So then...Everything but NASCAR?
Submitted by gjohnsit on Tue, 04/06/2021 - 7:16pm
That'll fix those libtards!
Yesser, a conservative boycott of America's pastime for reasons of patriotism.
It can't fail!
And the conservative NFL boycott for reasons of patriotism worked so well that..., uh, hmmm.
Something went wrong.
We're running out of sports.
And there's one thing I'm sure of, is that an overwhelming majority of Republicans love their sports.
So they are being asked to chose the politics that make the angry over the leisure activities that they love.
I watched a documentary on Heaven's Gate last night.
They pointed out that one of the signs that you are in a cult, is that you get cut off from the things that you love (people, places, ...sports).
Comments
Totally unrelated, but notable
The headline itself is surprising, but WHERE this article happened is shocking
Just in case you still don't get it, check out the last sentence.
And then what...?
Should I be cheering, or fearing, this news?
It occurred to me this morning that, maybe, we should stop assuming that "free market" and "capitalism" are synonymous. What if they're actually antagonistic? A "market" without capitalism might not be so bad. Can a "capitalist" market even be "free"? Is "free market" really just an oxymoron?
As definitions of "capitalism" go, I like the one based on its Classical root: capit-, meaning "head", specifically as in "head of cattle" - capitalism is a society in which people are treated like cattle. It's just Industrial-Age feudalism, and Marx and Engels made a HUUUUUUGE mistake saying the Industrial Age changed politics, and obfuscating everything with their new lexicon. We are fighting the same battle today that they were in 1776. The Enlightenment basically got everything right, but the Industrial Revolution confused the bejeesus out of everyone, and only in the past 60 years has it really started to pay off, opening opportunities that nobody in prior centuries, or even the early 20th (looking at YOU, Postmodernists and Romantics!), could've imagined; I am reaching the conclusion that Marx and Engels ruined the Left. Their ideas have failed horribly, ditto Adam Smith's, whom they did not provide an "alternative" to but ratified and trapped us with. "Evil Yin-Yang" is a term/concept I would like to see take off. The 19th-Century conceit of "social science" is largely to blame for what C99's own Cassiodorus keeps referring to as our "failure of political imagination".
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
The "free market"
is the banner waved by the advocates of capitalism, specifically of neoliberal capitalism, in which governments exist primarily to promote the fiction of a "free market" in its rule over all aspects of private life. Neoliberalism is accompanied by elite rule in the form of what the late Sheldon Wolin called "inverted totalitarianism," managed democracy such that the same people (Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the Walton family, and the rest of the super-rich including pretty much anyone mentioned in Peter Phillips' book "Giants") always stand at the top of financial and thus political power regardless of which party appears as the public face of the nation-state. Popular culture is marked by the failure of political imagination to imagine anything beyond such a system. (Are there, for instance, any popular books on climate change mitigation being marketed today outside of Bill Gates' volume?)
Much as I appreciate being quoted, I feel obliged to argue here that behind the "'Market without capitalism'" is the idea that, once freed from capitalism, people will go back to markets. One recalls the classic passage from Hutchinson, Mellor, and Olsen's book "The Politics of Money," pp. 90-91, which begins: "Free markets are, in the words of John Gray... a product of artifice, design, and political coercion" (90). I won't quote the whole thing here -- but the most purple passage discusses how:
Certainly we can imagine something beyond such a framework -- or perhaps our political imaginations are so atrophied at this point that we can't.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
I'm sure I could...
...but what's the context, and what problem are we actually trying to solve? What don't we want to change? It sounds like you want something that has nothing whatsoever in common with the Postwar Consensus - most people don't want to go that far. Satisfaction, when genuine and justified, is hardly the same as failure of imagination (and you need SOMETHING static to brace yourself against while you're sending your imagination in other directions).
https://www.technocracyinc.org/ at least USED TO have a very ambitious and thorough re-imagination of how society works - they used to have a video espousing a shift from the "price system" which they traced all the way back to Ancient Mesopotamia to a resource-based society, and a shift from people productivity being motivated by "incentive" to "initiative" (a lot like UBI with energy-certificates). https://freeworldcharter.org/en is pretty damned ambitious, too - and what about Star Trek, for Goodness sake? There's a great deal of exactly the "political imagination" it sounds like you're talking about, if you know where to look - but naturally, nobody presently profiting from omnicide is going to want to do anything but either consume and corrupt those ideas, or make them disappear entirely.
