The perfect fumble
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 3 Jun 2012
- Messages
- 24,598
The world is not like California and as we've just witnessed, neither is a sizeable chunk of the USA. The only thing one can say with certainty about the values that you hold, or I hold for that matter, whatever they may be, with all their nuance and cultural overlay, is they are not a one size fits all, though, come to think of it, I'm sure I could say that, I'm not so sure you would.
I've lived long enough to witness "progressive" politics morph into a mirror image of that which it ostensibly opposes. Under the cover of universal human rights, the left has crafted its own constantly burgeoning version of the white man's burden, an "enlightened" moral superiority, a kind of progressive determinism that through cultural creep and establishment capture, seeks to refashion the world in its own image, and why not? if one believes that a better world is whatever's trending in identity politics in North American academia, whatever's the latest scam "progressive" lobby groups and race grifters are peddling.
So what does this have to do with sport...
When you state....
Fair enough, you're making a distinction between the sacrifices an individual makes, once they inevitably subsume a portion of their individuality in order to become a team player and contrasting it with an individual in the stands, who is under no compunction to do the same, and can exercise their right to acquiesce or not. But you over egg the pudding, the power of "the team" is not absolute, this isn't Orwell's 1984, or the Khmer Rouge, this isn't the divine right of kings, or the absolutism of an Ayatollah, a player has not been drafted into the army and the manager is not the drill Sergeant in "Full Metal Jacket"
And here you're conflating self autonomy with talent and or fuckwittery...
There are a number of things that might reasonably be expected of a player, the bread and butter technical stuff obviously, such as requiring a winger to try and get the ball in the box, a goal keeper to attempt to save goals, the wider necessity of not being an arse hole to your team mates, to display respect for the fans and the club (at least superficially) to engage in the PR circus that comes with being a sports professional and those nebulous little things with which it would be impossible to object.
What you're referring to is that which is required of a player by the owners, or the sport's federation or even the government, not as a team player and this is the crux, but as an employee, what those who are powerful tell those whose livelihoods they control.
Corporate and institutional capture by those selling a "fairer world" is now relentless, and sports persons in particular must be seen to embrace these values, these progressive "corporate" core values of their club, values that increasingly go well beyond the confines of sport, well beyond the idea that sport can be an exemplar, not only for the age old virtues of independence, self worth, health and well being, but to be a mirror to a better version of ourselves. To achieve this it is not essential for a club to comprehend whatever shite the progressive think tanks, pressure groups and assorted grifters have managed to concoct, which is just as well, because for the most part what they're selling is intellectually vacuous, dishonest, divisive and harmful.
Of course, this is not the first time pressure has been brought to bear on players.
Berlin, May 14th 1938, Germany face England in an end-of-season friendly.....
In the English speaking world, sport occupies a significant cultural space, what happened above in 1938 was a consequence of the political exigency of the time, what happened below in 1968 was no less significant of its age, though this came with no corporate or establishment approval...
You posted the following, by doing little more than change the word "team" to "party" it reads rather differently.
I did this because you're effectively saying that being a member of a team, beyond the behavioural requirements necessary for the nuts and bolts of the team game itself, requires a player to engage in a mode of behaviour that would shock most folk if it were required of members of a political party.
OTT? Probably.
I find it deeply depressing that the left always devours itself. At the extremes it's the gulags, the cultural revolution and the killing field, if it avoids that, then it's Animal Farm, it invariably becomes what it professes to despise. In the flabby centre left there's performative nonsense, damaging gesture politics, laces and armbands, anything to avoid the issue and then quelle surprise! There's a jolt when the great unwashed opt for a huckster and conman.
Cue hand wringing, comforting words for embattled minorities, gestures, then rinse and repeat.
Last edited: