Let’s get my one-paragraph soapbox out of the way: I used to find it intolerable that people don’t understand or accept that protest can be both peaceful and unpeaceful. After all, it may be peaceful all day across one or more cities, but then things seem to always get ugly — whether it’s a full-on riot, clashes with enforcement, or if it’s just a few incidents by people who may not even be part of any groups participating. “THEY” and the protests themselves, therefore, are judged violent. Maybe that makes sense, maybe it doesn’t.
So let’s talk about something else instead — Sports.
There are games where fans get out of hand, even REALLY out of hand. In some places, wearing the wrong jersey is asking for trouble, and you may “fall down the stairs” if you don’t watch yourself. There are outright fights. Parking lots are left in shambles from tailgating. Graffiti isn’t unheard of. In a larger stadium, there are usually arrests every game. Roads are blocked with game-goers before and afterward. There have even been burning and overturned cars in cities when their team made a long-awaited championship win.
This seems normal, expected, and acceptable, given the lack of outcry or condemnation. But I now see there are so many clearly more law-abiding citizens out there who have taught me the truth thanks to so many comments and memes. These are the applications of their arguments to these situations:
- People should stop posting about the games. Violence is more a problem than watching the sport and fans should just stop coming so there wouldn’t be incidents.
- Posting negative news, and rebuking news reports NOT about violence at games, is really important to make the point you think sports are dumb.
- At some point, people should admit fans aren’t there for the game. They just want to cause chaos and bring down the sport.
- If the fans want to be peaceful, why don’t they stop the violent ones?
- If fans block the street, we should be able to run them over, or at least charge them with murder if an ambulance can’t get through and someone dies.
- If fans don’t move right away, or argue with security, the use of near-deadly force and chemical weapons is acceptable against the whole crowd.
- If security escalates their necessary violence against fans, it is always justified, even if it includes the destruction of medical supplies and targeting journalists and medics.
- People who go to games get whatever they deserve, and are guilty of giving moral cover to all those who incite or carry out violence.
- People who support fans are on the wrong side of law and order, worthy of our ridicule.
- The kind of people who love sports are morally inferior in some social or ethnic way (but you can’t say this out loud in a PC world today).
So, seeing the error of my ways, I will no longer support going to sporting events. It is appalling to me to see people wave around their team logos like other teams or sports don’t matter. I support stadium security and will find an appropriate banner to wave for that instead, just to make sure people don’t think I’m a fan. And hopefully, if we can stop fans from going and protect our stadiums and streets, sports will just go away and everything will be back to normal. Maybe people will even start going to church on Sundays again like the good old days.
It’s better than tearing down our way of life, though I’m not sure what that means anymore. I guess I just need more Facebook reeducation.