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naraburns  nihil supernum  1yr ago (text post)   35539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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Well, it finally happened. Last Saturday San Jose Sharks goaltender James Reimer, citing religious beliefs, refused to wear the Pride-themed warmup jersey in honor of Pride night, and accordingly sat out warmups. Reimer has started most of San Jose's games this season but has mostly been splitting time with Kaapo Kahkonen, but he did not start Saturday and instead was Kahkonen's backup. This isn't the first time this season that the Pride jerseys have led to controversy—Ivan Provorov of the Philadelphia Flyers declined to wear it back in January, citing his Russian Orthodox faith, and Pride nights were cancelled in New York and Minnesota (presumably because the refusals would be conspicuous enough to cause undue controversy, but I have no evidence of this). So it's been simmering for a while, but this was the first real big blowup. Getting mad at Russians for having "incorrect" beliefs doesn't get much traction (Ovechkin's support of Putin was never that big a deal) because it's presumed that they aren't exactly the most enlightened people. And individual teams cancelling events seems suspect but teams are already too easy to get mad at for a variety of reasons, though people certainly took advantage of the opportunity. But now, with Reimer, and Anglo Protestant. conservatives finally have their Colin Kaepernick.

Reaction was predictable. The Fox News comment section duly praised Reimer for his courage to stand up against the wokeness that has come to infect professional sports. Reddit, meanwhile, seemed disgusted that the NHL would allow one of its players to openly flaunt the ideals of inclusiveness. There was also a quite a bit of armchair theologizing, with people who almost assuredly aren't religious either making fun of religion wholesale or claiming that, actually, Reimer's faith should make him an LGBT ally. Nearly absent from this conversation, though, is Kaepernick, despite the obvious parallels. Conservatives had previously argued that "politics should be kept out of sports", and that Kaepernick's nonparticipation in a team-oriented civic ritual was tantamount to injecting his own politics into the game. Even Mike Tomlin's decision to keep the Steelers in the tunnel in an attempt to avoid controversy that may have resulted from a player kneeling backfired; participation was mandatory, and Alejandro Villenueva was praised as a folk hero for conspicuously entering the field anyway to stand for the anthem. Ditto liberals, who also failed to see that the idea of punishing a player for refusing to participate in a pregame activity because it was against his religious or political beliefs is something that extends across the board; we can't pick and choose which beliefs are okay to protest and which aren't. The only real difference is that conservatives seem to believe that Pride nights are an abomination that has to go, while I never heard any serious Kaepernick supporters suggest that the NFL should do away with the anthem.

What's surprising is the lack of self-awareness. It's not that people in these comments sections don't challenge people with the obvious Kaepernick comparisons, it's that no one seems willing to even engage. I have yet to see anyone on either side make a statement about consistency (i.e. I defended Kaepernick and I defend Reimer/I criticized Kaepernick and I'm criticizing Reimer) or attempt to differentiate the situations. People usually try to differentiate because they want to appear principled and not just reacting based on their own biases, but most controversies give a little room for it. The Kaepernick case is so familiar and so alike that it's almost as if the cognitive dissonance actively prevents people from engaging. I'd like to see one person try to justify their position in light of this argument. Just one.

I get the impression from this and several of the replies (most notably those of @remzem and @SecureSignals) that a lot of users here simply do not understand the concept of "A Uniform" or what it represents in practice.

For the Record: The whole point of a uniform is that when you put it on you cease to be yourself and become a representative/manifestation of the larger group.

No one (or at least no one but the most terminally political) gives a shit if Kaepernick protests the flag out of uniform because "why should they?" The dude is entitled to his opinions isn't he? But when he protests in uniform, it is not Colin Kaepernick who is protesting the flag. It is the San Fransisco Giants 49ers and the National Football League who are doing so. That is why management was angry with him and why he ultimately got fired.

This also readily explains the various sides' responses to Reimer. If you aren't the sort of person who buys in to the left's bullshit about how "everything is political" (IE a bog-standard republican) simply refusing to don the uniform of something you do not support (and thus become that afore mentioned manifestation) is just the obviously moral and upstanding choice. But if you are the sort of person who believes that "everything is political" and "speech can be violence" the refusal to affirm something is functionally indistinguishable from active hostility towards it.

