moda0306 wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 6:24 pm
hardlawjockey wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 4:13 pm
Xan wrote: ↑Wed May 23, 2018 3:10 pm
I don't think the "bottom of the barrel" criticism applies here. This isn't the Trump thread, it's the NFL National Anthem Controversy thread. I didn't say "this happened, so Trump is the greatest ever".
But it is definitely a win for him. Maybe some are fawning, I don't know. But I do know that Trump was excoriated by the media and by seemingly most of the NFL for daring to say such an outrageous thing as get that guy who's kneeling off the field. And now that outrageous thing is the official policy. Because it isn't and wasn't outrageous in the first place.
I rank Colin Kapernick's actions right up there with the Buddhist monks in Vietnam who were setting themselves on fire in Saigon while I was in high school. An American eventually followed suit and torched himself right in front of the pentagon while his daughter was watching.
Okay, Mr. Kapernick, I can see that you want Americans to feel your pain even though you are a professional athlete with a multi-million dollar salary the rest of us can only dream of.
But I don't think those Buddhist monks or the idiot in front of the Pentagon did a damn thing to end the war. So the moral of the lesson, as far as I can see it, is stop being a f***ing idiot and figure out a better way to get your point across if you feel that strongly about it.
What action could a Vietnamese monk take to have the maximum affect on public American awareness about the war? Or a poor American?
I think those were likely were actions that maximized their individual impact on the war. I find that sort of suicide repellent on a visceral level, but that's more out of fear of pain than anything... and they didn't light others on fire.
Were they stupid? Perhaps... if their desired outcome was personal comfort.
The Buddhist monks weren't actually protesting the war, just the American puppet government in Saigon's preference for Catholicism and their discrimination against Buddhists. I suspect they didn't believe they would actually fare better under the communist regime, and how that eventually played out I don't really know.
The guy who torched himself in front of his daughter across from the Pentagon was a Christian.
I have no idea what was in their minds but I tend to chalk it up to the religious idea of redemptive sacrifice and suffering, though I wasn't aware that was so deeply embedded in Buddhism. As an atheist not expecting any kind of reward in an afterlife, the whole thing seems incomprehensible.
Maybe it's wrong to think of Mr. Kapernick's actions as the same type of self-immolation but he had to know there was going to be a price to pay for it, unless he really was stupid which it doesn't sound like he was. Despite the tattoos and hair he sounds like a very intelligent man. And those tattoos were all Bible verses so there may very well have been some kind of religious motivation involved.
He had one interview with another them that I know of but would not commit to standing during the national anthem so now he's suing the NFL for "collusion" among the owners to keep him unemployed. Try going on an interview and not being willing to commit to your boss that you won't do anything to embarrass the company and see how that works in the real world.
So maybe he is stupid, after all.