COLO. SPRINGS- You won’t find Youth Football scheduled on Sundays. Are they concerned about conflicting with Sunday church service or with the NFL?
Televised Pro Football doesn’t defer to the Lord’s day, in fact, it’s rechristened it. That’s not to pretend that football is America’s religion, but hasn’t its violence become our nationalist ethos? I think football’s armature is obviously the uniform of our soldiers and paramilitary police.
The day seems to grow ever farther off, when US imperial Fascism will be unmasked for what it is, at least when common Americans will come to recognize it: white supremacy through Capitalism. What will ultimately be revealed as having been America’s propaganda programs aimed at its children, akin to the Hitler Youth of the Nazis? No Child Left Behind tills the soil of impressionable minds with its scorched-earth mis-education, the Boy Scouts plant seeds, and the Junior Marines harvest. But American football fertilizes with ideology.
Roman Catholics excuse Pope Benedict XVI (himself a Pius XII apologist) having belonged to the Hitlerjugend in his youth, by explaining that a wider percentage of German children belonged than really ascribed to Nazi extremism. Might not the same rationalization be made about America’s young footballers? Few of the young athletes grow up to join the SS, but a good many of them will conform from the sidelines and lead the nationalist cheers.
Can the NFL even pretend to be an innocuous spectator sport where it is obviously ritualized warfare?
Patriotic American flags adorn the back of every NFL helmet. Not the front. Though both teams of the game are marked with the national flag, only the side on the offensive is noticed carrying it. The TV camera frames the flag as the viewer follows the advance. Television convention has it that in closeup, defenders are usually shown facing us. Whichever team we may be cheering, the TV would seem to prefer to project the hopeful ambition of the ventured aggression, sooner than the held-breath of the position defended.
Boyscout uniforms, like those of the Hitler Youth, glorified the soldiers of their day by emulating the functionality of their rugged khaki clothing. Can the same thing be said of scouts today? US soldiers, like their compatriot law enforcement officers stateside, wear bullet-proof armor. Combat soldiers, like riot police, wear padded exoskeletons under increasingly intimidating garb. Who are the 10-16 year-olds playing soldier these days?
All of America’s favorite sports have become totally commercialized and turned into combat zones where gratuitous violence and lack of basic human decency seem to be the main norms. Pity the children.
Las Vegas, New Mexico is in an interesting football scandal that hit the national news yesterday. Some of the bully football players there were sodomizing their fellow players with brooms and when the teachers learend about it, their first reaction was to keep it quiet! It didn’t work though and they made the national news. Wonderful culture… American football.
I once took a job in this town, but something about the people made me feel uncomfotable and in the end I just didn’t show up. The town is kind of lost in time and the true spirit of today’s American football it seems.
Sorry, but I don’t think you really have ANY idea what fascism is and what the Hitler Youth was. And no, reading wikipedia doesn’t count.
Just another Yank who thinks he knows something about fascism. You want fascism? Come to Europe and experience the growing EUSSR.
Sounds much like you’re a Skinhead.
Fine bunch of fellows, the Skins.
Of course, using terminology much like the Skins use might not actually mean you ARE one, but it does provide a bit of a Clew.
And we do have quite enough Skins on this side the pond, perhaps you regularly communicate with them, that we DO have a taste of what you’re imposing on the Normal People in Europe.
Or should I say England? Not quite the same thing, then, is it?
If you’re too much the infant to accept honest criticisms, then push off.
Perhaps you’ve not experienced Regimented Youth, American Style.
In which case it would be YOU who hasn’t a clew as to what goes on, perhaps?
Perhaps you’re unaware that American Fascists and Skinheads have made many threats against ONE, but only one, of our major presidential candidates, and also his supporters?
Or are you?
But, again, we are quite used to dealing with their sort.
If by chance you ARE one of them, then make that YOUR sort.
Right Cowardly lot of gits they are.
Imagine that, their one strength being their major weakness…
I’ve read this several times, and still have a question: is there some point to what you wrote? Are you attempting to communicate an idea, or just scribbling random, unconnected thoughts?
The action taken to national disaster is awesome but it’s a damn shame that so many people take advantage of the sad situations.
I mean everytime there is an earthquake, a flood, an oil spill – there’s always a group of heartless people who rip off tax payers.
This is in response to reading that 4 of Oprah Winfreys “angels” got busted ripping off the system. Shame on them!
http://www.cbsnews.com/blogs/2009/08/19/crimesider/entry5251471.shtml