What is the point of forced patriotism?

Travis said:
Okay, about being an employee. Suppose I forced my employees to stand every day and sing a song about how America is trash. Could you not understand that, while I am the boss, they might not like it?

Right now forcing them to stand for the anthem is forcing them to agree with the political proposition that America has no racism, has no problems, and is without faults.
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And said employees have the right to vote with their feet.

One of my LEO buddies and I had a running joke. If the event either one of us was forced to get into uniform and stand up behind the Mayor/CLEO/Whoever so they could make a pitch for gun control we'd make like Jeremiah Denton and eye blink out Morse code TORTURE.

In short, you don't have to agree, you just have to go through the motions. It makes ******** happy and bores hell out of the rest of us.
 
Lurch said:
On the one hand players are employees of a firm, and must follow any reasonable regulations.

On the other hand, the imposition of 'political' activities such as displays of patriotism, about which *personal* feelings can vary wildly, in the course of one's duties cannot be expected to engender a uniform response.

What other workplaces impose a 'patriotism ceremony'? I say, take the politics out of the workplace.
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When I went to see a movie at a local theatre, no anthem was played, but if I went to one on a military base, there was.

A nation is not always to be proud about. Why is it necessary to wave a flag at a sports event?
 
According to the new rules the players are not required to stand for the anthem. They may remain off the field during the anthem, but, if they choose to be on the field they are required to stand. There is no forced patriotic statement.
 
Travis said:
...And, more to the point, why do so many people love the idea of forced patriotism?...
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Kneeling is about as patriotic as one can be, especially as it is showing respect for what the anthem means while drawing attention to the injustice going on among the law-makers, judges/lawyers, as well as those hired to enforce such laws (not violate the civil rights of those they are supposed to defend). This is about as non-violent a form of protest as there is. What ever happened to "I may disagree with what you say, but I will defend with my life your right to have your say.?" That is the definition of patriotism toward the intent of the founders of our nation, who grew up in a nation where the right of the people to protest, was a right to prison and worse, and this is one of the major, fundamental reasons we separated ourselves from that nation to form our own.
 
Pope130 said:
According to the new rules the players are not required to stand for the anthem. They may remain off the field during the anthem, but, if they choose to be on the field they are required to stand. There is no forced patriotic statement.
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And of course, players are now reportedly discussing how to skirt the regulations and still protest, partly to spite the NFL.
 
Mumbles said:
And of course, players are now reportedly discussing how to skirt the regulations and still protest, partly to spite the NFL.
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Nothing to stop the fans from protesting,...so far, but no telling what new laws the Twits will try to pass overnight.
 
I'm going to predict that many of the fans will start kneeling for the anthem. Then the controlling authorities will have to make a rule that anyone failing to stand for the anthem will be ejected from the stadium.

There will be a lot of scofflaws to be ejected. Too many for normal security to handle. So that's when the brownshirts will appear.
 
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mgidm86 said:
The NFL has lost viewers recently.
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Conservatives keep spreading this meme and it is BS.

They have lost just as many viewers because they are not supporting the players right to protest (like the owners black balling Kaepernick) as they are losing viewers because of the players protesting.

The former group is never talked about because, well, they aren't Trump supporters is the easiest way to sum it up. The owners, because of obvious propaganda reasons, only talk about the latter group of viewers being lost.

Every single time this tired old meme comes up that they "lost viewers" it needs to be pointed out that they lost viewers on BOTH SIDES of the issue.

IOW, doing something that only appeases half of those viewers is only going to make viewership stay the same.


Say you take 10 minus 1 (for reason A positive) minus 1 (for reason A negative).

You get 8.

Now you do something to appease the reason A positive group. Then you just end up with 10 minus 2 (for reason A negative).

You're still at 8.


Of course that is assuming you lost the viewers in equal amounts. Obviously the owners are going to assume the group that thinks like them are the vast majority of the viewers lost... Which is why the meme exists in the first place.

tl;dr The Law of Unintended Consequences is very likely going to bite the owners in the ass.
 
Was wondering when the Trump Brownshirts would show up.
 
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Travis said:
And, more to the point, why do so many people love the idea of forced patriotism? Is it a power trip? A way to force someone else to do something you want not what they want?
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In Ontario, where I teach, every morning of every school day is opened with the national anthem. This is absolutely essential or many parents, who, of course, don't open their own work day with the national anthem, would lose their ****.

So every morning I have a class full of students who start out the day by turning off their brain. When I was in university many years ago I had my classmates fill out a survey on how well they knew the national anthem. Those (mostly from Ontario) who grew up with the national anthem every single school day for 12 years knew less of the national anthem than students from provinces that only played the national anthem on special occasions.