Edit: correction

Sorry I don't buy it.

The practical role that a duo like Brady and Bellicheck or a guy like James often plays is that of the villain/foil, often their "fans" are not the people following the games and it's pretty rare to see that mold broken. DiMaggio and Ruth seem to have pulled it off but the only one that really come to mind in my lifetime is Micheal Jordan, that is unless we count Pro Wrestling as a sport in which case we can add "the Rock" as well.

Meanwhile the timeline of ESPN of becoming "Sports TMZ" seems to map pretty cleanly to their decline viewership. Just a few days ago they were touting "huge growth" and "their best first quarter in years" with something like 600,000 average viewers in 18 - 48 range when back in the mid 00's when the movie Dodgeball came out they were pulling in millions.

Kapernick played football for the 49ers, SF giants are baseball.

You are correct, My bad. I've always been kind of a baseball guy and "The Giants" are just my in-built word association for "San Fransisco's Team".

Yes we should have standardized sports mascots. It's dumb that the Lakers, named after Minnesota's plentiful lakes, play in LA and the Cardinals play in Arizona. It's unfortunate that the brand is so locked in now but franchises should change as soon as they move.

I feel as though there is actually a relevant difference here, in that from what I understand Kaepernick refused to stand for the anthem as a form of political protest. He wanted to draw attention to himself and his beliefs with his refusal to stand. By contrast Reimer, I would imagine, refused to wear the jersey because it conflicted with his personal religious beliefs. He wasn't doing it to protest LGBT stuff or draw attention to himself, he just did it because he felt his conscience and beliefs compelled him to. If that's the case I would argue Kaepernick was inserting politics into sports where Reimer wasn't.

However, if Kaepernick wasn't using his refusal to stand for the anthem as a protest, but instead refused to stand because he felt his conscience wouldn't allow him to celebrate his country given certain critical flaws he perceived it to have or injustices he felt it was committing, then I would argue he wasn't inserting politics into sport either.

Ultimately it comes down to the question of whether the acts were done for external reasons, i.e. to promote a certain political agenda to others, or for internal ones i.e. simply to ensure one didn't betray their own values and beliefs.

I think the sameness is in injecting politics into sports and other entertainment events, something I’ve long found distasteful. The pride shirts shouldn’t be a thing, nor should players be protesting or refusing to participate in promotions. The death of politically neutral entertainment, whether sports, movies music, or TV shows has removed a cultural commons from American life, one of the very few places where liberals and conservatives, religious and irreligious, and people of all social classes and whatever other demographic groups could be in the same place and just be American without worrying about politics. Such things are rare and becoming rarer.

Last Saturday San Jose Sharks goaltender James Reimer, citing religious beliefs, refused to wear the Pride-themed warmup jersey in honor of Pride night, and accordingly sat out warmups. Reimer has started most of San Jose's games this season but has mostly been splitting time with Kaapo Kahkonen, but he did not start Saturday and instead was Kahkonen's backup.

This is something that can be solved with contract law. the contact should stipulate what is allowed or not. if the contract forbades certain performative acts of protest (like kneeling) or that you have to wear certain garb, then I think this would resolve a lot of the dispute.

I'm not sure what's to justify there. Kaepernick has protested for Good Thing (TM), thus protest is good and exercise of freedom. Reimer has protested for Bad Thing (TM) thus protest is bad and should be suppressed. If you try to dig up any deeper principle behind this - there isn't any. If we're winning it's good, if they're winning, it's bad. Them's the rules and there are no others. All talk about same standards and one playing field and all that is racist anyway, I'm sure one could find a dozen of quotes from Berkley professors on that.

It's not the lack of self-awareness. They know how it looks - and they are fine with it. It's an exercise of power - yes, there are different rules for Good Thing and Bad Thing, and yes, we will claim diametrically opposing arguments to support those - what you're going to do? What you can do? Point out the hypocrisy and inconsistency? They don't care, it works for them just fine. Your next move?

