through which 'our' behavior is regulated by normative expectations of the groups to which we belong.
In the minds of people who are aculturated into the controlling rules about their group's view of normativitiy, deviance/non-compliance endangers status quo of thier normative existence. Threats to existence draw strong, often intolerant, reactions.
Intolerance of a protest may not be something you, or I, would hold with, but failure to understand the underlying process would be a major gap in understanding of why protests such as Kaepernik's attract social angst as an act of public deviance. That's true even on DU, which is supposed to be liberal and thereby arguably characterized by tolerance to deviance in the cause of social justice.
It works sort of like this... a person doing, or not doing, something (in public or private) is seen by others and judged to be normative or deviant. This is especially true of celebrities aka people the public is drawn to observe. Consequently, the public and especially the PR dept's of sports teams expect their celebrity employees/products to be role models of conformity.
A person's deviance through doing, or not doing, something non-normative is argued as setting a bad example that erodes the power of whatever controlling rule is involved (as it is seen as acceptance and encouragement of the deviant behavior involved).
The opening ceremonies of professional sporting events in the US are very large ritualized displays of American us-ness. We are conditioned to personally identify with such displays of nationalism. Deviant acts at these times are not seen merely as narrow rejection of unfair, aspects of society but expansively as rejections of us and our idealized core values. Rejection of our self-image hurts.
Creating painful cognitive dissonance in others is typically the point of protest, though Kaepernik himself says his protest is personal. And really the reaction is about us and our dissonance at having our normativity challenged.
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