Perhaps the better question is not "where, oh where, is is ANYBODY'S imagination?", but "how do we save the creative geniuses among us - the 'creatively maladjusted' in whose hands Dr. King saw human salvation - from the campaign of annihilation presently being waged against them?"
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Most people don't want to go that far
Most people don't want catastrophic climate change or periodic pandemics, either. But either the political imagination will come back or people will just die, take your pick. As for the "postwar consensus," the real landmark was the consensus formed in 1973, in which the elites, reeling from the revolts of 1968 and 1970, and knowing they were not going to win in Vietnam despite the "enemy" losses in the Tet Offensive, opted for neoliberalism. Before 1973 America was governed by Richard M. Nixon, a far more liberal President than any of his successors to this day. It is because of THAT elite consensus, and not the "postwar" one before 1973, that the Republican Party is what it is today.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
Obviously, such markets are not free
When I want groceries, I can go to Target, Mariano's (Kroger), Jewel, Tony;s (same owner as Aldi)
plus more. In Communist Poland there was the state store. Period.
That's the difference between capitalism and communism. also Capitalism has super rich that live like feudal kings. Communism has nomenclatura that live like feudal kings. Both systems claim to represent the "People".
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
It waas a failure of imagination
that made of "Communism" only that, and nothing more. The concept has far more potential than what 20th-century history has made of it.
The ruling classes need an extra party to make the rest of us feel as if we participate in democracy. That's what the Democrats are for. They make the US more durable than the Soviet Union was.
I bet that they claim that the MLB boycott is a success.
Saying that the attendance is down without mentioning that capacity is down due to covid restrictions.
Well said...
...but what about the case of, rather than taking YOU away from them, they barge into the things you love and ruin them from within, professing shared love but demonstrating nothing but closed-minded incomprehension and contempt, cannibalizing them for their own purposes, and thus taking the things you love away from YOU? What do you call that?
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
politics n/t
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
Is that a joke?
Nothing personal, but I was hoping for a more candid answer.
In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.
Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!
Soory, it was a serious answer
I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.
NASCAR is actually an interesting case.
Any strides they've made towards wokeness have been top down, not bottom (athletes) up. And while they have a long way to go, they have been making changes, such as banning the stars and bars. Of course, it's not because of any sense of social awareness that these changes are being made. Rather, they've been on a steady decline of viewership for a long time and they're so desperate, they're even willing to try making races more inviting to other races. Needless to say, this hasn't always been accepted by their most loyal fanbase, but it's interesting that NASCAR itself seems to feel it's future is outside of with southern america.
Idolizing a politician is like believing the stripper really likes you.
As a former NASCAR fan
I think I can speak from experience having attended many races on eight different tracks (Daytona, Talladega, Atlanta, Darlington, Rockingham-RIP, Martinsville, Dover, and Louden) ranging from Talladega in the Deep South to Louden in New Hampshire. While NASCAR had its roots in the South, it had become popular nationwide, so the stereotypical NASCAR fan at a place such as Talladega is not necessarily the race fan one would meet in Dover or Louden.
NASCAR changed their strategy decades ago to try to appeal to a broader audience, especially the well heeled corporate fans. I held season tickets for the spring race at Talladega for a number of years and would see the same fans in the nearby seats each year. Those people were knowledgeable and there for racing. Then suddenly the seats all around were taken by corporate donors with people who were both clueless about racing and were there to party. I let my tickets go after two years of their annoying rowdiness.
