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I think its' more sinister than that. Keeping politics out of sports meant that sports were something that people could bond over. Sports could form a bridge be

I think its' more sinister than that. Keeping politics out of sports meant that sports were something that people could bond over. Sports could form a bridge between disparate viewpoints. Everybody talks about the growing political divide in America, but part of the problem is this compulsive desire to politicize everything has left nowhere for people with different views to feel comfortable congregating together.

jfengel 6y ago
I think the cause and effect are reversed here. People had sports as that bridge, and the country became more divided. That division has been increasing for decades. Sports came first and they weren't creating any bonding. If they had even slowed the process, they were rapidly running out of juice. The problem with "don't politicize" is that this has a thumb on the scale of the status quo. "Politicization" means that somebody wants something done. Usually they go at it for decades until it catches some kind of national attention. At that point it's merely a tactic to say, "Well, we can't really talk about it now, because it's politicized". I'm all for bridging divides, but not at the cost of that being an effective decision to do nothing. That's not solving problems; it's dismissing them.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  There's a difference between "we can't talk about this" and "lets not talk about this at a sports ball game." This notion is unacceptable to the left who instead must demand dogmatic adherence to their worldview where nobody can escape. What we're seeing out of the American left is no different than Maoist struggle sessions as a prelude to full blown authoritarian communism.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Ah, I see. Thank you for demonstrating the collegiality I've been missing by not watching sports.
- jariel 6y ago
  " That division has been increasing for decades." Only in pop culture. Almost every single material measure of integration has been improving. Wage gap, education gap, representation gap etc.. And from 1969->2001 even in pop culture things were improved. It started to heat up with Obama (I love the guy, but many didn't) and went into overdrive in the last 5 years. Watch CNN from 2005. It wasn't directly divisive, it was just somewhat biased news. Now, it's full on culture war.
  - jfengel 6y ago
    Only in pop culture. And on the Twitter feed of the last President.
    - jariel 6y ago
      Yes - Trump is an artifact of populism, and it's a tragedy that that kind of rhetoric had any kind of legitimization. But even during Trump's presidency, African Americans had their lowest unemployment rate in history. I don't credit him with much of that directly, rather, but he did preside over an area of 'open business growth' for which that was the result. Which is my point. Even despite the toxic rhetoric of a public official, things on the ground can improve.
      - jfengel 6y ago
        Yes, things on the ground definitely improve. After eight minutes, for example, they'll stop cutting off your windpipe. But that's OK, because he might have had fentanyl in his system, and that means it was definitely not kneeling on his neck for eight minutes that killed him. I'm quite certain of that because HN tells me that, over and over. I'm using sarcasm because it's disingenuous to talk about "a public official". He was the President of the United States, and 75 million people voted for him. They approved that rhetoric. I think it's likely that many of them preferred that rhetoric, and why he finally won the Presidency after two losses by vastly more competent politicians. This is not just one person. Your dismissal of the seriousness of this is, in my opinion, one of the reasons it's so serious. African Americans are being mocked on one side, and on the other side they feel that their concerns about literally being murdered are being met with "Well, you have a low unemployment rate".
MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago
I've found bars are filled with people willing to chat. Almost as if the political bubble is just a media driven fabrication.
- junon 6y ago
  The bar is the last place I'd want to bring up politics in the US. Then again, I come from a red state and certainly do not match the general consensus there.
mikestew 6y ago
Keeping politics out of sports... That is, we do that after we do our little patriotic opening song, then we leave the politics out, right?
- axguscbklp 6y ago
  Throw the patriotic and military-worshipping stuff out too. It annoys me as much as the "social justice" stuff annoys me. Perhaps more. I'm in principle opposed to the patriotic and military stuff, although I'd probably make an exception if the country was actually being militarily attacked for some reason other than because of blowback for its meddling overseas. I could imagine supporting some social justice messaging in sports, I just don't like it when the messaging is based on highly questionable arguments but promoted as obvious truth. Most BLM-type messaging falls into that category for me. The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates. I should emphasize, questionable - I'm not saying the theory is false, just that it needs to be investigated further as far as I'm concerned.
  - blacktriangle 6y ago
    It's okay, you can say the narrative is false, the data supports you.
    - axguscbklp 6y ago
      I'm not trying to conceal my opinions though, I'm actually undecided on the matter.
  - mindslight 6y ago
    > The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates You don't have to fully subscribe to the intrinsically-racist Black Lives Matter narrative to agree that unaccountable police are a major problem regardless of race. And IMO unaccountable police is a more fundamental issue than the newly-stoked racism.