Are you arguing that hypocrisy should not be called out or criticized because everyone does it and therefore the accuser is also a hypocrite (and a meta hypocrite, for complaining about hypocrisy?)

Or are you arguing that complaints and criticism are pointless because the targets can simply ignore you and keep doing what they're doing?

And if so, does this generalize to an argument that complaints and criticism about any bad behavior are pointless because the targets can simply ignore you?

I think he's advocating for something more like "be nice until you can coordinate meanness". A peasant calling out the king's hypocrisy is pretty meaningless until the peasant gathers a few thousand fellow peasants who share a distain for the King's hypocritical ways and put the king's hypocritical neck in a guillotine.

Is that not what this is here though? You can't gather a few thousand peasants towards a common cause without at least discussing it among the other peasants. Discussing bad behaviors that we observe, criticizing them as bad behavior and making a reasoned argument about why the behavior is bad is the peasant gathering behavior. While calling out the king's hypocrisy to his face would be getting into an argument with the person who was engaging in the behavior.

Maybe the metaphor isn't quite right. This is not a brigade squad, and even if we get a thousand members to all agree that the behavior is bad we're not going to then set out to get into arguments with hypocrites and gang up on them. But at least noticing the behavior and specifying it helps to warn people away from falling into that trap themselves. I expect that people here are more likely to hold principled and non-hypocritical views, at least more than average, but it's by no means universal, either across people or even within the same person: you might be a hypocrite on some topics but not others. So pointing out common failure modes and warning against them can be useful.

I have yet to see anyone on either side make a statement about consistency (i.e. I defended Kaepernick and I defend Reimer/I criticized Kaepernick and I'm criticizing Reimer) or attempt to differentiate the situations.

This should just be filed under yet another case where the dissident right perspective generalizes where the Conservative perspective does not:

  • Conservatives want to claim that sports shouldn't be political, but the DR understands that everything is political, and the more relevant it is to social consciousness the more political it is inherently.

  • The Conservatives opposed Kaepernick because he was "bringing politics to sports", the DR opposed Kaepernick because it represented the subversive enshrinement of black grievance against white people in an important public arena.

  • Now Conservatives are going to do somewhat of an about-face endorsing athletes bringing political controversy to sports, whereas the DR can support the protest for the exact same reasoning it opposed the Kaepernick protests.

So, the DR perspective can defend Reimer and oppose Kaepernick for an internally consistent reason. Conservatives cannot because they continue to deny that these symbolically meaningful conflicts are real, they constantly want to say "it's not about race" or "it's not about opposing the LGBT movement" when these controversies are very much about those things.

This lends credence to my observation that a lot of what the dissident right does is to try to make leftist victim politics work in the service of white people / males / etc. rather than against them. In that sense, it is in spirit a leftist movement.

I actually cannot think of any popular modern political movement in the West that is not based on claiming to be the real victims.

This is an appealing belief but I don't think it holds up. There are perfectly rational reasons to dispute victimhood status even if you don't think it's actually important if your interlocutor thinks it is. If you're 5'5" tall and a 6'6" tall person behind you at a theater tells you that you should switch seats with him because it's easier for shorter people to see over taller people you can fully believe that they're not entitled to switch seats with you even if you were taller than them and argue that but it might be even easier to point out that you're not actually taller than them as that disarms their only argument and you don't have to go down the values disagreement about whether is legitimate to demand someone switch their assigned seat with you.

This same issue comes up with the gun debate. A lot of ink is spilt on whether guns makes people safer or more vulnerable. This is the sole position that the gun confiscation side of the aisle depends entirely on, if it's not true that getting rid of guns would make us safer then they have no possible justification for their policy proposals. The other side of the aisle also has some constituents that would switch sides based on the answer to the question but I believe them to be a vast minority. Listening to debates about gun control one could be understandably mistaken in believing that everyone only actually cares about whether guns make you safer or not despite that not actually being the universal motivation.

Do the libertarians count, or are they being victimized by the Man?

There's nothing about victimhood in my comment from the DR perspective, it's about conflict and how conflict manifests in public rituals and the hierarchy of civic symbols. The Conservative conflation of the recognition of conflict with the complaint of victimhood is another Conservative shortcoming.

