Trump on Sunday pushed the Washington Commanders NFL team to return to its previous name, which was scrapped five years ago because it included a word that many view as a slur against Native Americans.
The president also threatened to block a complicated deal for the Commanders to return to a stadium in Washington, D.C., unless they return to the name “Washington Redskins.”
“The Washington “Whatever’s” should IMMEDIATELY change their name back to the Washington Redskins Football Team. There is a big clamoring for this,” Mr. Trump wrote.
Professional sports is just a way for wealthy whites to own slaves, and trade them between each other like trading cards. I don’t care about the squabbles among Sociopathic Oligarchs about their precious sports teams, until it comes to using tax money to build their temples. Then I object strenuously.
If they want a new stadium, they can buy the land and build it, using their own money. Not one penny of taxpayer money should ever be spent on professional sports. Let the owners pay for everything, they can well afford it. Taxpayers should not be subsidizing the dick-measuring contests of billionaires.
Sportsball millionaires are slaves is a take I never expected.
And yet, those team owners can literally SELL them to each other. Imagine how smug those owners are, knowing they literally own their millionaire athletes. Those athletes are nothing more than birds in gilded cages. The beauty of their cage doesn’t replace their freedom.
I agree about tax funded stadiums, but slavery…? Come on. I’m sure slaves would definitely see playing a sport for notoriety and millions of dollars as basically the same as indentured servitude.
Imagine you are an athlete possessing the skills to do something at an incredibly high level, and you can be compensated obscenely for it. However, in order to capitalize on this incredible talent, you have to sign a contract, and surrender your entire career and life to a racist white Sociopathic Oligarchs who is absolutely obsessed with money. But the money is unbelievable, so you do it.
Now you have a family, they love their home, their schools, their friends, their city. Then one day, you are told that you have been SOLD to a different racist white Sociopathic Oligarch in another part of the country, and you have to go, or you will be in breach of your contract, and you will lose everything.
Have fun telling your family that some stranger to them has decided to uproot their entire lives, and send them to a city they have no interest in, and may even hate, AND THEY HAVE NO CHOICE.
You are OWNED by a wealthy white man, and he can sell you to another wealthy white man without bothering to consult you at all. If that’s not slavery, then what is it?
Pretty simple. When you don’t have a choice in the terms of your agreement. Then, in addition, it is legal to beat the shit out of you for any reason, and in some cases kill a person under such conditions. All protected by law, in many cases with no contract termination. And throughout the remainder of your life, you’ll work tirelessly and thanklessly; all while owning no property or possessing any rights your own.
If you think your analogy holds up, fine. I just think it is hyperbole of the highest order.
There are lots of different types of slavery, some like you described, but even during the American slave era, there were differences between slaves. Not all were consigned to work in the fields to their deaths. Many were house slaves, and lived moderately easier lives. Some slaves were allowed to work personal jobs off the plantation, and keep the money, some were able to travel within their jobs, and some could even eventually purchase their freedom. Others were forced into the sugar cane fields in Louisiana or the Caribbean, and driven to work until their deaths, usually within a few brutal years. That’s a wide spectrum of experience among slaves.
Obviously, the modern day athlete is not a perfect equivalent, but they do lose much of their autonomy when they sign a contract. At that point, their lives, and their families,’ are in the hands of a money-obsessed Sociopathic Oligarch, who sees the athletes he OWNS as his personal property.
The system resembles slavery more than it doesn’t.
It really doesn’t. They are not owned. They accept contracts of their own volition and are represented by unions. Are slaves represented by unions? This is just silly.