The NFL's "Black Lives Matter Moment" Shows Trump’s Growing Weakness

I will admit I am not a fan of professional sports, especially football.  I go to a friend's annual Super Bowl party for the social event aspect, but never the game.  To the extent I follow sports at all, it's at the college level, typically focused on my alma mater and that of my late parents. And growing up, I focused on individual sports like cross country, skiing, water skiing and surfing.  All of this is a roundabout way of saying that I'm not a fan of the NFL which is all about money and appeasing fans as opposed to sportsmanship.  As for NFL/football fans, if as much attention and time was placed on politics so as to elect decent politicians and on bettering our communities, the nation would be a far better place.  Thus, I found it interesting that outwardly the NFL altered its position on racial discrimination and embraced (somewhat insincerely, in my view) the Black Lives Matter cause.  I doubt that the move was motivated by any real conviction but instead due to (i) the shifting winds of public opinion and (ii) the flagging influence of the racist-in-chief in the White House.  A piece in New York Magazine looks at Trump's shrinking ability to intimidate the NFL.  Here are excerpts:

When NFL commissioner Roger Goodell admitted in an oddly low-res video on Friday evening that the league was wrong for “not listening to NFL players earlier” — and then actually uttered the phrase “Black Lives Matter” — it was widely seen as a cynical gesture from a company hack who finally acquiesced to public pressure, rather than a heartfelt gesture of genuine remorse.

Slate’s Joel Anderson saw Goodell’s pandering for what it was, writing, “Goodell’s empty gestures tell us nothing about what the NFL thinks of black lives. . . . . the NFL loves nothing more than a hollow branding opportunity. Goodell’s “admission” was yet another one.

What happened next should not have been surprising. On Sunday night, President Trump, tweeting through it as always, attempted to bust out one of his greatest hits.

[B]ack when the NFL-kneeling story line began, Trump muscled his way into the conversation by claiming that owners should “get that son of a bitch off the field right now” when players took a knee, and encouraging fans to leave the stadium when it happened. (A month later, his vice-president would do just that, at considerable taxpayer expense.) Goodell called Trump’s comments “divisive,” but ignored players’ requests that he support a racial equality program. Ultimately, Goodell caved to Trump and his supporters by banning kneeling altogether during the national anthem; nevertheless, Trump was back at it a year later, just to make sure Goodell remembered who held the leash. That Goodell acceded so quickly and totally to Trump three years ago is one of the reasons his statement on Friday felt so empty; nobody believes his platitudes anymore, nor should they.

[T]here is reason to think that this time will be different. That’s partly because Goodell and the NFL owners have witnessed the same shift in power and influence over the last fortnight that you and I can. And it’s partly because so much of the frustration with the NFL’s stance on Black Lives Matter has come from inside Goodell’s organization; a terrific Athletic piece details how a video made by NFL players, and produced internally by a “rogue” employee, forced Goodell’s hand. I wonder, though, if the bigger reason for Goodell’s new posture is even simpler: Goodell isn’t particularly scared of Trump anymore. There was a time when Goodell had to bob and weave along with every presidential broadside, when he had to pattern league policy around Trump’s Twitter mood swings. But the Trump of 2017 — or even of a few months ago — was a much more powerful Trump than the one we have before us now.

You could attach Trump’s diminishment in influence to the widespread condemnation and disgust with his gassing of protesters for a particularly lame-brained photo-op stunt last Monday. You could say it’s because of his lagging poll numbers generally, or the fact that Trump is looking more and more like a scared man hiding inside a black-fence-fortified prison of his own making. But one of the undeniable takeaways from the last week is that Trump looks weaker than he has at any time during his presidency. (We have reached the point of the cycle when aides are anonymously complaining that his wife is undermining him.) And when you are weak, no matter how much you might bluster and stomp your feet, people don’t fear you like they once did. Even someone as skittish as Goodell.

When Trump’s national anthem tweets were front-page news, the NFL owners and a few player representatives held a secret meeting, which the Times obtained audio of. What’s telling reading that story today is how terrified the league was of Trump:

If there’s a lesson the NFL earned from the entire debacle, it’s that Trump didn’t have the power back then that they feared he did … and that he definitely doesn’t have it now. Look at the week Drew Brees just had. On Wednesday, he told Yahoo Finance he would “never agree with anybody disrespecting the flag.” There has probably never been a time in NFL history, up until now, when  expressing that opinion would have constituted  a problem for Brees. But on Thursday, after an overwhelming uproar (including among his own teammates), Brees apologized, and then apologized again. That led Trump to tweet that he was a “big fan” of Brees but that he should have never said sorry,  and that “OLD GLORY is to be revered, cherished, and flown high.” But Brees, smartly, realized that Trump was nothing to be scared of. He went on Instagram and addressed the president directly: “We must stop talking about the flag and shift our attention to the real issues of systemic racial injustice, economic oppression, police brutality, and judicial & prison reform.”

