As far as the latest thing people are upset about with NFL players, ultimately I think it’s hilarious and absurd, like most wacky shit you people do. The best thing about it is that all of your whining about veterans and the flag is doing is just helping to get the message out and giving more power to the players you are hurling all your mock outrage at. You’re a joke, and you don’t even know it. Let me explain.
When citizens protested the Vietnam War, people like you called them hippies and traitors and all kinds of horrible things. They mocked them and took the side of the establishment, and cheered on the police and national guard when they beat them and tried to stop them from practicing their rights guaranteed to them in the Constitution. Yet history shows that they were right, and you’re hard pressed to find anyone today that thinks the Vietnam War was a good idea. If those people had just given it a little more thought and joined the obviously right side, countless parents would have their children alive today.
When Ralph Nader crusaded against automakers for better safety standards, he was the subject of a smear campaign by the establishment, and plenty of ignorant blowhards like you joined in. Yet today, the things Nader fought for have saved countless lives and made the world safer for you and your children. The same goes for Clair Patterson, who saved us all from lead poisoning. And the people who brought the dangers of asbestos, and cigarette smoking, and nuclear power, and a thousand other dangers to light. Like the people trying to warn us about climate change today, who most of you mock when you’re too ignorant on the subject to even have an opinion.
Just like people were angry at Muhammad Ali, Malcolm X, anyone connected to the Civil Rights movement, or any woman that dares open their mouths and ask to treated as an equal. People like you are on the wrong side of history every time, coming off as petty and ridiculous, casting yourself into a discussion where you have no dog in the fight. You just like to be outraged. The world has passed you by. You’re not capable of critical thinking or abstract thought. You react to the simplest stimuli. You think the flag means something and you extrapolate all kinds of wacky theories from there and see slights where there are none. You seem too narrow minded to understand the basic principle that symbols of freedom don’t matter nearly as much as the actual freedoms you claim they represent. You put symbols before human life. How disgusting is that?
If you think people like me are being insulting, or too harsh, that’s because we can look back at centuries of your ridiculous behavior and see all the work it takes having to stop and try to explain it to you and undo the damage you are doing, to crawl over all the roadblocks you erect in front of the march to freedom.
People like to think we’re noble because we went to war to stop slavery, and genocides, and topple dictators, yet you are taking the same side as the people we fought against. You do it time and time again, and don’t even see that you’re doing it. You can’t seem to make the connection that your actions have consequences and that what you do informs people of who you are.
And I hate to tell you, but if you are on the side of people wanting to restrict freedom, if you are on the side of this horrendous man in the White House, if you are on the same side of Neo-Nazis and Confederate sympathizers, that’s what you will be viewed as. You can’t espouse those same opinions and then claim to be nothing like the people with the same viewpoints.
I will never understand people that are on the side of the establishment. It’s like going to a casino and rooting for the house to win. The rich and powerful in this world do not represent your best interests. They work to confuse you and distract you in an attempt to get you to look the other way while they raid the coffers or to trick you into acting against your best interests. Oddly enough, the few times that government leaders try to give you something that will actually help you, that’s when you fight them. You claim to hate the establishment and big government, but you side with them on every issue that results in you losing your freedom or your money. You are so easily tricked by people lying to you and telling you that you’re smart. Any simple reinforcement that you’re not as dense as you fear you might be and you throw your convictions and morals out the window. I’m sorry, but if you can think of better word than “stupid” to describe that behavior, I’d like to hear it.
When I said you had no dog in this fight, that wasn’t entirely accurate, because you do. You’re dog isn’t in the ring right now, but it’s sitting in the on deck circle. If you take the rights away from some of our citizens, you open the door to take the rights away for all citizens. If you don’t fight police corruption now, when it affects a group of citizens you don’t belong to, don’t be surprised when someday it affects you because no one stopped it when they had a chance.
You people are so blind, you can’t even understand the sentiment of “don’t shit where you eat.” You will so readily take up the cause of your enemy because you have no depth when it comes to social issues. You can’t even see one or two moves ahead in the game. You just react like Pavlov’s dog whenever a bell rings, and you unwittingly do your master’s bidding because that's easier than thinking for yourself. You are ruled by your outrage and your hate and your anger and your own feelings of insecurity and low self esteem. You can’t let anyone have anything because you are greedy and frightened and afraid that means you might lose something yourself.
You will cut off your nose to spite your face, and then you wonder why the country is a joke and why your life gets shittier all the time. You deny any help to the lower classes and minorities, then wonder why poverty breeds criminals. You defeat yourself by stifling your fellow citizens. Every improvement to our quality of life is accomplished in spite of you. You have basically transformed yourself into a speedbump, nothing more.
And the biggest joke of all, and it’s on you, make no mistake, is that everything you’re doing is just helping your opposition. All your fear and confusion is just making heroes out of the people you seem intent on keeping down, and helping to add fighters to their cause. Just like the war on terror breeds terrorists, just like your hysterics over teen sex and drug use makes those things seem more attractive to teens, or like any instance where you act out of irrational fear to inform your actions.
For instance, up until Friday, you had a few players kneeling and not making much of an impact. Then your idiot president threw down a gauntlet, which you took up all too willingly, and now you have the entire NFL, owners included, rising up in solidarity. Other sports are joining, and more people are joining the cause, all because of your ridiculous reactions to a matter that doesn’t take anything away from you in the least. You cause your own misery, you can’t even help yourself. It’s like a compulsion to sabotage the things you say you care about.
Maybe you just hate yourself. Maybe you just want to feel like a martyr. Maybe you just keep making life harder for yourself because it makes you feel like you are important, like you matter. People confuse self induced misery with character all the time. Maybe this is your way of trying to fit in, or feel like you have conviction.
Instead of trying to impede progress, why don’t you actually try to think for yourself and make your own mark on society? Why don’t you try putting your energy towards figuring out who you really are and making the world a better place, rather than railing against people that are actually trying to make the world a better place? Honestly, I hate to keep repeating it, but you have no reason whatsoever for your stance, no matter how many times you repeat lies and debunked rules and phony outrage.
Like I said at the beginning though, I think it’s all hilarious. I love that people are always acting crazy and getting themselves all twisted up and fighting against their own best interests. I guess most of them really have nothing better to do. I know I always have some spare time to agitate the rabble. It amuses the hell out of me. Yeah, there is an element of it that can be frustrating at times, because I really do want people to just be happy and figure all this shit out, but honestly, I don’t really think there’s much chance of that happening. It’s sad, because it’s all right there waiting for you, but nobody can get their shit together long enough to just do the simple and right things that need to be done.
So I choose to laugh at the absurdity of it all, because if I didn’t laugh, I would cry. So I hope you wake up, but if you don’t, that’s fine too. You can’t stop progress, especially not in this day and age, you can just slow it down and make it a little more annoying of a process. And if you think I’m being too hard on you, well, tough shit. It’s really nothing personal. Like I said earlier, actions have consequences, and if you’re going to blindly impede justice, you deserve all the derision you get heaped on you.