This lack of consistency from mainstream conservatism indicates a deeper philosophical problem with it. This cuts to the core of their neutered responses to easy divorce, gay "marriage," looser abortion stances, etc.. At bottom, neoconservatives have very liberal positions. This internal friction is caused by their implicit acceptance of the Enlightenment project's axiomatic positions, such as Mill's no-harm principle. Neoconservatives would generally not deny that all agents should be free, with minimal constraints on their behavior as long as all parties consent. They believe that absolute neutrality in the public sphere is an unmitigated good, and that "freedom" should be maximized -- to mean that we shouldn't enforce moral standards, even Christian ones, except by social means.

So when private businesses refuse service to customers not wearing a mask, the conservative can't object on any solid grounds. Unless they're willing to apply a similar standard to Christian bakeries refusing to service homosexual couples. Both are private companies and they can do what they want, under the liberal, egalitarian view. The best neoconservatives can hope for is a grassroots social change which effectively renders Christian morals the dominant position anyway, rendering the problem of enforcing this morality a non-issue.

I think “conservatives” could be logically consistent about bringing politics into supports with one caveat

  • they didn’t realize the national anthem itself was political. Your American so therefore you like America.

Thru this logic Kap added politics where there was none. And Reimer didn’t add politics it was the nhl adding politics by forcing him to be pro-pride politics.

As long as the anthem isn’t politics then theirs no logical issue with the conservative position. They just scold the NHL for adding politics.

"Didn't realize" begs the question by assuming that the position that someone "didn't realize" is the truth. We have a rule against consensus for this reason.

The national anthem is political in the sense that anything is political. Playing a game on artificial grass could be interpreted as support of the plastics industry and some player could claim that actually, the team has made a political statement by choosing to play on plastic grass, and that he's merely refusing to participate in politics by refusing to play on it.

That's not what "is political" means. The national anthem is controversial only among an extreme minority of people, and to the extent it is, most of the controversy involves opponents ascribing meaning to singing it that supporters don't. The national anthem is also something that has been used in sports for so long that it deserves the benefit of the doubt--it's always been there, nobody's bringing anything in. This isn't true for Pride themes.

The national anthem is also something that has been used in sports for so long that it deserves the benefit of the doubt--it's always been there, nobody's bringing anything in.

Well that's pretty much the crux of the whole conservative/progressive debate isn't it? So handwaving that away is basically the (so to speak) ball game. How much benefit of the doubt old things should get just because they are old is a huge sticking point.

Segregated sports had been a thing for a long time, should they also have had the benefit of the doubt for example? Once pride flags have been in the NHL long enough do they count as well?

Segregated sports had been a thing for a long time, should they also have had the benefit of the doubt for example?

Segregated sports are politics which is about sports, not sports being used to promote politics about something else. If someone was prohibited from playing sports because he was gay, then sure, protest it.

Once pride flags have been in the NHL long enough do they count as well?

If pride flags have been in the NHL for a long time without controversy, including external controversy, then sure,

That just doesn't seem like a great way to decide whats actually good to me (which is probably why I am not a natural conservative). It's just a form of status quo bias.

My view is that in deciding if something needs to change, both the status quo and the change should be analysed under the same lens.

If being expected to be standing for the anthem is a political act (and i think it is) then whether politics should be allowed has already been decided in the affirmative. We're just arguing over which politics get included. Which is fine to be clear. Its a reasonable position to hold that "good" politics should be in and "bad" politics be out. Its probably yhe most common position i wouod say.

And if standing for the anthem becomes controversial then would your logic indicate it should then be stopped because it is now controversial?

If being expected to be standing for the anthem is a political act (and i think it is) then whether politics should be allowed has already been decided in the affirmative.

If playing on artificial grass is a political act, then....

Everything is political, if you ask the right person. "Keeping politics out" doesn't mean "keeping out everything that is political, if you ask the right person".

And if standing for the anthem becomes controversial then would your logic indicate it should then be stopped because it is now controversial?

