NFL will fine players and personnel who don't stand for national anthem

correct. Since the protests were never aimed at NFL owners what difference does it make?

 

You’re looking at social injustices 50 years ago with the gift of hindsight. I’m sure many thought it wasn’t a legitimate cause then and that minorities were happy as clams being segregated. I’m pretty sure that they were thrown the anti-Patriot card too.

Do you believe that the social injustices of today aren’t a legitimate cause? Have you ever been racially profiled? I did a project for a guy who’s manager was black. In Pasadena. He said he would get pulled over so much and taken out of his car that he had to call the police station to explain that he worked for a local dentist and to please stop pulling him over so much.

I find the correlation of kneeling to disrespecting troops or country to be pretty low.

 

Yes actually it does
I disagree totally. For several reasons. I think some of the police shootings are justified. I think black people are ignoring the fundamental problem. I think to many black men run into the police cause of crine, because of lack of education and guidance, because of poor homes.

So if you're asking me personally, ye

 

I went to a protest and a football game broke out.

 

I take your disruptive a bit further. Having an emotional reaction that bother you is disruptive to self. So in that sense, it's particularly personally disruptive to some. And the source of that disruption is indeed that emotional reaction - the feeling that their flag and their country is being disrespected as an example. I believe some folks genuinely felt that way. Then there is the fake outrage that a much larger number of people carry because of politic (especially since Trump insert himself into this).

Now, that emotional reaction is based on self interpretation of the protest. It doesn't matter that it's a protest, it matter what they interpret the intent of the protest to be. On the very top surface, if you felt that the protest was to disrespect the flag and the country, you would feel anger. And if not, but it was toward a "valid" protest, you are fine. It IS a self interpretation (anyone who tell you they know the true intent is a liar) and due to that, you get different reactions for both protests. On a deeper level, you can understand where that feeling of whether it's a "valid" protest or not can be uncovered. It might be that you fought for your nation, watch your fellow solder die and that kneeling instead of standing to the flag "piss" you off. That's to me is a genuine response and something I can understand and fully respect. It could be that you hate black, don't like their protest and cannot acknowledge their reason for doing so, and hijack other valid reason (disrespecting the flag and country) to show your opposition. And I'm sure there are reasons in between those two poles.

p.s. There is a story of the original protester and of a veteran that didn't like it. They actually met and understood each other. I think that tell you all you need to know on both the validity of the protest and the emotional reaction.

 

Who cares it's their private business

But to answer your question they have the league's best interests in mind. That means everyone making money. The more money the more real change players can make

 

The only song that should be sung at a sporting event not involving a national team (WC, Olympics, ...) is Take Me Out To The Ballgame.

 

i did not realize that they were taking a knee over one specific incident. is that what they have said?

also, anyone who supports trump has zero credibility when it comes to this issue. trump said POWs are not heroic b/c they were captured and also attacked a gold star family. for yall to come out and say what nfl players are doing is disrespectful is a complete joke.

 

you dont have freedom of speech while you are at work though. wherever you stand on this issue, its been a huge distraction for the nfl and distractions are bad for business so i get why they instituted this new policy. personally, i dont think they should even have the anthem at sporting events.

its all been blown way out of proportion though. trump was able to control the narrative and convince his brainwashed sycophants that this was something they were supposed to get mad about. i dont believe any of them are actually sincere about this...if they were they would be more upset about the president and his slanders against the military.

 

The problems of the future will not be as bad as the problems of the past in absolute terms. That's no reason to stop attempting change.

 

I'd bet that you can take a knee at work as long as it doesn't prevent you from doing work and as long as it doesn't create a safety hazard. Which in the case of the football players kneeling during the National Anthem, it doesn't.

btw, I believe most if not all stadiums are public buildings or paid for in large part, if not entirety, by public moneys. That would seem to suggest that your right to free speech would come before any "its a private business".

 

I agree. Its all been blown out of proportion and the meaning has been lost.

Kaepernick started it in 2016 before Trump was in office and people were angry at Kaepernick back then. Other players started doing it after that.
Trump insulted the players which then caused the NFL and even more players to join in.

Regardless of my belief, I can respect Kaepernick and the other players choice to bringing awareness.