NASCAR also changed their formula for determining the overall championship and started installing some hokey tricks and a playoff method to determine the winner. They were trying to compete with professional football and a lot of the new fans and corporate sponsors loved it. I lost interest after that and the last race I attended was in 2015. And I do not even follow it any more.
Of all the fans I ever met at a race, the nicest and oldest crowd were the people who attended the Dover, Delaware race. The rowdiest were the Talladega fans, many of whom simply camp out for the week and get drunk while never attending the race. At Louden, there were a lot of Canadian fans. And you would be surprised at how many black fans I saw over the years, particularly at Atlanta. Most of the people I knew personally were not your confederate flag waving rednecks. In fact, my best friend with whom I attended nearly all of these races is very much to the left like me.
However the people in charge of NASCAR and most of the team owners are very conservative. Drivers are not allowed to stray too far from the corporate line, so we cannot really know what many of them think. I do know that Dale Earnhardt Sr. was very opposed to the confederate flag and asked his fans not to display it.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
Well, given that many republicans I'm aware of
are staunch vaccine refusers/deniers, perhaps their absence will make baseball games safer to attend for the rest of us.
Just kidding. This is just another example of the "invisible hand of the market" holding up that singular finger and making a simple, unmistakable gesture to us all, on behalf of the Owners.
Twice bitten, permanently shy.
I watched a documentary on
For consumers of professional sports what, if any upside is there? I guess you could argue that since it involves actual human participants that it's at least a step up from, say, online gaming.
Other than that, it functions mostly as mind numbing distraction from reality, disincentive to actually engage in productive physical activity and a useful medium for programming zombie consumers.
So, if Republicans want to take the lead in weaning themselves from such destructive behaviors then good for them. Nothing like leading by example.
Want to see a cult in action click on over to TOS.
“I would not sit waiting for some vague tomorrow, nor for something to happen. One could wait a lifetime, and find nothing at the end of the waiting. I would begin here, I would make something happen.”
― Louis L'Amour, Sackett's Land
If NASCAR gets too annoyingly woke
I imagine the good old boys and gals can get back to basics
on their own, one way or another...
Opposite issues
It is one thing for fans to boycott NASCAR or MLB for reasons, it is totally different when a company makes that decision over the wants of the citizens. Did black voters, you know the ones who are supposed to be shafted over Georgia voting laws want the game moved out of state? Were they even asked?
THIS:
Cass' comment on inverted totalitarianism is spot on too. We are witnessing a sea change, imho.
And who da thunk I would ever agree with Mitch McC?
Especially when it is based on democrat lies. People can get watered in line if they are thirsty. 2 mandatory early Saturday voting and 2 Sundays if town want to open them. Polls are NOT closed at 5pm as Psaki the liar loves to repeat as does the addled idiot, Biden. It was wrong to move the game. If Georgians don't like the bill it is up to them to change it. Not a Major Business that has ripped off poor, minority communities for ages.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
It's a bad law, no doubt. But boycotting a whole state is stupid
Dems are exaggerating, I agree. Like they do. But the republicans are also lying about it, and it actually does make it illegal for anyone to give any "food or drink" to voters waiting in line. So no more delivering pizzas or donuts or coffee (or water) as none of these can be brought to support and encourage voters who are waiting in long lines. That is some stupid bullshit right there. Yes it says that "self-service" water can be made available at a certain distance. Does that make this a good thing? NO.
They also required counties to remove a lot of ballot drop boxes -- why? Just to make it harder to vote! These were installed as part of making voting easier in the pandemic, but now they have to go. It needs to be a big effing hassle to vote, amirite?!? So say the republicans. Trump's whole mission to destroy the post office was about preventing vote-by-mail, because as he actually said out loud, if those types of provisions were made widely available "republicans would never win another election" which is why they have to be prevented at all costs.
Republicans win only by putting up barriers to democratic voters getting to the polls. I do not support that one bit. Even though I'm not a dem and I don't believe that party is in any way good either. But as I have always said, dems bad does not equal republicans good. They are both bad. I see no reason to pretend otherwise.
