[T]he opening weekend also began with an increasing number of players sitting down or kneeling for the national anthem, a precedent set last season by the now unemployed quarterback Colin Kaepernick.Looting is good:
When Kaepernick decided to kneel for “The Star-Spangled Banner” in 2016, he said:
“I am not going to stand up to show pride in a flag for a country that oppresses black people and people of color...."
From New York, to Alabama, to California, Americans were unified in support of their country and their flag.
“To me, there is an element of symbolism here with big-city America playing heartland America on the friendly fields of strife,” said then-NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue at a game between the New York Giants and Kansas City Chiefs. “We’re very proud to be back.”
Americans stepped back from political squabbles and even Congress got together to demonstrate solidarity. Republican President George W. Bush was movingly greeted with chants of “USA! USA! USA!” in liberal New York City.
The fissures of our society that certainly existed then as now, were smoothed over by the most obvious national threat. The motto of the time was: “United we stand.”
How things have changed 16 years later.
An author and journalist came under fire on social media Monday, after she tweeted a reply to an anti-looting warning from Miami police by saying: "The carceral state... is inseparable from white supremacy."...A Foreign Policy writer argues that immigration is coming to save you, but boy does he resent you:
good morning, the carceral state exists to protect private property and is inseparable from white supremacy https://t.co/etynmh0rX5
— Sarah Jaffe (@sarahljaffe) September 11, 2017
All hail Western civilization, which gave the world the genocide of the Native Americans, slavery, the Inquisition, the Holocaust, Hiroshima, and global warming. How hypocritical this whole debate about migration really is.Gee, only racists wouldn't want to bring aboard a whole lot more people who feel that way about America and the West. Especially since we get to enjoy not just the lecture on how awful our culture and ancestors are, but the resentment for having concerns about the changes to American culture brought about by immigrants who broadcast that they hate it.
All this on 9/11. It's like 'talking about the Queen on Independence Day,' only worse.
UPDATE: Related, I suspect: more Americans can't name any branches of the Federal government than can name all three. Our cultural elites are doing a great job teaching resentment, and a terrible job teaching civics. How does small-r republican self government remain possible under these circumstances?
I confess to being extremely math-challenged & have no hope whatsoever of understanding polls and statistics, but...
ReplyDeleteDoes this information (copied below from the Annenberg site) have any bearing on the validity of the results for broader purposes? I have never been convinced that a pool of ~1,000 respondents is at all representative of a population of ~300+ million people, but ... what do I know?
Also, I note the 8% response rate. Isn't that awfully low and self-selecting?
***********************************************
Interviews were conducted from August 9-13, 2017 among 1,013 U.S. adults, aged 18 and older. Respondents were drawn from a national probability sample in all 50 states. The dual frame sample included 603 cell phone respondents and 39 respondents who completed the survey in Spanish.
Data were weighted to represent the target U.S. adult population. The adjusted margin of error for total respondents in the sample is +/- 3.69 % at the 95% confidence level. The response rate was 8% (AAPOR RR 3).
Oops, it wiped out my name when I previewed. That "Anonymous" is me.
ReplyDeleteI wonder, will the Brother Cadfael mysteries be challenged for depicting non-moustache-twirling Crusaders?
ReplyDeleteStatistics are one of the dodgier sorts of math, and after last year I guess we have to say that we have more reason to doubt their validity than previously.
ReplyDelete"Data were weighted to represent the target U.S. adult population."
ReplyDeleteUnless you know what parameters were used to do that, the other data they give are meaningless. I think that was where most of the polls were off last election cycle- the pollsters read the election wrong and didn't have the correct proportions of 'likelihood of voting' blocks.
So who is going to prove me wrong by resurrecting this dead Republic.
ReplyDeleteThe only citizenship I care about is membership in the Divine Kingdom.
All this human nation stuff is merely a side issue of convenience.