What I disagree with is the NFL's response and the additional players who started protesting for the sake of Trump. They are morons who have allowed Trump to change the narrative and disrupt the original intent of the protest.

 

I bet if you work in a 'at-will' state, your employer can fire you. And if you are not fired and you annoy your co-workers with your politics, they will treat you like ****.

 

im self-employed so i can pretty much do whatever i want, but in a proper work environment if you taking a knee causes a distraction then the boss has a right to put a stop to it. like i said, distractions are bad for business.

thats a fair and interesting point. most nfl stadiums are subsidized by the taxpayer. still though, the nfl is a private business...its not their fault that the taxpayer is stupid enough to pay for their stadiums.

 

It's like expressing your 2nd amendment rights on Clutchfans -- if Clutch doesn't like what you are doing he can shut you down or outright ban you. If you protest some random thing you don't like at work (whether you're right or wrong) you can be fired.

 

Sure... Clutch can. But if I was fired from work for what I believe was not proper cause then I could sue the employer. I don't think me kneeling at work, as long as it didn't effect my work, and as long as it didn't create a safety hazard, would be considered just cause.

Furthermore... clutch didn't get public funding for clutchfans. The stadiums did.

 

To each his own...just odd that a handful of players kneeling during the anthem would affect folks enjoyment of that particular event, especially when one would have to look really hard (and taken their own attention away from the flag and anthem) to actually spot the protesting players.

 

Which isn't a problem so long as you aren't disrespecting the past by suggesting that a protest/riot over Blake drinking the last of the office coffee without making more is the same as Gandhi protesting for independence or MLK protesting for civil rights. Right now, that's pretty much what you are doing.

The fact that some people inaccurately said the same thing in the past has nothing to do with people accurately saying something today.

I think most people have been racially profiled....very few whine about it. Perhaps if you had been raised in a diverse environment you'd have a different perspective on the issue. As to the first question, do I believe that the perceived social injustices of today are a legitimate cause? No, the perceived social injustices most of the time aren't actual injustices. I think that some social injustices exist, but they are very few and far between. Now that doesn't mean that we don't keep working to fix the instances that do happen, we just shouldn't parade around a bunch of fake examples in order to pretend the issues are more prevalent then they really are.

It's similar to people who think that things are more dangerous today than they really are because they watch too much news. They fail to realize that things are actually safer now than they were at any point since the mid 60's because they buy into sensationalism.

I don't think it disrespects "the troops" at all, they are just a group that is more likely to get pissed off by disrespecting the country than the random garbage ass civilian. The stated reason for the "protest" was to show disrespect for the flag and the country it represents or more specifically to make a public display of a lack of pride in the flag and the country it represents. Before they managed to spin things for PR purposes, that was the stated intent.....so you don't have to do any guesswork. They told you flat out.

The start of the protest was in direct response to the police shooting of Sylville Smith in Milwaukee, the home town of the player who started it. That player wasn't able to be involved in the riots in his home town due to being stuck with football responsibilities during preseason, so he decided to show a public display of disrespect for the flag instead by sitting on the bench during the anthem.....the problem was no one noticed his public display of disrespect so he decided to leak to the press what he was doing and then the next week he took a knee on the field so that no one could miss it. The rest is history.

Now that said, after the initial backlash they decided to spin things differently for PR purposes, but the initial reasons and intentions were well known and stated freely.

 

It's understandable that as a Democrat you wouldn't be concerned about disrespect towards the country, but imagine that it was an issue you cared about. Let's say for example that a few players did a Nazi salute before the game started. Would that horribly offensive and disrespectful thing affect your enjoyment of that particular event? It certainly would mine. What if you were sitting really far away and you had to look really hard to spot the players who did it? Yeah, it would still affect my enjoyment of the game if I saw it or even heard about it after the fact. If the players then dressed in shirts with pictures of hate group leaders and foreign dictators with a history of oppressing and even killing their own people while attempting to justify their actions....you'd probably feel some kind of way about that. Again, it's all about translating it from things you don't care about like this country into the equivalent things you do care about. You have to realize that there are people who care about those things you don't care about as much as you do about those things you care about.

 

Precisely Goodells plan. How on earth can we promote a World Football league while still playing the National Anthem?