Rising did a good segment on this, pointing out that the intention of the Geogia law was unquestionably to suppress voting from voters/areas that tend to vote heavily dem. And they did it because they lost the senate seats in January to democrats. Can't have that, so they changed law to make it harder next time. That is not right.
Now about the boycotts, yes boycotting an entire state is stupid and wrong. Speaking as an Arizona native who was here in 2010, when our elected dem governor was poached by Obama and AZ Republicans used the opening to target "illegals" in the state with SB1070, and our entire state suddenly became the liberals' scapegoat and target of generalized hatred and ire -- I know what that is like. And it sucks.
MLB is free to do what they want, and people who want to spend their time and money attending pro sports games can do what they want.
Trae Crowder has an excellent short video rant about this, where he totally nails it IMO. Worth a watch.
[video:https://youtu.be/BNMKB5-V0cc]
But dems are lying about the voting hours
and Biden is saying that it's the worst Jim Crow law ever because it stops voting at 5pm just as people are getting off work. It does not. Major news sites have come out and reversed their bad reviews on some of it and especially mentioned the Biden quote, 'It does not end voting at 5pm.' Just yesterday Psaki bitch slapped a reporter who had called her out on the 5pm lie and lied while doing it.
Bottom line is that MLB had no right in my opinion to move it without any discussion and from a state that has over 50% blacks living in it to a state that has less than 14% and is mainly white.
But what is the winning message that dems and MLB just had to move it from Georgia when there are good things in the bill. And gawd's nightgown, let's start talking about why lines are 10 hours long on voting days when it usually only happens in high minority neighborhoods. But the bill opens up early voting longer and with 2 Sats mandatory? Good and bad like you say, but the game should not have been moved. This is opening a can of worms that no one knows where it will go and it's bad for MLB to do when they suck every cent out of communities by getting them to pay for the team's playground instead of the owners who make all the money from stadiums.
There will be lots of lawsuits over this so it isn't even final that all the rules will stand, but let's lose our heads over it while dems pass their version of voting rules which will hurt anyone from a 3rd party wanting to play politics. And remember this fun factoid: the DNC and RNC are private companies that have nothing to do with making voting more fair. If dems were really upset about blacks not being able to vote then they should do what they can to make it easier for their voters to vote. White people rarely have to wait in line for more that 30 minutes. I have always walked in, signed the papers, got my ballot and voted in less than 10.
Utah republicans are making voting here easier and we have had vote by mail for 3-4 years if not more. I liked to go in person after reading the book sent on it. Others shouldn't have to wait more than any white person does. But they have for decades and dems have done nothing about it.
Here is what Atlanta's mayor is doing to counter the bill: DK link.
I meant to edit more before I posted, but oops. Might not be too coherent. Here is more on Atlanta's mayor: (to twit)
I'm not sure of the order of tweets. Can't embed them.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Thanks and good comment. I don't pay much attention to Biden
or his press secretary, but yes I agree they are exaggerating, as I said earlier. The law does set a default closing time for early voting at 5:00 p.m. -- for really no good reason -- so that is not entirely made up, but I totally agree that they are making misleading comments about it and playing politics as usual.
MLB does "have the right" to hold their events wherever they want to, and to not hold them somewhere they don't want to. I think it was a bad decision on their part and I don't agree with it, but they absolutely do have a "right" to have their games wherever they choose. And patrons have the right to then not attend said games if they do not like the decisions that were made. That is how it works.
I also do agree with the point, and thank you for bringing it up because I should have said this before, that here in AZ we also have vote-by-mail for everyone who wants to and it's very easy, and has been this way for a very long time here, and yet republicans still win plenty of elections in this state.
So yes -- and they mentioned this on the Rising segment -- Trump likely shot himself in the foot with his War on the Post Office and trying to kill vote-by-mail. Because if he had encouraged his supporters to use it, rather than undermining it, he may very well have won the election. Oops!