If it started as controversial and there was a substantial, continuous, controversy between then and now, yes. If it started as mostly uncontroversial and a couple of loud agitators made noise about it, no.

If it started as controversial and there was a substantial, continuous, controversy between then and now, yes. If it started as mostly uncontroversial and a couple of loud agitators made noise about it, no.

Again though that is just a history bias. Why does the controversy have to be continuous to count? What dead people think about today is irrelevant, they aren't here to experience it. So if enough people right now think it is a problem (whichever way!) that should outweigh whether people did or did not think it was a problem 250 years ago.

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Okay, that’s fine, but it does mean that conservatives had a pretty massive blind spot that they hadn’t even tried to consider very deeply, doesn’t it? You’d have to be a special sort of blinkered not to look at the actual semantic content of the National Anthem itself - not to mention the larger constellation of military- and state-affirming symbology which surrounds the presentation of the anthem at a sporting event - a presentation that very often includes not only the physical presence of active-duty military personnel but also a fly-over by genuine military-grade aircraft - and think, “This doesn’t contain any ideological content about citizens’ relationship with their government.”

This is what so frustrated me during the whole Kaepernick situation, because like every other American here, I was around during the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and I saw firsthand the consequences of just rubber-stamping everything your government and your military decide to do. (“They’re fighting for our freedom,” etc.) I would have thought, naïvely, that maybe conservatives would have at least developed some awareness that there is actual political/ideological content behind all the flag-waving patriotic stuff, but apparently even all these years later they’re still using the patriotic symbolism as a license to turn off the analytical part of their brains entirely and fall back on “none of this is political, I just want to grill.”

To be clear, pride is the exact same thing from the left- progressives claim it’s not political, it’s just that some people oppose it because they’re bigots.

I would defend both Kaepernick and Reimer, even though I disagree with each of them on the object level. I don't think athletes should be penalized based on anything not directly related to their performance on the field.

In principle this sounds nice, but in reality pro players need to kick ass on the field/ice and also not piss off all the people that buy jerseys. And they need to say inane boring shit during press conferences even if they don’t feel like it. If the guy on the bench can play 90-95% as skillfully and will also do the other parts of the job then he should definitely play over the brand risk who is slightly better.

Right, but the only reason the athlete is a "brand risk" to begin with is because people care about what they do off the field. I recognize that people do care about this, but my argument is that people shouldn't care about this. Nobody cares about or wants to know about their plumber's politics because it's irrelevant; they should take the same approach with athletes.

That's fair, but plumbers aren't also public figures (usually). Part of being a pro athlete is becoming and being a public figure, and that's part of why they are paid so well and receive sponsorship offers, etc. Without the eyeballs of the masses being good at a sport would be far less valuable, and if athletes help people get invested in the team through their brand as a public figure they become more valuable and teams have more incentive to use them on the field (of course they have to be good as a prerequisite).

I'd say that a roster player in a sport like American football, where there are ~50 people on the team, can get away with not being a public figure. But that means they can't enjoy the benefits of being a public figure and have to keep a low profile, because they're a roster player and can easily be replaced.

Another factor that the sports media sometimes talks about is locker room dynamics. It's unclear to me if this is a real thing, ideally pro athletes would be consummate professionals and only care about their colleagues' athletic performance. But if it is a real thing, I'd imagine that sometimes players who rock the boat publicly may also do so privately. When it comes to the OP's example it seems unlikely that this is relevant, but maybe it's relevant more generally.

Are you suggesting that 0% of a player's off-the-field conduct should be considered in decisions about whether to play them (criminal misconduct aside)? In principle I agree, coaches who want to win a game should play their best-performing players. But coaches will bench good players for not attending weekly practices, so should that not count? Teams could make internal, social agreements about individual player conduct that could be broken, should that not be considered? I'd be comfortable saying that 2-5% of a pro player's social conduct can and should be a factor in their employment (with wiggle room for different sports and for stars/franchise players).

Part of being a pro athlete is becoming and being a public figure, and that's part of why they are paid so well and receive sponsorship offers, etc.

