Sports = Tribalism = Politics
There are many deniers out there that want to believe that there’s absolutely nothing wrong with sports and that people who want to make them ‘political’ should just go away.
Example:
Sports fans should never condone players that do not stand proud for their National Anthem or their Country. NFL should change policy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 24, 2017
Let’s make sure we’re informed about this. This is 100% about race, despite what Donald Trump says:
The issue of kneeling has nothing to do with race. It is about respect for our Country, Flag and National Anthem. NFL must respect this!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 25, 2017
A quick search yields many articles which document the background on the issue. I picked this one from the New Yorker magazine.
Last year, before the election, a solitary Colin Kaepernick took to one knee during the national anthem when he played for the San Francisco 49ers, in protest of police brutality against black Americans. The quietness of his action invited loud disapproval. For the past year, the N.F.L. and many of its players have rigorously distanced themselves from Kaepernick, who has been seen as unpatriotic.
This is 100% about black versus white and the actions helped spawn the ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that has swept North American, where citizens of colour are demanding respect from police forces everywhere.
In many cases, it’s also becoming about owners versus players.
Of course now, the kneel is becoming a show of opposition against Trump.
The angry opposition that has emerged as a result of the silent protest is ridiculous. Here are just a couple of memes making the rounds to emphasize this:
And this …
When you distill what modern sports are all about, they represent tribalism at its very best. Sports pit ‘us’ against ‘them’. Therefore, sports events that feature rivals from different countries or regions are by definition political.
How many times have you seen fights erupt in a different city other than Boston when someone is wearing a Red Sox hat or outside Toronto when someone’s wearing a Maple Leafs jersey?
We encourage it, we profit from it, we televise it endlessly and it consistently does one thing: distract us.
Yes, sports are a distraction from the real events that chip away at our freedom and mobility every day.
This has been true since the late days of the Roman Empire, when rulers and the Senate wanted to distract us from the crumbling state of affairs.
Trump pissing back and forth with North Korea is just another example of ‘us’ versus ‘them’ stupidity that has nothing to do with intelligence and everything to do with tribalism, a line in the sand and an arbitrary ‘team logo’.
Stop complaining about people that are asking us to look at this seriously and start thinking about why we’re so easily whipped into an absurd frenzy when politics and sports are mentioned.