1-Man’s Opinion on Sports–Monday “Society Overtakes Sports-in Weekend of Importance”
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“Sports & Society”
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This has been such a hard weekend to be an American.
Today instead of writing about what I see in sports, I will write about what I feel about society.
I will bypass writing about the MLB-Union civil war in baseball; the NFL’s attempts to open campus; the NBA-NHL schedule; NASCAR; player moves and other things that normally take up my day.
I will write about Atlanta and Washington, DC…Philadelphia to Los Angeles….Minnesota…what I saw…what I feel.
It feels like the worst days we have ever experienced. Worse than 9/11, watching the Twin Towers come down. The horrors of Newtown and all the other shootings. Beyond the grief of the JFK and Martin Luther King assassinations. The crushing loss of the Challenger crash. Uglier than what we saw as Watts-Hough-Detroit-Little Havana burned to the ground.
I feel heartbreak, rage, shame, sadness.
This is more than the 1st Amendment-right to protest. A criminal element has taken over our society. Young Americans, with the decision to make, ‘right-vs-wrong’, rioting, looting, vandalizing. Giving the finger and F-bombs to anyone-everyone in law enforcement.
In the midst of what I watched in the evenings, I thought about people taking knees. The dirty cop with the knee on the neck of George Floyd, suffocating his life away. And the knee Colin Kaeperneck and then other NFL players took, to protest racial intolerance. Nothing has changed in our society, it has only gotten worse.
The most sacred things in our society, St-Patrick’s Cathedral in New York and Jewish synagogues there, broken into, desecrated, vandalized. Here in San Diego, they set an American flag on fire and ran it up a mast-pole ablaze.
America has seen the horrors of life over the decades, and our President’s have stepped front and center. Close your eyes and remember:
..George Bush standing with 1st responders in the midst of the smoldering embers of death around the Twin Towers.
..Obama singing ‘Amazing Grace’ at the memorial service for the shooting victims in a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
..Ronald Reagan giving the emotional speech in the aftermath of the Challenger Tragedy.
..Bill Clinton walking into the bombed out building in Oklahoma City surrounded by death.
..JFK and his press conference about the Cuban Missile Crisis on the brink of World War III.
..Martin Luther King and his ‘I Have a Dream’ speech as they sang ‘We Shall Overcome’ crossing the Selma Bridge.
And these days, with nearly 105,000 dead from the Virus…43M-unemployed, and now our cities burning down, the current President sits and tweets 32-times in an evening, criticizing one and all. Everything about him right now is about politics, his needs and wants and desires to be re-elected.
I sat to jot some notes about the Trump era, and the more I wrote, the more upset I became about what the White House has become. When I think of the last 3-years, these things flash into my mind. I closed my eyes, and the sounds, sights and the tweets came rushing back. Non-stop from the person who could pull the country together, but instead is content to fan the flames…watching it get pulled apart;.:
..Pandemic Press Conferences…Lies…Half Truths…Misinformation…Uniformed comments…Degrading attacks.
..The ‘Looting and Shooting’ tweets
..We have’ Vicious dogs and ominous weapons’ tweets
..’I am not to blame’
..’Liberate your state’…against advice of doctors
..Kids in cages locked up at the border
..Insults to veterans including the late John McCain
..Name-calling tweets about any and all politicians who question him
..Degrading comments to women
..Charlottesville and his ‘good people on both sides’
..All his people, the ones he hired, sent to prison
..The continued across the board firings of people he put in place
..The pardons he handed out to those convicted
..His ‘fake news stance’ towards all in the media
..Insults to our long time allies
..Condemnation of NATO and the World Health Organization
..Blame China..Blame the CDC..Blame the Governors…Blame the Democrats.
..Russia-North Korea
America deserves a leader who is caring and compassionate. Not someone who believes he can attack Constitutional law, and has the right to offend, because he lives at 1600-Pennsylvania Avenue.
Leaders of great countries, can change the world.
This leader has taken us to chaos and conflict and divisiveness.
As we sit here and hurt, sit here and mourn, sit here and pray for a Loving God to give us direction out of all that is wrong, I have just one feeling beyond today.
America deserves better.
This is Donald Trump’s America….all this ‘on his watch’.
To borrow the President’s phrase: Make America Great Again
To use my phrase: Make sure you vote, your chance to change things.
November’s elections cannot get here fast enough.
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I think your view of race, justice and politics is sophomoric at best. Trump is an absolute ass but to place the blame on him is lazy and simplistic. As a country we’ve always struggled socially and it hasn’t and shouldn’t be placed on the shoulders of just one politician. I had hoped President Obama would lead to better race relations, but he turned out to be one of the most divisive and racist Presidents. He pick and chose incidents to interject himself. Trayvon,Michael Brown, his friend Henry Luis Gates. Obama stepped in it so bad he had to create the “Beer Summit” at the White House. I am personally tired of 1 injustice being worse than all the others because it’s based on race and a sellable narrative. What happened is a crime. The rioting is also a crime. I pray one day we have a gentleman back in the oval office, but it won’t happen soon because of the two people running currently for office. I am now done talking politics on a sports page. This is your forum and you have chosen to speak out the way you see fit. I have listened to you since the early 90’s on 690 but after today Lee, ,I say good bye and God bless.