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naraburns  nihil supernum  2yr ago (text post)   38048 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 20, 2023

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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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