jfengel 6y ago

I think the cause and effect are reversed here. People had sports as that bridge, and the country became more divided. That division has been increasing for decades. Sports came first and they weren't creating any bonding. If they had even slowed the process, they were rapidly running out of juice. The problem with "don't politicize" is that this has a thumb on the scale of the status quo. "Politicization" means that somebody wants something done. Usually they go at it for decades until it catches some kind of national attention. At that point it's merely a tactic to say, "Well, we can't really talk about it now, because it's politicized". I'm all for bridging divides, but not at the cost of that being an effective decision to do nothing. That's not solving problems; it's dismissing them.

blacktriangle 6y ago
There's a difference between "we can't talk about this" and "lets not talk about this at a sports ball game." This notion is unacceptable to the left who instead must demand dogmatic adherence to their worldview where nobody can escape. What we're seeing out of the American left is no different than Maoist struggle sessions as a prelude to full blown authoritarian communism.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Ah, I see. Thank you for demonstrating the collegiality I've been missing by not watching sports.
jariel 6y ago
" That division has been increasing for decades." Only in pop culture. Almost every single material measure of integration has been improving. Wage gap, education gap, representation gap etc.. And from 1969->2001 even in pop culture things were improved. It started to heat up with Obama (I love the guy, but many didn't) and went into overdrive in the last 5 years. Watch CNN from 2005. It wasn't directly divisive, it was just somewhat biased news. Now, it's full on culture war.
- jfengel 6y ago
  Only in pop culture. And on the Twitter feed of the last President.
  - jariel 6y ago
    Yes - Trump is an artifact of populism, and it's a tragedy that that kind of rhetoric had any kind of legitimization. But even during Trump's presidency, African Americans had their lowest unemployment rate in history. I don't credit him with much of that directly, rather, but he did preside over an area of 'open business growth' for which that was the result. Which is my point. Even despite the toxic rhetoric of a public official, things on the ground can improve.
    - jfengel 6y ago
      Yes, things on the ground definitely improve. After eight minutes, for example, they'll stop cutting off your windpipe. But that's OK, because he might have had fentanyl in his system, and that means it was definitely not kneeling on his neck for eight minutes that killed him. I'm quite certain of that because HN tells me that, over and over. I'm using sarcasm because it's disingenuous to talk about "a public official". He was the President of the United States, and 75 million people voted for him. They approved that rhetoric. I think it's likely that many of them preferred that rhetoric, and why he finally won the Presidency after two losses by vastly more competent politicians. This is not just one person. Your dismissal of the seriousness of this is, in my opinion, one of the reasons it's so serious. African Americans are being mocked on one side, and on the other side they feel that their concerns about literally being murdered are being met with "Well, you have a low unemployment rate".

MeinBlutIstBlau 6y ago

I've found bars are filled with people willing to chat. Almost as if the political bubble is just a media driven fabrication.

junon 6y ago
The bar is the last place I'd want to bring up politics in the US. Then again, I come from a red state and certainly do not match the general consensus there.

mikestew 6y ago

Keeping politics out of sports... That is, we do that after we do our little patriotic opening song, then we leave the politics out, right?

axguscbklp 6y ago
Throw the patriotic and military-worshipping stuff out too. It annoys me as much as the "social justice" stuff annoys me. Perhaps more. I'm in principle opposed to the patriotic and military stuff, although I'd probably make an exception if the country was actually being militarily attacked for some reason other than because of blowback for its meddling overseas. I could imagine supporting some social justice messaging in sports, I just don't like it when the messaging is based on highly questionable arguments but promoted as obvious truth. Most BLM-type messaging falls into that category for me. The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates. I should emphasize, questionable - I'm not saying the theory is false, just that it needs to be investigated further as far as I'm concerned.
- blacktriangle 6y ago
  It's okay, you can say the narrative is false, the data supports you.
  - axguscbklp 6y ago
    I'm not trying to conceal my opinions though, I'm actually undecided on the matter.
- mindslight 6y ago
  > The theory that minorities are disproportionately shot by police started to seem questionable to me once I corrected for things like police encounter rates and homicide rates You don't have to fully subscribe to the intrinsically-racist Black Lives Matter narrative to agree that unaccountable police are a major problem regardless of race. And IMO unaccountable police is a more fundamental issue than the newly-stoked racism.