Should He Stand?

Another big problem I have, is the NFL’s position on this. Sure, Krapernick can sit to express his views, but when the Dallas Cowboys wanted to wear decals on their helmets to honor the murdered Dallas police, they said no. When St Louis Rams players came out with their hands up, in regards to Ferguson, the NFL had no problem.

What Fapernick doesn’t understand is, sports can be one of the few things that encourage unity. Go to a game, you see white, black, Asian, Latino people all cheering together, because it’s about the same common thing…their team winning.

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Yes, Ogre. That’s what he seems to be missing. I’ll support his freedom to do what he’s doing. Individual freedom and free speech is absolutely a hill worth dying on for me.

BUT he can’t control my reaction, or the reactions of millions of Americans who think he’s acting like a spoiled little uninformed, ungrateful baby. He seems surprised by this. Now he’s a victim of “stereotypes and racism.” It’s a lot like hearing that the KKK is having a rally, or knowing that the Westboro Baptist Church is doing a protest. I’ll support their right to do it, but I will completely ignore them because I think they are a bunch of bigoted, racist idiots. Honestly, the best way to deal with those people is to let them stand on their street corner alone with no crowds and no press until they get bored.

You know if you really support free speech if you’re willing to tolerate people who say things that offend you, and even defend their right to do it. Idaho said that better.

The irony of this is that some of my progressive friends who are really standing up for this dork and his right to free speech are the same people who want to shout down or uninvite conservatives on college campuses. They bend over backward to give attention to the cry bullies who want to censor history of anything “hurtful”, want trigger warnings and safe spaces, cry “hate speech” to silence their political opposition. And yet they seem to want to be so respectful of Kaepernick’s rights. Why is that?

It makes me wonder what it takes to trigger their morality in terms of love of country.

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I used to be a liberal progressive in my late teens and early 20’s. The best way I could describe my mindset back then was to say that I was operating on a fundamental assumption that liberal ideas were good - rooted in empathy, compassion and tolerance - and conservative ideas were bad - rooted in greed, selfishness and intolerance.

In other words, I really gave these things VERY little thought. It was easier to just stick to the feel-good narratives I’d get from progressive media outlets online. The funny thing is that I became a conservative not by reading right-wing opinions, but by reading almost exclusively left-wing opinions. My brain eventually kicked in and the pattern of deceit, the logical inconsistencies and the general weakness of so many progressive lines of thought became very apparent to me. I could go on and on about those sort of realizations I’ve had…

I suppose there’s a reason why it is common for young liberals to become middle-aged conservatives while the opposite scenario is quite uncommon.

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“If you’re a college aged conservative, you are heartless; if you’re a middle aged liberal, you’re brainless”

Or something to that extent.

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It is a double standard. Free speech goes out the window when your view differs from theirs and words like “bigot” and “racist” get thrown around.

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The damned fool just had a press conference wearing a Fidel Castro t-shirt.

Hahaha…that is a special kind of stupid. Wow

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Of course he did. Fuck him. Seriously, fuck him.

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Mathematically, this is quite wrong. The Soviet Union in 1940 was roughly 5.5 times more populous than the USA in 1860. Soviet military deaths exceeded 6 million or more than 10 times the US civil war military deaths. That doesn’t take into consideration that over 13 million Soviet civilians died in WW2. The US civil war had probably fewer than 50,000 civilian casualties.

That means that considering only military casualties Soviet WW2 was roughly twice as deadly as the US civil war (as a percentage of total pre-war population). Including civilians, Soviet WW2 was over 6 times deadlier than the US civil war as a percentage of pre-war population.

And as far as the Civil War vs. other US wars, the total casualties in all other wars exceeds the total casualties of the Civil War (although it is close).

@ aging and politics. I’ve gone from being a moderate Republican to being much more Libertarian in many ways. By the time I’m 80 I’ll probably be a straight up Anarchist.

I’m picturing Maude but with bigger traps.

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He is talking about percentage, not raw numbers. 20% of the male population.

Might still be wrong, I’m not sure what % of service age males died but it is pretty comparable in terms of generational loss.

I’m talking percentages, too. The 1860 population of the US was around 31 million according to the census. Including civilian casualties, around 700,000 people died. That’s about 2.2% of the population. Probably around 5% of the male population. I don’t have demographic data, but almost certainly the casualties were concentrated among young and middle aged adult men. But since around half of a normal male population is young or middle aged men, it’s unlikely that war deaths exceeded 10% of the male “service age” population.

Compare to 1940s Soviet Union. Prewar population was around 170 million according to the 1937 census. Over 26 million people died. About 20 million of them were men. So about 15% of the total population and around 22% of the male population. In the age bracket from 20 to 49 (“service age”), approximately 40% of men were killed. Plus wounded.

Obviously this is tangential to the thread, but I wanted to point out the fact that the characterization of civil war deaths wasn’t even close to accurate. Something around 10% and something around 40% are not comparable in terms of generational loss.

i dont have demographic information wither. thanks for the correction.

People like him and Byonce feel above it all. They think that they are larger than life and can’t be touched when they act like scum. Hopefully fan base will erode for both of them.

(Note those that did not see the recent music video awards Byonce glorified the thugs that were killed by police)

You guys are harsh! Just imagine going through life like you are a kitten and entire social constructs are one giant ball of yarn. He jumped on to race relations and it rolled right over him, now he’s all tangled up.

His only hope is to dart full speed across the room into a closed sliding glass door and pray that nobody pulls out a laser pointer during his next “press conference” and starts whizzing around on the ceiling.

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Agreed, I was going to respond with another comment, but, he is just another asshole like 10 billion others, so, it time to move on.

Some good news: Muhammed -AL-Adnani is dead. Roast in hell, motherfucker.

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Now that is some cheerful news to start my day. I love it.

The Soviet numbers are all over the place, and you are mixing military and civilian deaths. The official number of military dead 8.7 million calculated by the Russian Ministry of Defense.

But that number very well could be bullshit. So we have no way of knowing who is right on this particular tangent.

Regardless, the point Ruffian made, which is (paraphrasing) “America fucking tore itself in two to free slaves, and this putz should at least respect those who marched under the flag he hates that died to free him” remains.

I’m Israeli and stand when the US national anthem is played, FWIW.

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