Is it “collusion” if each owner individually decides not to hire him? That’s what it seems to be happening. It doesn’t seem like the owners are actually colluding together. There doesn’t need to be any collusion if no one wants him.
Well, thank you for answering, though I think your view point is terribly wrong. It sounds like the same logic used against those who protested Vietnam and even against those that fought for Civil Rights.
Maybe the point of this isn’t for him to get a QB job in the NFL, but to keep the conversation going and make owners and whomever else speak about this on the record. There are a lot more NFL players taking a knee and making other statements, maybe this is to protect them from ending up in a similar situation.
There might be more going on here than him just trying to get himself a job.
Also, saying that what Vick did (murdering dogs) is not as bad as making a peaceful protest that is not illegal in any way is an absolutely abhorrent viewpoint to hold. Committing crimes and murdering animals is much worse than a peaceful exercise of the first amendment that was so non disruptive that nobody even noticed for the first couple of games. I can’t even comprehend how anyone with a conscience could possibly feel otherwise.
I believe two teams is enough.
I don’t think “Yeah, I’ll never sign him!” is enough. I think he would need “I won’t sign him if you won’t sign him”, or something like that.
For some the taking of a knee disparages America itself, and the military and government specifically. They might well think that’s worse than killing a few dogs. (I don’t feel this way, but I can understand how some do.)
For my money, Kaepernick is a slightly above average talent, who needs a very specific offense and system to work. So for many teams, to much would have to be changed for him to work. On top of that, he’s a PR headache, so will most likely continue to be so. So when all is said and done, with all of the pluses and minuses added up, he’s just not worth the effort.
I don’t understand it and never will. Part of what makes America what it is is that we are all free to speak our minds. Without that, what is America? Holding that murdering innocent dogs is not as bad is exercising one of our fundamental rights as free citizens is a position that is completely foreign to me. Forced patriotism is as unAmerican is it gets.
I think one argument, is that if they want to protest police brutality, they don’t/didn’t have to take a knee during that national anthem, which appears to more or an attack on “America” and not on police brutality specifically.
Ones fundamental right could be to defecate on the American flag. I support free speech. Doesn’t mean I have to like how the free speech in question is being exercised in that case.
Not sure where I see the “forced patriotism.”
This is quite surprising to me, and thus I’m very curious. Does your opinion apply throughout US history, regardless of circumstance? Would you feel the same about a slave who said he didn’t respect the US, or a Native American being removed from their ancestral lands, or living in poverty in a reservation, or a black person living in the Jim Crow South, or a Japanese American interred, etc.? Or do your feelings change depending on the time due to policy and societal changes, and if so, when would be the cutoff point?
Which is different than saying its actually worse than murdering dogs for sport.
I’m not saying anyone has to like it, but perspective is way out of whack on this one. I remain unconvinced that any form of legal, peaceful protest can be worse than illegally murdering innocent dogs.
No? So the president of the USA stating that any player protesting should be fired and is a son of a bitch is not an attempt at forced patriotism? Really?
I didn’t see your Trump reference previously.
I didn’t make one, but because this outrage didn’t really start at its current level until his comments on the issue I don’t see why it was necessary to spell it all out and connect all of the dots. Trump and his followers are trying to force NFL players to stand and express patriotism in the way that they demand. Are you disputing this?
This is all a sidetrack by the way, so I’m happy to drop it and get back to the actual topic of the thread.
If your experience with America is such that it is in fact a net negative, relative to the standards prevailing in other countries in that era, then there’s no reason for you to respect it. (Most likely in that circumstance you would be perfectly happy being stripped of citizenship and deported, since you’d be better off elsewhere.)
But if on the whole you have it pretty good as do the other people on whose behalf you’re protesting - again, relative to the prevailing standards in other countries - then you’re disrespecting the country is a lack of appreciation for the country which while not perfect is giving you a lot, and disrespecting the people who are sacrificing on behalf of the country in all sorts of ways as described above. And it’s further damaging in eroding the bond of country and the willingness of people to make various sacrifices on behalf of their fellow citizens in the name of that bond.