I'm saying people shouldn't expect more out of public figures than what they're being paid to do. A good athlete doesn't need to be smart or a morally good person, those attributes are unrelated to their job. Same with actors, musicians, artists, and the like. None of the bad things Mike Tyson has done could diminish his quality as a boxer. None of the bad things Roman Polanski has done could diminish the quality of his films.

Are you suggesting that 0% of a player's off-the-field conduct should be considered in decisions about whether to play them (criminal misconduct aside)?

Yes, though by "off the field" I mean things not directly related to their ability to win or perform well. So missing practice or causing problems in the locker room would count as "on the field" since this clearly has an impact on their performance or the team's performance.

And even criminal misconduct I would say should not factor into such decisions, except to the extent that the consequences of such misconduct impact the player's ability to do their job (e.g. if they're in jail then obviously they can't play). The justice system should adjudicate guilt and punishment, not sports teams.

It's only March, is it flippin' Pride Year all the year round now? How many Pride nights and days can be crammed in?

This month is gender equality month. Where gender means sex, not gender identity. So it’s about the pay differential between the sexes. Nevertheless, most articles I’ve seen have been about trans-issues. it’s never ending.

There's a big rainbow flag on the wall of an open open office in the building I work in. Pride all day, every day, no days off for good behavior.

My hotel has a pride flag flying next to the American flag and the state flag. Definitely makes me feel worse about working there; it's like I'm under occupation.

So the Pride flag is officially on the same level as the National Anthem now? I thought that was just a dissident right twitter meme about "globohomo" and the "GAE." But good to know, good to know.

For the wokes, it's not even nearly the same level. The Pride flag expresses best hopes and feelings of millions, is a symbol of all that is best in our nation and quite possibly is a sacred object, while the National Anthem is a symbol of systemically racist oppressive society and constant reminder of suffering and oppression every person who became a multi-millionaire for playing a game is subject to. There can't be any comparison.

Is there a hierarchy of civic symbols that I am unaware of? If there is, who decided it, and how acceptable is it to resist each one?

Your Betters decided it. Just follow the latest twitter hashtags, and you'd know what you should resist this week.

This is a bad, low-effort post.

Are you just going through every comment on this thread and bitching about your outgroup?

If you've got nothing better to say than "Why are you posting this?" you could refrain from bitching at other people's posts yourself.

Your term "civic" is so loose as to be meaningless, or otherwise is deliberately attempting to smuggle private, sectarian/partisan symbols like the Pride flag in amongst official, general symbols like the Stars and Stripes.

Is there a hierarchy of civic symbols that I am unaware of?

This is obtuse. Of course there are a hierarchy of civic symbols, I doubt you are unaware of such a hierarchy, and that hierarchy is extremely important and dynamic. There always has been, even when civic life was composed of a literal hierarchy of symbolic gods that each had civic meaning. This is understood by the people who have elevated the trans flag to its level of cultural sacredness.

If there is, who decided it, and how acceptable is it to resist each one?

It's called culture- with cult formulating the operative base of the word for a reason.

It stands to reason that the official symbol of the country you're a citizen of is placed higher than a symbol for who you prefer to bang, no?

As far I understand either one can be resisted. Flag burning has been recognized as free speech by the very same courts the American flag represents, but some people seem to believe only one is allowed to be resisted.

when provorov sat out the NHL put out a total non statement in response to the outrage. if a team or the NHL actually tried to suspend someone for not participating the union would raise hell. anyways, you're allowed to dislike anyone for participating or not participating, standing or kneeling, whatever. they just shouldn't be disciplined for it.

The union would raise hell, but I'm not sure the appeal would go anywhere. Players don't get to decide what uniforms they wear. If they want to sit out, then they don't get to skip team activities without permission. Pick your poison. It's just not a fight the NHL thinks is worth having.

Are the situations equivalent?

I suppose in both cases, employees are being required to "participate" in what could be considered a "political" activity (are all civic activities political?), and I am against employees being coerced into political displays of any kind.

I guess the arguments will come down to one's definitions of "participate" and "political," and is kneeling taking a conspicuously political action as opposed to merely not participating, ala Reimer?

