NFL Solidarity
I recently mentioned that I rarely even turn on my TV anymore. That is primarily because, as a political news junkie, that is all I have ever watched for the past 40 years or so. It hasn’t always been that way. As a young man, I was hooked on football. It began long before TIVO, when I couldn’t miss a pro game on Sundays. When it advanced to the point of not wanting to miss a college game on Saturdays, it finally occurred to me that I was wasting my weekends, watching other people have fun. I went cold turkey in the mid ‘70s. Now, I only ever watch the Super Bowl, and half the time I DVR that.
Now that I am effectively boycotting cable news, for loss of interest in partisan politics, and am probably getting too old to enjoy much exercise, I just might become a football fan again. My prime motive would be to support the NFL, in the face of the state’s call for sheeple to boycott their games. Whatever one might think of their personal motives for doing so, the players’ open defiance of nationalistic rituals, needs to be encouraged by right-thinking Liberty-loving individuals.
The notion that those dissatisfied with the state, can just stop waving its flag or standing at attention for its anthem, is certainly to be encouraged. It wouldn’t do if the NFL had to knuckle under to the state’s economic pressure, so the least I can do is help keep their ratings up. I think I’ll set my DVR up to record all NFL games, even if I don’t bother to watch them.  😉 ◄Dave►
One of the remaining beauties of America. You don’t have to watch if you don’t want to. Like you my interest in football amounts to somewhere in around zero. I have too many far better things to do. I also couldn’t care less about the political opinion of a bunch of way over paid under educated adolescents in oversize men’s bodies. It’s a show and when you don’t like the show don’t watch. That’s what people are doing.
That said this “movement” in the NFL have effectively moved the goal post. They now claim it to protest the deaths of certain people. If you think back the original stated intent was to show solidarity with Black Lives Matter. A group I see as a black supremacist group responsible for at the least inciting the death of police officers over the past couple years. If their actions were to effect my viewing habits it’s only due to consistency. I wouldn’t watch if a group of players supported the KKK either.
Of course you could enjoy watching the unnecessary slow strangulation of the goose that laid the golden egg. That’s sort of entertaining.
I understand your sentiments entirely, Chris, and concur with most of them. I have no more time for racial supremacists – black, brown, yellow, pink, or white – than I have for pompous politicians. It seems incredibly foolish to risk such a lucrative career, by publicly pissing off the customers who are paying your salary. Trump was right to suggest that the owners would be wise to squelch such a threat to their businesses. They may wish they had listened. Before thinking it thru, my kneejerk reaction to Kaepernick’s original protest was dismay.
Like you, and most everyone else in our generation, I was thoroughly indoctrinated as a child, to pledge allegiance to the state represented by the American flag. It was indelibly engrained in our young psyches, to expect any proper American to stand at attention to salute it, whenever the national anthem is performed. Even though I have done neither in years, I am still a bit melancholy whenever I publicly abstain from these patriotic state rituals, with the feeling that something culturally significant has been lost in the process.
I still love my homeland and its unique ethos, as evolved by the time I was growing up in the ‘50s. Government was still deemed a necessary evil, which most agreed ought to be kept small and unobtrusive. Then, police considered themselves ‘Peace Officers,’ not ‘Law Enforcement Officers,’ or revenue collectors. Their job was to keep the peace, not to sneak around trying to catch someone breaking a rule, for which they could be fined to help cover the cost of their high government salaries and pensions. They had no need of jackboots, bulletproof vests, helmets, shields, gas masks, assault weapons, or armored personnel carriers. They had earned the respect and support of the citizenry, and rarely gave anyone a legitimate cause to object to their performance, much less riot over it.
How my world has changed! While I certainly disagree with many of the tactics being used by angry subcultures, protesting the behaviors of the jackbooted thugs of the state, I can often sympathize with their grievances. In way too many cases, the only significant difference between modern players of ‘cops & robbers,’ is that one side is wearing badges. That, and that polite society invests the presumption of innocence in a clash, almost invariably with the badges. As an anti-state individualist freeman, who distrusts all forms of authority, I am often inclined to lean the other way.
