The case against football

I don't mean to sound like a sports prude, if there is such a thing, but if you're an NFL fan, these guys are suffering catastrophic brain injuries so you can be entertained. How can you be okay with that?


On various other blogs I've issued screeds about football-why the teams aren't really trying to win (they make money regardless), with the result that the sport is basically just a hugely successful TV show. Or about how the sixteen game season's small sample size makes it all kind of pointless anyway. Not to mention the degree to which the game's success is linked to all the free publicity it gets in the media, or how the hype to thrills ratio is pretty skewed given that there may be five or six exciting plays (lots of "three yards and a cloud of dust" skirmishes) in a dreary three hour TV show.


But those are simply matters of taste. Much more important is that we now know much more about how risky the game is, which may be why kids' participation in the sport is declining-America's parents have the good sense to protect their kids.


Dr. Bennet Omalu, whose pioneering research into football's dangers was actively resisted by the league, says kids under eighteen shouldn't play football at all. He has the same opinion, it should be added, about other contact sports-they are simply too risky for the developing brain.


For the NFL'ers themselves, Omalu says no equipment can prevent the injuries caused by huge guys moving at great speeds. Far too may become suicidal, or zombies.

Of course there are other arguments against the game-the current kneeling idiocy, the fact that so many of the players are, well, thugs.


But the safety issue is the big one.

The bizarre ritual (anti-ritual?) of anthem protests

The phrase has a strange ring to it-"anthem protests". Who would protest the playing of their own national anthem? The anthem, after all, and the displaying of the flag, and any other civic ritual you could name, aren't some sort of declaration that a nation is flawless.

We celebrate America, or at least acknowledge its worth, as a sort of truism of shared values-that a people, with a given set of civic beliefs, have created and sustained a nation in line with those values. But what happens when those values are no longer widely shared?

I don't intend to wade into all the political controversies that have me convinced we're a nation in name only. I'll just mention that we have a founding document that establishes the rules of the civic game. Increasingly that document, and the laws that operate under it, are seen as just so many words on paper, when one side is unhappy with the results. When such a point is reached, where the consequences of a long-established democratic process are "illegitimate" because the wrong party wins or the wrong policy is instituted, we are in the process of rejecting what made America succeed. The entire system is based on the idea that the results of our political process are by definition legitimate.

The essential orientation of America-as a nation organized towards the promotion of freedom and prosperity-is now rejected by half the nation. Freedom is dicey because people can use it for purposes not tending towards "social justice". Prosperity-the creation of new wealth, with the ultimate purpose of starting and maintaining families-is irrelevant. Redistribution of existing wealth (with the exception of Silicon Valley's vast hordes of same) is paramount. The fact that greater redistribution doesn't yield greater economic equality is irrelevant.


So we have one side wishing to maintain the old order, and another rejecting it entirely. What the latter would establish may still maintain some of the forms of democracy, but they will be toothless relics. Whatever means necessary to get to nirvana will be acceptable.


UPDATE: Miriam has some interesting thoughts on what was intended to be a cost-free exercise in virtue-signalling.

FURTHER UPDATE: A further reason not to watch the NFL-an appalling percentage of these guys are thugs. Here are detailed NFL arrest records. 

ONE MORE UPDATE: "The brontosaurus in the room": Roger L. Simon on the lie behind the protests-the notion that cops are what's wrong with the black community.


AND FINALLY: No matter how you play with the numbers, it is black men who are doing most of the killing of black men.

Links-mostly controversial

It looks like Obama spied on Trump and his campaign, as he also apparently did on reporters like Sharyl Attkisson. There should be outrage from all sides on this, but we're past the point where anything but results matters to the Left.

A fun little plaything-CodePen chord progression arpeggio generator. I've wasted hours with this.

Ray Fair, an economist famous for his election models, shows you here how fast you'll decline in chess and sports as you age. It's not pretty.


Buying the iPhone X-an exercise in irrationality. 

Want to know exactly what Bob Dylan played on his XM Satellite and Sirius XM radio shows? Now you can, or at least "the Best of".


Cardinal Dolan wants liberals to like him a little too much. Bending over backwards to avoid the dreaded label of "Islamophobia" doesn't show much spiritual leadership, but then again most of our American bishops act more like administrators than spiritual leaders.