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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'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.
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