Too bad that there is not an alternative cultural ritual, for celebrating one’s American heritage and expressing eternal love for the land of our fathers, while openly spurning the den of thieves claiming dominion over it with utter contempt. Although I find the notion of ‘taking a knee’ even more distasteful than saluting a flag of state, perhaps the NFL is in the process of creating one. 😊 ◄Dave►
I completely understand your position Dave. That said I still maybe hold a different take on showing respect for the flag or pledging allegiance. I still hold to the founding principal of the republic. I don’t see the flag as representing the government, or politicians, or jack boot thugs. I see it as a representation of this great land and all the people therein. It’s a land and society that in spite of pressures to the contrary has still afforded me an opportunity to live a relatively comfortable, productive, and secure life. My problem is not with America, but with the constant onslaught of everything unamerican. When these dullards disrespect the flag they disrespect the representation of all the values they say they want. They claim to want justice. The flag and founding are still the most recognizable symbol of justice in the world and I believe the PEOPLE it represents are as well. The perversion of American ideals by politicians and authoritarians doesn’t change that. Want to promote justice? Take it up with those that fancy themselves the arbiters of what is just. Hold dear the ideals of a once proud republic and you may just find a few hundred million allies.
Sadly, as you must admit Chris, America no longer even pretends to be a republic, if it ever truly was one. At this point, it is an oligarchy, pretending to be a democracy, and I sure haven’t seen much justice of late, especially among crooked oligarchs. In case I didn’t make it clear, my problem is not with America either. It is with those claiming the mandate to rule over Americans, the massive corruption inherent in that process, and the oppressive infrastructure they use to enforce compliance with their rules.
The problem goes way beyond the form of the government, claiming dominion over these shores. It is the nation state itself that is the anthesis of Liberty, whether organized as a republic, democracy, dictatorship, caliphate, or Marxist collective. Each type represents a gang of thieves, employing armed coercion to plunder the public and enforce their rules. This is as true of a republic as any other. Effective government is by nature raw force, or it soon ceases to exist. Forgive me for dreaming of the latter. 😉 ◄Dave►
You guys are providing some thought provoking commentary … darn it!
At 2 am in the morning it is a bit of a strain on the brain.
I suppose as much change as I have seen in my life I must admit NONE OF IT altered my life personally. I am as free to do as I choose today as when I was 20. I stand for the national anthem and believe in the pledge.
Mostly because I am grateful to be in a land that affords that to be the case.
Somewhere early on I learned if you choose to be free you better be willing to fight for it yourself without the help of others. I do not enter into the fight of others because if their freedom is not important enough for their personal effort mine is pointless. That comes to an abrupt stop where a child or the disabled might be concerned.
What comes next is for those who must face it next.
That means it is not my problem and daily I get to choose what is the next fun thing on the horizon. 😉
Don’t like professional football, never have and never will. Yet, it strikes me as very odd that so many entertainers can’t wait to trash the system that made them very rich and artificially important. Seems like cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.
I have no idea what the best answer is to all this crap but I suspect we had best find one quickly, while there is still something to save. And, YES, the principles that made us once great ARE worth trying to save.
Troy
Oh really? Why? How? For whom? How will you ever know if you succeeded?
Good luck to you. I have wasted half of my one and only life, miserably failing at trying valiantly to restore the American dream, for the sake of our posterity. Others in our generation, spent theirs working even more diligently, and far more successfully, corrupting feeble young minds to detest it. As far as I can tell, they won hands down.
The latest generation of simpleminded sheeple, graduating from Public indoctrination facilities, have deliberately chosen the security of the nanny state, over the animating contest of pursuing the American dream. Worse, 400 years of rich American history went for naught, now that these Progressive snowflakes have arrived on the scene, to tell us doddering old fogies how we must live our lives. Well, fuck them. They don’t deserve the American dream, and I’ll waste no more precious time trying to save it for them. 👿 â—„Daveâ–º