Social Justice in Sports, Bread and Circuses

On any Sunday, the government-owned stadiums across the socialist country I knew, ruled by the Communist Party, were filled with men cheering their favorite soccer teams, throwing empty beer bottles at other spectators, letting out temporary steam from their miserable lives during the week, a sort of Roman “Pane et circenses,” bread and circuses, for the oppressed proletariat.

There were no concession stands, no food sold, just beer brought from the outside. The fans often injured other fans and fights broke out that the police were not eager to disperse. They were told to leave them alone. The soccer players and coaches were not immune from injury either.

Sports but especially soccer could exist in the former Soviet satellite countries to pacify the proletariat. Other sports were used to glorify, in competitions with other countries, the existence of the socialist state which controlled everything including athletic training, domestic competition venues, medals, and small earnings to athletes and their families – gold dust in the eyes of the beholder.

In the U.S., organized sports have become something else, tools of indoctrination into the much-desired transition from the maligned capitalism, which gave so many associated with sports a vast and unimaginable wealth, to socialism, which allegedly is going to make everyone equal under the leadership of the Democrat Socialist Party.

NBA’s Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, born and raised in Gulfport, MS, chose not to stand for the national anthem in 1996 and said that he did so because the American flag was “a symbol of freedom for some, … a symbol of oppression and tyranny to others.” Many wondered if he struggled with such an imagined dilemma when he spent money received from playing basketball as point guard for the Denver Nuggets.

The American left started to influence professional sports by declaring football dangerous and prone to injuries that were unfair to millionaire athletes, causing them severe brain and joint injuries. It is also true that student-athletes are not protected by financial remunerations and healthcare like the professional players are. Both groups experience brain and bodily injuries, some of which are quite debilitating and affect their long-term health. Some professional athletes experienced degenerative brain damage such as ALS. Players died from dehydration and heat exhaustion - thirty lives were lost in 18 years. 30 NCAA Football Players Have Died During Workouts Since 2000, HBO Reveals | American Council on Science and Health (acsh.org)

One can imagine and surmise that professional and collegiate sports are headed for the chopping block after such oft-repeated declarations and heated discussions against team sports. Who can tolerate so many human casualties?

Then the left decided to use sports for the “greater good,” to transform it into a democratized” platform of “social justice” advocacy, pushing “economic democracy.” If you wonder what direction that kind of rhetoric will take, it is the direction of socialism and eventual communism.

Americans were asked, “what dreams would you pursue if your basic needs were met?” What would you do with your time if everybody were on basic government dole and equal income?

During King Henry the VIII’s time, his poor subjects received leftover food from his 12 days of Christmas banquets and these scraps were called “dole.”

Dole is a fitting description in modern times when you consider that millions of subjects trapped under Soviet socialist countries in Europe during the twentieth century received scraps (dole) from the centralized state economy controlled by the Communist Party.

It is hard to enjoy organized sports today when highly paid players who live in mansions and opulence none of their spectators would ever dream of, lecture their fans about morality, wealth, greed, social justice, racism, questioning their history, their patriotism, and the love they have for their country.

It is no surprise that the NFL viewership has dropped by 17 percent, by their own admission. Fans, called racists by the players, chose to stay home, turned the television sets off, and stopped buying jerseys and other sports memorabilia. Vilifying and questioning the fans’ patriotism and political affiliation, destroying the golden goose so to speak, does not seem to be a particularly good business model in team sports.

Sports, like everything else the left promotes, has become a social justice and civil right issue. They believe sports should challenge imagined and manufactured racism and should be a “refuge for all who want to play, a place where oppression is challenged.” What oppression they are talking about, I have no idea, as I see no oppressed people around me, on the contrary, they are free to do as they see fit.

Sports, in the radical left’s view, should eliminate “sexism, toxic masculinity, and homophobia.” Sports teams should be forces “for the greater good.”

This rhetoric sounds familiar to me as the socialist society I grew up in emphasized “the greater good” to the exclusion of the individual who had to accept his/her paltry station in life and never strive for anything better unless the tyrannical government decided to give certain people with athletic talent the opportunity to succeed on the dear leader’s behalf.

The left objects to sports being used to promote patriotism and militarism and any symbols associated with them, the flag, uniformed military, and the national anthem which they despise.  It has become familiar to see athletes speak badly of their country while abroad competing in international sporting events and even in Olympics. They present themselves as global citizens, not Americans.

Radical lefties want to use sports to reflect their philosophy of civil disobedience and hatred for their country, hatred for capitalism which has made so many of them rich beyond anybody’s dreams of success. They wish to exploit sports for their envisioned social justice.

Wealthy athletes with God-given talent and exorbitant contracts kneel during the national anthem because they are not proud of our country – they see our most tolerant nation as oppressing black people and people of color.

From our reality-based vantage point, we are not oppressing anyone, people are free to make their own choices in life, athletes included. Americans must deal with the consequences of their deliberate acts and must take responsibility for their failures instead of blaming the non-existent construct of “systemic racism” and bogus “white privilege.”