NFL Protests...Last YEAR, and THIS Year
I heard some of Stephen A Smith's radio show earlier today, he was RIGHT that, "Few players got behind Colin Kaepernik when he first knelt...they didn't want to have anything to do with it."
He was also RIGHT that there are TWO separate protests, Kaepernik's protest against his perceived "black oppression" and the NFL's and its ownership's protests AGAINST Trump, as THAT was what last week's protests were all about.
He was 100% WRONG that, "Whites commit as many heinous crimes as blacks, but we don't talk about that." (more on that later)
He was MOSTLY WRONG that, "The protest had nothing to do with the flag, or the National Anthem."
They WERE initiated as a protest against "black oppression" and "Police brutality," BUT the flag & the Anthem were critical to it, as Kaepernik made clear, "I will not respect a country that doesn't respect black people."
This was always a dicey proposition for the NFL, an organization that controls EVERYTHING associated with it. It's banned American flag decals, 9/11 Memorial insignias, even fined Marshon Lynch for wearing a non-NFL approved cap during Super Bowl week interviews a few years back.
Trump's criticisms may have baited them into a massive mistake, but that too...is on THEM. By doubling down on all this, this past weekend, the NFL now owns all of this.
What was once an annoyance is now a potential disaster.
Sponsors are getting skittish as Direct TV offers refunds for those looking to drop NFL Red Zone. NFL ticket sales are down a reported 18%..."REPORTED" is the operative word there.
The NFL and the players have no easy way to "walk back from this," short of finding some event, real, or imagined, that they can construe as a signal of racial progress and declare victory.
That too, is a dicey proposition and something like that would have to be well calculated and very well orchestrated.
Green Bay's highly popular Aaron Rodgers sought to engage fans by having everyone link arms ahead of last night's game as a symbol of unity and that angered fans even more...with a clear majority seeing it as a call to capitulation, rather than compromise, or "coming together."
No, right now, the Nationalists among us, those of us who love "our America," are spoiling for this fight.
I think the NFL miscalculated badly on this.
This has morphed into something other than people standing up for what they believe in. The players, wittingly, or not threw down a gauntlet...and that challenge has stirred up a hornet's nest in response.
It does all come down to perception, or "interpretation." If you condition yourself to believe "racism is behind most of the things we don't like," then you'll see racism everywhere.
That becomes part of a crippling "victim's ethos" that some have found to be an easy path to free stuff.
The problem with "free stuff" is that it's not free. One of its costs is an internalized feeling of entitlement. Another is a crippling, internalized stigma that leads that person to believe that they can't compete...can't get ahead without that crutch.
That's why affirmative-action has produced few super-successes, and geniuses.
Walter E. Williams, Thomas Sowell, Clarence Thomas and Ben Carson (they all got into College BEFORE 1970, ahead of Affirmative Action's preferences, which began in earnest in 1971) all had grades that would get anyone into College. They were, by ALL accounts, exceptional students.
Most of the real recipients of affirmative-action wind up placed in environments their grades wouldn't have gotten them into (the guy who'd have done well at Syracuse is admitted to MIT) and crushed by disappointment.
The The idea that people of African descent are unable to compete equally with any other group is not only bogus, but malicious.
So the NFL now owns these protests, begun by Colin Kaepernik over perceived "black oppression."
Here is my retort;
"Oppression? As in a half century of segregated standards called Affirmative Action?
"The ponderous price of that privelege is unfathomable, moreover it's been received without a drop of gratitude. It's accepted as "expected," when the U.S. and the UK are the only two nations on earth ever to embark on such an ill-conceived program to "improve race relations."
"Ironically enough, that is in keeping with the West (England, France and the U.S) being among the first nations in the world to ban chattel slavery, STILL rife in the Muslim Mideast, throughout Sub-Saharan Africa and in large tracts of Asia.
"The U.S. banned the importation of slaves in 1805 (look it up)...some 200 years and counting ahead of much of the rest of the world.
"We're tired of this talk of "oppression," in the midst of one of the more generous social welfare programs/social safety nets in the world, in the midst of a virtually singular, on the globe, program of, what the Brits less euphemistically call, Positive Discrimination (discrimination against whites and Asians).
"We're tired of complaints about failing schools, when, in dozens of instances around the country once "failing schools" when they had an overwhelmingly black clientele, have become, virtually overnight, with the SAME buildings, books and teachers, "high performing schools" when those same areas become predominantly Asian.
"NO...there is no "black oppression." The truth is, the majority of African-Americans who've supported this meme are, wittingly, or not, part of that cadre of anti-Americans, led by far-Left whites, who really have no concern at all for blacks.
"If anything, it has been the "black underclass" that has been allowed to victimize/oppress poorer Asians and whites.
"Since 1976, African-Americans have committed over 50% of all the homicides nationwide! THAT is a staggering statistic...easily verified with the FBI's violent crime stats online. That’s why homicide is the leading cause of death for black males between the ages of 16 & 36. Homicide is NOT in the top five causes of death for that age range in any other group.
"Colin Kaepernik referenced BLM (Black Lives Matter), a movement based on a LIE ("Hands up, don't shoot") and one that has continually championed thugs, who've attacked Police as part of their anti-cop and yes...anti-white social agenda.
"So, YES, we reject BLM, we reject its lies. We reject Colin Kaepernik's message, made clear with his "cops/pigs" socks and Che Guevara tee shirts...and YES, we reject the NFL for endorsing these fundamentally anti-American protests, when they've previously barred players from wearing American flag decals, or 9/11 insignias on their uniforms.
"THIS is where all the visceral anger you're seeing comes from.
"THIS is a losing proposition for all those supporting the protests over this false meme.
"Oddly enough...and for better, or worse, THIS issue plays GREAT for Bannon and Trump, as 2018 approaches, allowing them to frame Nationaism as "pro-American" and globalism/One Worldism as "anti-American"....so have at it."
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