Longtime Friend and Ex-Drummer Knob and I were swapping texts about the resumption of the Formula One season — we’re both keen fans thereof — and amidst all the talk about Vettel staying at Ferrari and what-have-you came this priceless line from Knob:
“If they all kneel at the first race, I switch off.”
This kind of echoes God-Emperor Trump’s attitude:
President Donald Trump criticized American sporting organizations for making steps to allow players to kneel in protest during the national anthem.
“I won’t be watching much anymore!” Trump wrote, sharing an article reporting the United States Soccer Federation repealed a rule banning players from kneeling during the national anthem.
But hey… if the various sports’ controlling bodies want to piss in their own soup, who are we to stop them?
I think they’ve forgotten that sport is actually a non-essential commodity — i.e. you no likee, you switchee offee — and they’ll pay the penalties for their arrogance.
I’m reminded of that photo of a Nazi rally where everyone is giving the Nazi salute. Except one man.
And, more recently, the first Avengers movie. The scene where everyone kneels to Loki except one old man.
Yeah! This is the U.S.A.
My generation was brought up with: You can do or say whatever you want, unless it harms me or mine.
You want to threaten me with a weapon that may harm me, I am at liberty to shoot it out of your hand, but I warn you that, despite almost daily practice, I am a poor shot and may instead hit you in center mass.
I was brought up respecting the Flag and the nation for which it stands; in kindergarten, we were taught to stand and place our right hand over our hearts. As citizens of this great nation: as a sign of respect. I volunteered for the Service; I didn’t wait around for them to call my number, I didn’t run off to Canada.
You wish to kneel during the Anthem to show disrespect, what is to prevent me, as an individual, from displaying a lack of respect for/to you.
You have threatened me by trying to publicly disgrace my beliefs, my way of life. I have no, that’s zero, wish to threaten you, but I will not respect you or support you or support the associations or the companies that support you, or deal with you in any way.
And I will write my friends, and communicate with them in every possible way, to explain why I do this and request they do the same, and spread the message: that they are, by inaction, supporting an invidious individual.
Well said. I’ve seen that ticket requests for President Trump’s rally in OKC have gone from 300,000 to close to a million. I didn’t even think that OKC had a million people living there. But I think this shows you speak for many, many Americans who were brought up exactly as you were, and as I was.
With the “speed” of popular culture today, it doesn’t take long for trends to go from “breaking” to “current” to “tiresome.” We’ve pretty much hit “tiresome” with regards to the endless BLM chatter and the “woke mob” virtually patrolling the Intertubes to try and snuff out any vestiges of un-woke thought and send the transgressors off to the re-education gulags.
But it’s often been said that “the opposite of love isn’t hate, it’s apathy.” I predict that the phenomenon of white apathy to black issues will become a rising tide. I mean, if my only options as a white person are to either (a) grovel before the Woke Mob, apologize for the sins of my race, gnash my teeth and rend my clothes about how hideous “white privilege” is, wear a hair shirt and “promise to do better” or (b) change the channel, I’m more inclined to do the latter.
I have neither the time nor the inclination to engage the woke mob in any kind of debate or argument, both because I have no desire to make myself a target of their wrath and because I don’t have any hope that they’re interested in any kind of honest debate anyway.
And as for the police – why haven’t they resigned en masse? It’s clear that in any encounter between a black person and a cop, the “authorities” are going to automatically side against the police. Who would want to go to work under that kind of system?
If the “woke mob” thinks they can do a better job of policing the inner city than the cops, then I say let them give it a try. I’ll be here in my safe, white suburb, living my life like I’ve always done and if the woke mob wants to burn black neighborhoods down, well, I’m not going to try and stop them.
And (getting back to the topic here) if the woke mob succeeds in turning popular sports into their own platform for hectoring, insulting and scolding their viewers, I suspect those “popular” sports will become a whole lot LESS popular. And my field of Fucks to Give shall remain barren.
The chance of the Star Spangled Banner being played at an F1 event is zero this year with the US GP not on the schedule and no US driver in the line up.
…… and the chance of drivers taking a knee at an Indy Car, NHRA , SCORE or a NASCAR race is similarly remote.
Baseball , Soccer , & NBA ……. I already don’t care.
I think you can expect to see it in NASCAR. Those fools are rapidly heading for “woke” at full throttle. Piss on ’em. I think going back to “stock” cars on dirt might be more entertaining than what it is today.
I dunno, the “woke mob” hates NASCAR and everything it stands for: Rural white people, the South, burning fossil fuels, rural white people, country music, and of course WHITE PEOPLE.
So any attempt on the part of NASCAR to kiss the ring of the “Woke Mob” is pretty much doomed to fail from the get go. Meanwhile, in trying to do that, they’ve alienated their base.
I’m reminded of some old schoolyard saying about how “those who turn their back on old friends in order to please new ones usually lose both.”
I’m at the point where I almost wish they’d stop playing the national anthem at sporting events. I only like hockey now anyway and the players are respectful.