As I said. Students simply turn off their brains. Why wouldn't they?

The anthem fetish is about small-minded people exerting dominance over others who they feel are inferior. In the case of the NFL it is racists, as someone else already said, showing those n-words who is boss. In the case of schools it is mainly about racists worried that immigrant and minority children won't be as patriotic as good ole white adults.
 
mgidm86 said:
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If I owned a business I wouldn't want my employees using their time at work (my business) to get political. It isn't smart in an office or most places of employment.

...
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Heh, heh, heh. Very funny. The anthem is political; singing it opens the conversation about politics. Or does the flag represent, er, something else? White supremacy, perhaps, as that is what the protest is about? In that case, by all means, privilege must impose to be itself.

ETA: Making employer political rights supreme is a clear sign of creeping feudalism. Redcoats are coming.
 
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I'm an embittered leftist but I see this as being a threefold thing:

  • It reduces the visibility of the players' protests
  • It keeps uppity fellows in their place
  • It allows the next move to be enforced standing and there will be less of an outcry

The US has protected first amendment rights. US posters regularly upbraid the UK and other European countries for their laws restricting free speech. It seems to me that in some ways and on certain subjects, despite the restrictions, Europeans have greater de-facto free speech rights whatever the de-jure position is.
 
Doesn't this fall under a breach of the 1st amendment? Or does the fact that it is a private organisation imposing this completely negate the 1st?
 
The most ironic thing about all of this, and the part that is surely lost on conservatives, is that not being forced to do **** like this is one of the reasons the US fought for its freedom from England.

Having the right to not stand and salute the king is about as American as something can be.

And yet here we are in an age where conservatives are trying to spin that the opposite is true.

They actually started it a bit before, but in 1954 when the conservatives added the word god to the pledge of allegiance their re-imagining of what it meant to be American was put into overdrive. Now 60 years later the Fox News bubble has pretty much solidified an America that is quite opposite to the one that actually existed in reality.

There is no way to return to what America once stood for without either dividing the country or having another civil war.

We should just vote on it because sadly it would pass by a large margin with agreement on both sides. (Ironically splitting up being one of the only things both sides would agree on...) The red states would love to be their own country, and the blue states would be happy to be rid of them.
 
Darat said:
Doesn't this fall under a breach of the 1st amendment? Or does the fact that it is a private organisation imposing this completely negate the 1st?
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No and yes.


That doesn't stop it from looking very bad (well, to people who aren't Fox News Bubble Brain Washed Trumptards, of course).

#1: There aren't really many (any?) non-governmental professions that would enforce something like this.

#2: It is relatively recent and funded by the government for propaganda.

#3: (And this one is admittedly iffy, but this is how history works.) You have old white owners forcing players who are 90% black to do something in a country that had a few hundred years of slavery.


And all of that is without even having to prove that the thing the players are trying to bring awareness to is a true legitimate problem. Which it is.
 
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This is The End said:
The most ironic thing about all of this, and the part that is surely lost on conservatives, is that not being forced to do **** like this is one of the reasons the US fought for its freedom from England.
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I suppose it depends on what end of the telescope you're looking at it from.

The US War or Independence could be viewed as a group of enlightened individuals throwing off the yoke of monarchist oppression, or it could be viewed as a group of agitators wanting to seize power from TPTB. This move certainly runs counter to the first but is IMO fairly and squarely the latter. ;)

Likewise with freedom of religion and so forth. It could have been that the Founding Fathers wanted to free the US populace from being oppressed by religion or, viewed from the other end of the telescope, it wanted to allow sects to be as oppressive as they liked, free from government interference.
 
Travis said:
So the NFL is going to start punishing players and teams that don't partake in mandatory political messaging before games. On social media conservatives are hailing the decision with comments that seem to best be summarized as "Yes, make them stand!"

"Make them stand?"

What is the point when the key action in that sentence is the word "make"? As in, take away choice.

All through the NFL protest blowup I never was able to figure out why conservatives want forced patriotism. Is it proper to even still call it "patriotism" at that point. After all we don't call rape "forced sex" because we understand that the "forced" part makes it not even a form of sex at all. Similarly shouldn't there be a new term for when someone stands for the anthem but not because they think America is without fault but because they face punishment if they do not.

And, more to the point, why do so many people love the idea of forced patriotism? Is it a power trip? A way to force someone else to do something you want not what they want?
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This issue is not peculiar patriotism or conservatives. The left has been trying to compel speech on a whole host of issues. It's a pretty common human instinct across the spectrum to try to force people to publicly agree with your position, even if they privately disagree.

Tactically, this is a mistake for conservatives. They should let the players kneel. The NFL will justly suffer reduced attendance and viewership as a result.
 
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