anthem protests sparked a national movement a "rich, spoiled athlete" -- and a "knucklehead" to boot.

Cruz's line of attack is a familiar one and essentially boils down to this: What does a wealthy, millionaire athlete have to complain about?

It also misses the point completely, so let's get remedial here for just a second.

Kaepernick's protests aren't necessarily about the conditions he has to endure -- they're about the conditions so many racial minorities have to endure in an American society that remains, by any honest accounting, unequal.

Unarmed black Americans, for example, are five times as likely to be killed by police than are unarmed white Americans. Millionaire athletes, as we've seen before, certainly aren't immune to police mistreatment -- but anonymous racial minorities living everyday lives are overwhelmingly the ones who bear the brunt of American police brutality. Meanwhile, racial economic inequality is only getting worse.

Kaepernick, to his credit, sees the world beyond the horizons of his own self-interest. Cruz? Not so much.

After all, this is the guy who -- in a thinly-veiled attempt to appease the roiling Republican base with an eye toward future political runs -- recently phone-banked for the Donald Trump, who denigrated him and his family at every turn during the Republican primaries.

But, hey -- a failed presidential candidate must try to stay relevant somehow, and targeting a lightning rod NFL quarterback is certainly low-hanging fruit.