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One signal that wokeness is waning: the words printed at the bottom of the helmets of NFL players.
I don't have metrics on this, this is all just my subjective perception. I scrubbed through my recording of the games while writing this in the interest of accuracy.
At the start of the 2020 season, just a few months after social justice become trendy, the NFL decided to allow players to swap out the name of their team on the back of the helmet for a social justice message. At that time they could choose one of four messages: "Stop Hate," "It Takes All Of Us," "End Racism," or "Black Lives Matter." The league would also sometimes print these messages on the field.
At the season opener this past Thursday, with the L.A. Rams facing the Buffalo Bills, I noticed a new message: "Choose Love." I thought it was just nearly all of the Rams sporting this one, but this article says it was all of them. Few of the Bills were displaying anything except for their team name. That the preferred message was so non-specific was a signal itself that attitudes may be shifting. The article says that the NFL says "Choose Love" is a message against hate crimes and gun violence, but I would never have guessed that had it not been spelled out for me.
This past Sunday I watched three games: Cincinnati Bengals vs. Pittsburgh Steelers, Green Bay Packers vs. Minnesota Vikings, and Tampa Bay Buccaneers vs. Dallas Cowboys.
For Bengals vs Steelers I saw zero of these messages. Notably neither quarterback on either team had such a message.
In Packers vs Vikings I couldn't see any messages on the Packers, I'd say about a third of the Vikings had them. Neither quarterback had them.
For Cowboys vs. Bucs I saw none on the Cowboys, about half of Bucs players had them, which included the quarterback Tom Brady, sporting "Inspire Change."
In all of the games I noticed just one "Black Lives Matter," on a Vikings player.
Maybe I'm just misremembering the prevalence of these the past two seasons, but I thought they used to be more likely than not, especially for star players.
Richard Hannania had an interest point on gay marriage yesterday. He like me has trouble making a direct attack on gay marriage. But the gay marriage bundle (he used woke bundle) as a whole seems like it’s been a big negative. I’d use Pride bundle. He cited rising depression on the left; I usually cite falling fertility as a bad thing.
Maybe I just want to get to dislike gays like 2 decades ago. But the bundle argument which gay marriage seemed to be the spears tip seems like it’s been a giant negative for society. And then you get an argument of can you pick and choose policy and get ride of Pride but keep gay marriage or you just have to suppress the whole thing.
The fertility crisis could be solved tomorrow by outlawing birth control and legalizing child labor. Gay marriage is a symptom of sexuality becoming decoupled from reproduction, not a cause.
I agree with your point that gay marriage is a result of sexuality being decoupled from reproduction. And hence with the decoupling banning gay marriage just becomes bigotry.
But I don’t know how to attack the root cause which I think on net has been a negative.
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