MANDATING PATRIOTISM

With the advent of free agency, the day when players would stay with one team for the majority of their careers has gone the way of leather helmets and high top cleats. Today, pro athletes move from team to team with the speed of a pre-game wind sprint. Increasingly, stars notwithstanding, fans are rooting for team colors as much as for the players wearing them.

But with NFL players continuing their protests against police brutality during the national anthem, NFL TV ratings, game attendance, and merchandise sales have also continued to decline as fans pull back in their own counter-protest. The situation has left NFL commissioner Roger Goodell in a delicate no man’s land.

On one side are the players, 70% of whom are African-American, men with real-life attachments to the disorders and denials of daily black existence in America that their athletic prowess has afforded them fiscal and physical, if not emotional, separation from. On the other side are the fans, 90% of whom are not African-American, because that is the racial makeup of the nation. And that 90% watches the 70% on Sundays to escape the news that has brought the players to their knees.

SACRED MILITARY

The men and women of the military have long been held in the highest regard, no matter the society, no matter the era. In the United States, it is no surprise considering that its first president was the military man who delivered independence from England.  Yet recently I have heard people ask, “why is the country is so over-the-top in celebrating the military, treating them like they are sacred human beings? They signed up for this. They are doing a job.”

True enough, but the job they do, like the police and firefighters, can put their life at risk. That sacred duty is what separates the force from the civilians they represent and serve. But nothing occurs in a vacuum, and support for the military is no different.  The current state of the military’s relationship with the greater society is a perfect example of how history can inform, and why understanding its arc can help bring differing sides into greater accord, if not full agreement.

GRANTING OR DENYING PERMISSION

As American cities are increasingly confronted by extremes in weather, social unrest, and general lunacy, you wonder how inviolate mass gatherings, including road races, may be in the years ahead. We take such things as road races and parades and big outdoor concerts for granted. But where lie the limits on our police, fire, and first-responders? Just this past weekend the inaugural Virgin Sport Festival of Fitness in San Francisco was cancelled due to Bay Area wildfires.

But whether it’s California wild fires, hurricanes in Texas, Louisiana, and Florida, or a maniacal fellow traveler with second amendment rights scoping a big concert in Nevada, how much longer before cities begin to question granting permits for such mass public events? Or demand so much more funding that they become unfeasible?

AMERICA PAST TIME

Though baseball came to be known as the American Pastime in the 19th century, football largely usurped that mantel in the age of television. So much so, that beyond these borders the game is called American Football to differentiate it from what Americans call soccer, but what the rest of the world knows as football.

In this age of globalization, the National Football League is trying to market American football overseas with games in London, Mexico City, and soon in China. However, the growing awareness of the games’ inherent violence, and its consequences to the long-term health of its players are contributing to a lessening of interest in the once and still mighty sporting juggernaut. Add the current backlash against players expressing social dissent on the field – #takeaknee- and the danger to its own well-being is magnified.

National pastimes are based on mutual understandings and shared experiences. But as the makeup of the nation continues to change, there are fewer elements linking us together. We still have the E Pluribus but are quickly losing the Unum. Like track and field events that don’t amount to a unified track meet, but are merely individual events that share the same venue, so are myriad Americans increasingly sharing a land, but fewer and fewer of its common values or past national assumptions.