Also, complete tangent, what do Canadians like Reimer do during the US National Anthem? Do they stand politely but not sing/participate? Do they kneel or otherwise demonstrate their lack of interest or objection to the anthem? Is this useful in any way as a comparison to Kapernick's method of dissent?

I believe the correct etiquette for hearing someone else’s national anthem is to stand respectfully.

I was thinking about something similar today. The real power is the Overton window and not values like free speech. I’ve long supported a character like Pinochet. I don’t give a shit about human rights for communists because if they ever gained power I view it as very bad for civilization. Therefore, I have no problem with death squats for communists. I’m ok with say 3% of US citizens being communists and having their free speech somewhere on Reddit. If they become politically powerful enough to take over the State I would support death squads here and not care about their human rights.

As a fan of the NFL I wouldn’t watch the games if they supported Kaepernick movement. I think he’s a racists. Atleast for his stated BLM goals that cops are racists and kill black people etc. I don’t think that argument stands up statistically which makes me view him as just a race warrior. Though if BLM had focused on other issues where I think things can be improved like statistically America probably doesn’t police enough and over jails. We could get less crime with more police on the street and letting more criminals out of jail. Jail really is inhumane but necessary. Think the basic theory is young people act irrationally but more police would increase the chance of being caught and reduce crime more than longer sentences.

Hockey is probably a little weird in that their players are likely heavily red tribe from small towns but their customers are highly blue tribe.

But this is mostly to my point trying to enforce different Overton windows and no one cares about free speech. In my case I do try to differentiate between speech that leads to bad things versus good things. But a lot of that’s just my opinion (which I think I’m smart).

It’s important to put Latin American death squads in sociological-political-judicial context. (Yes, I know that in the shitpile that is the normie world, only leftists get license to appeal to context in public discourse, but screw that.) Wherever leftist insurgents operated in Latin America, they specifically terrorized judges as well, to intimidate them into basically letting captured commie agitators, terrorists, sympathizers, saboteurs, agents etc go free with a slap on the wrist. The entire judicial system was paralysed. Also, many judges were leftist activists themselves. So yes, death squads were necessary. There was no other option for defense.

I have no problem with death squats for communists.

No wonder commies always look like they skip leg day.

And here I thought it was the idea that only lefties could play with the really fun old Games Workshop miniatures.

Hmm, we apparently haven't added a ban of mention of the Squats on here yet...

The Squat Clock broke. A refugee showed up on Necromunda. The GW Youtube video announcing this is a classic, and is seen by some Kevin Rountree fans as the decisive turning point that put an end to the Tom Kirby dork age. Unfortunately I am on a VPN which blocks Youtube at the moment so I can't link.

What's surprising is the lack of self-awareness. It's not that people in these comments sections don't challenge people with the obvious Kaepernick comparisons, it's that no one seems willing to even engage.

Least surprising thing to me.

If you WERE to draw the parallel, point out how similar these situations are and why the 'rules' as stated would suggest they should be treated equally, and they were to even respond, they would only start making increasingly complicated justifications for why the situations aren't actually comparable.

Without committing to an actual, defined belief they will take you down a rabbit hole of prevarications that prevent them having to acknowledge either their own inconsistency or the other 'team' possibly having a point.

@theory is already kicking off the process in his comment.

Conservatives had previously argued that "politics should be kept out of sports", and that Kaepernick's nonparticipation in a team-oriented civic ritual

False equivalence. Standing up for the national anthem is culturally universal phenomenon, common to all countries and ideologies. Wearing symbols of the LGBTQ+ pride movement isn't the majority position in the US, let alone the world.

Standing up for the national anthem is culturally universal phenomenon

Nationalism isn't universal, let alone being for the national anthem of your (again, not a universal sentiment) country.

I'm sure there's some Irishmen who don't feel too kindly about the national anthem of the United Kingdom, for example. To this day iirc there are elected Sinn Fein members that'll never sit in government cause they can't accept the trappings of the UK government.

Sinn Fein politicians are perfectly happy to stand respectfully for God Save the King in accordance with international protocol when it is played at an international sports game, or on other appropriate civic occasions like the arrival or departure of a senior official visitor from the United Kingdom.