If you didn't watch the video I posted, I again suggest give it the three or so minutes. He totally nails why the attempted boycott of Georgia, including moving the big baseball game, is so wrong and dumb.
Hmmm. Boycotts hurt Georgians
That's interesting.
It made me wonder what sanctions do if boycotts are bad? Remember sanctions?
Sanctions are evil, IMO
If, as I assume, you are referring to a foreign policy of depriving people in certain areas or countries of basic human needs as a way of trying to pressure governments or those in power in those areas or countries, then I believe that to be fundamentally wrong.
Boycotts are of course not the same thing, exactly, so your question was something of a non sequitur, but there you go. I've been told that boycotts are effective and good, see BDS or the worldwide boycott of South Africa, or the great grape boycott, etc. I know all the arguments for and against. I realize that boycotts such as those can make an impact and for many it seems the collateral damage is viewed as worth it.
I think it's a complicated issue in some cases, but in general and in most situations I feel that generalized geographical-based boycotts are a bad idea. Specifically the ones targeting Georgia right now, and AZ in the past, are both in the "bad idea" category in my view.
for me, personally speaking
Pro Sports is nothing but a continuation of the Old Plantation system, where old rich people buy and sell their young bucks and fight them against one another.
The player's themselves, to me, are over paid spoiled brats. Their wokeness is a f-king joke to me. One need only look to their starting salaries...
From Statista.com:
Imagine making 7 million a year, and all you can do to display your "wokeness" is to kneel during the national anthem. That to me is not "wokeness", it's simply "social marketing", to increase the player's value in the market for swag sales!
People get more upset at a bad call by an official during a f-king GAME, than they do about all the horrible shit our country has done, and is still doing, to the rest of world. How many years has America been in Afghanistan or Iraq, but hey, it's okay to torture folks.
[video:https://youtu.be/l9uvGoHg0DI]
I reckon Joe Biden was right, nothing will fundamentally change.
C99, my refuge from an insane world. #ForceTheVote
Obama's damage to states run by dem guvs
He took Huntsman too and made him ambassador to China leaving us with Herbert as guv. Huntsman may have been a repub, but he was doing great stuff for Utah till Herbie took over. The Huntsman family is very rich and influential and have built a huge cancer center next to the U of U campus just as a side note, but Utah took 3 steps backwards after Herbert took over. Cox isn't too bad as of yet. But damn him for doing that. Then we saw lots of states turn red and here we are. All by design. again, IMO. Sorry it happened to you too. The more I learn about Zero........
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Thanks snoop. I was really pissed at Obama for that one
Taking Janet Napolitano from Arizona to become director of Homeland Security under Obama left us with a far-right loonie, Jan Brewer, as governor here. Was that really necessary? I don't think so! I still don't get why he did that to us. I really wished she would have told him no and not abandoned the state.
I know we are not the only state that had this happen to us, but the resulting mass boycott of AZ was a direct result of his actions in poaching our elected dem governor and leaving Brewski in power. Did any of those angry whole-state boycotters even think about that? Hell no.
Jan Brewer say no more
Yeah she was something else and Obama owned what happened in AZ over that act and with the blond fritz in charge.. ugh. Worse than anything Herbert did. Janet should have stayed put. Now isn't she running the California College system where wages for her and those in high positions are making outrageous salaries while overseeing the rise in college tuition? Things seem to have gotten worse with college affordability after she took her position. I am not impressed with her. Or that Donna Shalala gal. Or Nancy.. I'll stop.
Rumor was he took out a lot of people who might have challenged him for top spot and left us with McCain and the Palin twit. Thanks Obama.
Seem to be having problems hitting reply this morning. Doh.
OT but interesting. Biden's Yellen is asking the world to raise taxes on US businesses who don't like paying any. And it's not like congress has written the tax laws so that businesses could do exactly what they are doing.
Scientists are concerned that conspiracy theories may die out if they keep coming true at the current alarming rate.
Sums it up.