This thread is about politics --- not sports. Let's get that clear at the start.
>> ...if you’ve been to a baseball game at any time in the last decade, you’ve probably noticed some changes. Military or law enforcement members now perform flag ceremonies before the start of the game. Military recruits are enlisted right on the field. Surprise reunions of deployed men and women and their families play out before an audience of thousands. There’s always the obligatory ovation for wounded warriors. And this year saw a flyover by three F-18 fighter jets during the playing of the national anthem.
The games have morphed into choreographed patriotic events. Who’s paying for all this hoopla? As it turns out, you and I are, through the tax money that we send to the Pentagon.
Former Arizona Republican senators John McCain and Jeff Flake issued a report a few years ago that found that since 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Pentagon has shelled out at least $6.8 million for Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and other sports leagues to “honor” troops with cheap stunts at sporting events. The details are listed in a new Senate report.
The total tally may top $10 million — and even reach $100 million, if you count the military’s marketing deals with NASCAR.
For millions of your tax dollars, the Pentagon is buying things like ceremonial first pitches for recent veterans, club-level seats for vets at football games, and airport greetings for returning service members.
If that sounds crass to you, you’re not alone.
... Patriotism is a good thing. It can be unifying and inspiring. But what we’re seeing at sporting events isn’t patriotism. It’s nationalism — propaganda, even — and it’s potentially dangerous.
The Pentagon even pays for “sponsored” renditions of God Bless America.
Irving Berlin wrote that song in 1918 as a show tune for a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank. ...Since then, it’s become an official part of Major League Baseball games. In several stadiums the tune has replaced Take Me Out to the Ballgame in group sing-alongs during the seventh-inning stretch.
In fact, this former show tune has become mandatory in some places.
In 2008, a fan at Yankee Stadium was restrained and then ejected by police officers for attempting to leave his seat for the restroom while the song was playing. The following year, three minor league fans of the now-defunct Newark Bears were ejected from the stadium for refusing to stand during the song.
If it’s freely chosen, standing for the national anthem is patriotic. Forcing people to stand for God Bless America isn’t. This is about more than taxpayer money. The government has no business propagandizing the American people. --- John Kiriakou, former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
This Paid Patriotism Scandal, starring the US Pentagon in the role of Pimp, is sadly not a new story. It's the same Jingoism song and dance (literally) that brought NFL players out to the field for the national anthem about ten years ago, which, unknown to the general public because it was never part of the telecast, became a fake "issue" when some photographer who obviously wasn't doing the Jingo Dance snapped quarterback Colin Kaepernick's picture, sitting out the song.
Your tax dollars at work, fans. And you non-fans, you're paying the same thing for mass Jingo-ball choreography literally forced on a captive audience who came there for a completely different purpose, that being to specifically get away from . Good to know as April 15 approaches, right?
Just in case it didn't sink in:
"God Bless Ameirca" replaces "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" --- the exact event they all came there for.
Now try to imagine being forcibly ejected for refusing to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".
Next time you go to a sports event and they try to force you to do the mandatory Jingo Dance, pull out your Earnest V. Starr flag and walk out of your seat. Do it in droves. We won't all fit in the bathroom so go get something to eat or drink. Just walk around until the Jingo Exercise peters out. Flatly refuse to sit in the back of the bus and make them arrest us all until it sinks in to them that they can't coerce people.
Got virtually a whole baseball season in front of us. Do it. Resist Big State.
Statist-enforced mob mentality ---- where it leads:
Authoritarians LOVE this shit. And they rouse the unwashed to do their authoritarian bidding with phrases like "get that sumbitch off the field, he's fired".
PLAY BALL.
>> ...if you’ve been to a baseball game at any time in the last decade, you’ve probably noticed some changes. Military or law enforcement members now perform flag ceremonies before the start of the game. Military recruits are enlisted right on the field. Surprise reunions of deployed men and women and their families play out before an audience of thousands. There’s always the obligatory ovation for wounded warriors. And this year saw a flyover by three F-18 fighter jets during the playing of the national anthem.
The games have morphed into choreographed patriotic events. Who’s paying for all this hoopla? As it turns out, you and I are, through the tax money that we send to the Pentagon.
Former Arizona Republican senators John McCain and Jeff Flake issued a report a few years ago that found that since 2013, the most recent year for which statistics are available, the Pentagon has shelled out at least $6.8 million for Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and other sports leagues to “honor” troops with cheap stunts at sporting events. The details are listed in a new Senate report.
The total tally may top $10 million — and even reach $100 million, if you count the military’s marketing deals with NASCAR.
For millions of your tax dollars, the Pentagon is buying things like ceremonial first pitches for recent veterans, club-level seats for vets at football games, and airport greetings for returning service members.
If that sounds crass to you, you’re not alone.
... Patriotism is a good thing. It can be unifying and inspiring. But what we’re seeing at sporting events isn’t patriotism. It’s nationalism — propaganda, even — and it’s potentially dangerous.
The Pentagon even pays for “sponsored” renditions of God Bless America.
Irving Berlin wrote that song in 1918 as a show tune for a revue called Yip Yip Yaphank. ...Since then, it’s become an official part of Major League Baseball games. In several stadiums the tune has replaced Take Me Out to the Ballgame in group sing-alongs during the seventh-inning stretch.
In fact, this former show tune has become mandatory in some places.
In 2008, a fan at Yankee Stadium was restrained and then ejected by police officers for attempting to leave his seat for the restroom while the song was playing. The following year, three minor league fans of the now-defunct Newark Bears were ejected from the stadium for refusing to stand during the song.
If it’s freely chosen, standing for the national anthem is patriotic. Forcing people to stand for God Bless America isn’t. This is about more than taxpayer money. The government has no business propagandizing the American people. --- John Kiriakou, former CIA counterterrorism officer and former senior investigator with the Senate Foreign Relations Committee
Your tax dollars at work, fans. And you non-fans, you're paying the same thing for mass Jingo-ball choreography literally forced on a captive audience who came there for a completely different purpose, that being to specifically get away from . Good to know as April 15 approaches, right?
Just in case it didn't sink in:
"God Bless Ameirca" replaces "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" --- the exact event they all came there for.
Now try to imagine being forcibly ejected for refusing to sing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame".
Next time you go to a sports event and they try to force you to do the mandatory Jingo Dance, pull out your Earnest V. Starr flag and walk out of your seat. Do it in droves. We won't all fit in the bathroom so go get something to eat or drink. Just walk around until the Jingo Exercise peters out. Flatly refuse to sit in the back of the bus and make them arrest us all until it sinks in to them that they can't coerce people.
Got virtually a whole baseball season in front of us. Do it. Resist Big State.
Statist-enforced mob mentality ---- where it leads:
Authoritarians LOVE this shit. And they rouse the unwashed to do their authoritarian bidding with phrases like "get that sumbitch off the field, he's fired".
PLAY BALL.
