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Notes -
Harrison Butker's commencement speech (transcript) is probably the most politically incorrect public exposition I've ever heard from a (relatively) public non-political figure. Butker is the Kansas City Chief's placekicker, and a devout Catholic. He hits nearly all the culture war hot topics: abortion, pride month, women's role in society, the Covid response, and Biden's leadership or lack thereof.
While the mainstream and new media are universal in their condemnation of this speech, the NFL up to this point is merely "distancing" itself from Butker's viewpoints. If Butker's career can survive intact, this seems to be further evidence in favor of the "vibe-shift". Indeed, he may have shifted the Overton window himself: he mentions his "teammate's girlfriend" (Taylor Swift); and simply by being on the same team as Travis Kelce, Butker's beliefs has the potential to be platformed to the millions of women who have started following the Chiefs.
Courage is contagious: the more people who stand up to the regime, the easier it becomes for others to do so. In my own small way, I signed a petition in support of Butker under my real name. While this seems a small risk to take, it isn't one I would have countenanced four years ago.
I got a couple upvotes on reddit replying to a post “with bad guy Butker whose the evilest player in the nfl”
Good Guy: Butker Bad Guy: too many to name
I am not sure if the Overton window of NFL player conduct has really changed that much. I think most Americans have always had some support for traditional values and even more support a religious community to do their own thing. Explicitly stating this publicly though was banned for a while.
This also has me thinking about the right to free association. Which has largely been deleted from the U.S. constitution. I largely support a right to free association but it feels like it does need some limits. I would like a company to be able to fire some one for any reason they want. If you get promoted to CEO and your personal view is that Indians are smelly vile creatures and want to fire them just because they are Indian I want you to have that right. And ideally those Indians you don’t like get scooped up by your competitor and build a better product.
Butker’s case provides the counter-point. If the NFL decided they don’t want Catholics playing in their league who do real Catholic things and fired Butker it would cause him real harm. Go start your own football league is not viable. This happens with a lot of product too. If Microsoft decided no Jews can use excel that would be an irreplaceable loss. Jews of course could build their own excel software, but since every other organization uses excel the Jewish excel would not be compatible with the Gentile Excel used by everyone else. They could not be accountants or investment bankers because all their clients would be using Gentile Excel.
Of course Courts can come up with tests to distinguish the difference for when giving free association is non-viable. The issue here is that if you are the wrong group at the time let’s say a Catholic kicker the court could declare it is viable for him to start his own NFL to be a kicker, but also find it’s completely not viable for Jews to create their own excel.
Of course, he's earned 18 million already, so, assuming he's saved it, he'd still be quite well off.
Yeah, but he's a 29-year-old elite kicker. He probably has $40 million left on the table with a normal career trajectory.
I’m sure that if he gets fired he’d have a professional conservative job paying 7 figures in less than a year.
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An articulate NFL player who gets fired for being socially conservative has a professional social conservative speaker job already waiting for him.
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