No country in the world was ever perfect and none will ever be perfect, and if every group with some grievance refuses to respect the country, then what you get is balkanized situations such as exist in many countries, and you’re lucky if every group doesn’t have their own militia.
Ironically, this is one thing you would expect an athlete to appreciate, them being so big on sticking with their teammates and the like. You get an athlete refusing to do whatever customary honors for his team’s uniform or logo or whatever because of some supposed injustice, I don’t think his teammates would appreciate it. You don’t like the team, go find another team, no problem. But as long as you’re a member of the team, respect it.
ETA: personally I think they shouldn’t play the anthem at sporting events altogether.
Nationalism serves useful functions. No doubt about it. And one of them is indeed in creating a sense of collective identity that overrides tribal identity.
But you’ve got it exactly backwards in how that applies to Kaepernick. In America, our collective national identity is defined by fidelity to shared values. That’s true for all countries to some extent, but it’s especially so in the United States because of our distinctive history. Those values are things like equality and freedom of thought and expression. The desire to force people to stand while listening to a poem set to a British song, instead of quietly and respectfully expressing their opposition to a lack of equality, isn’t an expression of American values. It’s an expression of tribal values.
Back on the topic of the OP:
In antitrust, there does generally have to be evidence of collusion beyond proof of collective behavior. That can include statistical evidence, but the statistics would have to show behavior that is against individual self-interest (in the absence of a collusive agreement). Here, there is a reasonable case that not hiring Kaepernick is a good business decision, so I think you’d need more than that.
Well, I don’t view “his followers” as some monolith group that only thinks one way. I think there are some people who support the protest and support Trump, and some who don’t support the protest and support Trump. I didn’t see him as much of a factor in this until recently. Kaepernick started this in September of 2016 IIRC, and Trump’s comments were at least a year later, so I didn’t view Trump as central to this as you do.
I’ll state again that Kaepernick chose this method of protest – he could have choosen others. But you can’t make an effort to tic people off and then complain that they push back.
This seems internally inconsistent.
I don’t agree that “our collective national identity is defined by fidelity to shared values”. Our collective identity is defined by happening to be in the same place. That’s all. Insisting that it’s all about shared values is the very antithesis of the concept of freedom of thought and expression, which are about people’s freedom to choose and express their own values which other people may not share.
But the overriding point is that regardless of whether you share someone else’s values, you should respect the fact that you’re on the same team as them, based on the fact that you happen to live in the same country, and you’re “in it together” based on that circumstance alone.
“Tribal values” are appropriate and necessary where the “tribe” encompasses the entire country.
That doesn’t make any sense. It is perfectly possible (and in fact the case) to have a shared value of freedom of thought. The fact of it being shared does not make it not freely chosen. The idea that the content of American nationalism is “we’re all in the same place” is, uh, not well-supported.
I agree. What I’m pointing out is that you are wrong about which is which, in this case.
So you’d similarly condemn a comfortable white person who recognized the terrible evil of slavery, or Jim Crow, or some other (contemporary) great injustice in America, and stated that he didn’t respect the country due to this injustice? ISTM that if it’s reasonable for someone to lose respect for a country because of how they’ve been treated, then it’s reasonable for someone else to lose respect for the country because of how the first person was treated.
I’ll note that on top of this, as a veteran, I see no disrespect to myself or my service in these protests, and I don’t see how it must logically follow that if someone doesn’t respect the country, then they are disrespecting veterans and military members.
Here’s the text of the complaint. Note that he’s demanding arbitration based on violations of the Collective Bargaining Agreement, not any federal law:
So it doesn’t matter how toxic a property he’s made himself, or whether his actions were protected by federal law. If 2 or more owners agreed “We can’t hire this guy, he’ll make us look like idiots and hurt the NFL”, they violated the CBA.
Do you think he can prove that is took collusion to keep him from a job? I would think the owners were able to come to the conclusion he is not worth it on their own.