Part of the confusion is the weirdness of Americans putting on a patriotic display at bog-standard pro sports games. In the culture that is non-American pro sports (most obviously including European league football) it would be a presumptively inappropriate political statement to play the national anthem before a game. Similarly, it would be obviously inappropriate to protest a national anthem before a game between national teams, because it is being used to designate a country and not to make a political point.

Similarly, it would be obviously inappropriate to protest a national anthem before a game between national teams,

Yet this is what the American Womens Soccer Team did. So I don't think your reasoning explains what motivates those who disrespect the Star Spangled Banner.

That doesn’t make them not nationalists. Quite the opposite. They just aren’t nationalistic about the flag of the State they are living in, and would prefer another State to run that area

That doesn’t make them not nationalists.

It's not really the problem here. The problem is that they are anti-nationalist of the universally recognized flag of the nation that holds the country - just as the US flag is universally recognized as the flag of the current government holding sway over those territories.

They are showing the same "disrespect" that Kaep showed. Point is that that "respect" is not universal at all.

Basically you can't lean on some descriptive fact about flag popularity here; you just have to make a normative case that it's wrong to dismiss the national flag relative to other (less practically relevant in some cases) alternatives.

OTOH, the Supreme Court ruled 80 years ago that even schoolchildren have the right to refuse to salute the flag, so the underlying principle that civic rituals take second place to individual conscience is well-established in the US.

The teams being out on the field for the anthem wasn't a thing in the NFL until 2009, but Mike Tomlin's attempt to turn back the clock a mere eight years was also unacceptable to conservatives. And while wearing symbols of the LGBT movement isn't a majority position, what does that have to do with anything? It wasn't the league norm to have military appreciation nights until relatively recently. Would it be acceptable for an athlete who opposed some war to refuse to wear a camo jersey? The NHL added ads to jerseys this year and most fans hate it. Should a player who doesn't like it either get a free pass to not wear it? The norm is that you wear the uniform provided and don't nitpick about the design.

Refusing to wear a camo jersey I would have a lot more support for than refusing to take a knee cuz racism based on cops killing blacks (since cops kill a lot of whites and the entire difference in rates is explainable). But someone can make a really good anti military argument based on Cheney’s WMD lies.

A lot of the reason I hated Kap is his arguments were stupid. And he lacks numeracy.

honouring the military (expected, most of us understand self defence)

Please explain how honoring the military is related to “self-defense”? What if I believe that the military is not in fact defending me, but actually making me less safe, both in the short and long term? Does “dishonoring” the military make me less safe? If not, how is it related to my self-defense?

Would it be acceptable for an athlete who opposed some war to refuse to wear a camo jersey?

Absolutely, and Muhammad Ali is hailed a hero for refusing to fight in Vietnam.

I have to agree with Rov…I feel certain my grandfather would have had some choice words for Ali, probably starting with an N.

Fox News didn't exist in 1966, but if it did, do you think its viewers would have hailed him as a hero? This question wasn't addressed to you specifically, it was rhetorically addressed to the kind of person who has a problem with both Pride Night and Colin Kaepernick.

Standing up for the national anthem is culturally universal phenomenon, common to all countries and ideologies.

That may well be, but isn't the US a little unusual for having the national anthem at most sports games? My understanding was that this was an oddity of ours compared to, say, Europe, like the fact that most public school classrooms have American flags in them.

I don't know about Europe — or sports — but I can say that movie theaters in Thailand under King Bhumibol played some sort of regal anthem, and no other country I've been a cinema-goer was remotely similar. Not America, Japan, Singapore—even Russia didn't make me sit through anything about Putin before making me try and understand "Superbad" dubbed into a language I don't speak without subtitles.

(Michael Cera is utterly incomprehensible, but Jonah Hill comes through loud and clear. I later saw the movie in English, a similar experience.)

Thailand also jails people for insulting the king so it is probably not a representative of the norm.

British cinemas played the national anthem after the end credits until the early 1970's. According to Quora, it was stopped for health and safety reasons - the rush to leave the cinema during the credits (because it was disrespectful to leave during the anthem) was seen as dangerous.

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