That has to be a large part of the mindset of Goodell: While the safe thing three years ago might have been to capitulate to Trump, the safe thing now is to do the exact opposite. In 2017, you knew you had to deal with the president, one way or another, for the next three years. Now? Now you might be rid of him in a few months. And you’re aware — more aware than you were then — that his bark is a lot worse than his bite. This is the one trick he has, the Big Kneeling Threat. He’s beginning to look like an elderly coach trying to win in today’s NFL with the old T-formation playbook he used in the 1950s — in other words, like someone whose time has passed.

How is the league going to deal with Trump trying to turn this into a wedge issue once again? I think Goodell and the NFL are going to just ignore him. The players have shown the power they have in this situation, and their willingness to wield it. The fan base has shown it isn’t actually going to stop watching football because of Trump’s perpetual culture war.

The proper response, it’s becoming increasingly clear, is to either pretend he doesn’t exist — or maybe even to actively defy him. He’s not the Trump of three years ago. The movement and the people are more powerful than he is, and they always were. Roger Goodell knows that now. The NFL knows that now. Maybe, now, we all do.

Chaos in Dallas as Snipers Kill 5 Police and Wound 6 Others

What began as a peaceful Black Lives Matter protest in downtown Dallas, Texas - one of many across the country in the wake of two recent shootings of black males - turned into a nightmare and chaos as possibly four (4) snipers used the gathering to launch a full scale attack on police that left five officers dead and six more wounded.  Three suspects are in custody and one sniper was killed during the exchange of gunfire.  If the shooters had any connection to the protests other than taking advantage of the gathering of police at the event is under investigation.  If nothing else, the event again shows that America's ridiculous gun laws allows those who should not have guns to easily purchase them and commit mayhem.  Here are some highlights from the New York Times:  

DALLAS — Five Dallas police officers were killed and six others were wounded by snipers Thursday night during a demonstration protesting shootings by officers in Minnesota and Louisiana this week, the authorities said.

The police say they believe four people coordinated the attack with rifles, Police Chief David O. Brown said, and positioned themselves in triangulated locations near the end of the route the protesters planned to take. The police had three people in custody and were negotiating in the early-morning hours with a fourth, who was in a garage in downtown Dallas at El Centro, a community college.

That suspect had exchanged gunfire with the police and was being uncooperative in talks, Chief Brown said at a news conference in the lobby of City Hall.

The suspect “has told our negotiators that the end is coming and he’s going to hurt and kill more of us, meaning law enforcement, and that there are bombs all over the place in this garage and downtown,” Chief Brown said.

The three other suspects are a woman who was taken from the garage and two others who were taken in for questioning after a traffic stop.

[President Obama remarked] “Police in Dallas were on duty doing their jobs, keeping people safe, during peaceful protests. These law enforcement officers were targeted, and nearly a dozen officers were shot. Five were killed. Other officers, and at least one civilian, were wounded. Some are in serious condition and we are praying or their recovery.”

Chief Brown said the suspects in custody were not providing investigators with many details. “We just are not getting the cooperation we’d like, to know that answer of why, the motivation, who they are,” he said.

The shooting had been carried out by snipers who fired down on a demonstration in the city’s downtown area that until that point had been peaceful, the chief said.

They “planned to injure and kill as many law enforcement officers as they could,” Chief Brown said.

“Some were shot in the back,” the chief said. “We believe that these suspects were positioning themselves in a way to triangulate on these officers.”

Chief Brown said it was too early in the investigation to say whether there was any connection between the shooters and the demonstration. He suggested that those involved had some knowledge of the march route.

The protest was planned by Dominique R. Alexander, an ordained minister and the head of the Next Generation Action Network.

He said that the organization “does not condone violence against any human being, and we condemn anyone who wants to commit violence.”  “I was right there when the shooting happened,” Mr. Alexander said. “They could have shot me.”

This killing spree will do nothing to improve already strained relations between black citizens and police.  It also underscores a continuing problem in America: the total inability of far too many to see the common humanity of others of different races, religious faiths and sexual orientations.   Whatever the shooters thought they would accomplish other than killing police officers, they likely set things backward instead of improving things. 

GOP Is Using Black Lives Matter to Scare Whites Into Voting for Them

Sadly, among the base of today's Republican Party, black lives do not matter.  For that matter, neither do LGBT lives or the lives of those who are non-white and/or non-right wing Christian.  Yet, in typical form, the GOP presidential candidates are trying to whip up fear about crime and drive white voters - who they desperately need in higher and higher percentages - to vote Republican.  In many cities, police forces are out of control in terms of the unnecessary level of violence they use.  And sadly, blacks are often the targets of this excessive force.  By whipping up fear over crime, the GOP seeks to change the topic and push votes its way.  It's obscene, but then again, so is today's GOP.  Here are highlights from a piece in Slate:

Almost everyone has something to demagogue in the 2016 Republican primary. For Donald Trump, it’s Latino immigration, and Mexican migrants in particular. For Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, it’s the nuclear deal with Iran; for former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, it’s the Kim Davis affair in Kentucky, where a county official was jailed for refusing to sign marriage licenses for same-sex couples; and for New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, it’s crime.

That may seem like a strange choice, given broad trends. National rates of violent crime are down to their lowest levels in a generation, with steep drops in gun homicide among all groups. And while violence is still a problem for isolated, low-income black Americans, the overall portrait is good: Twenty years after the crime waves of the 1990s, American cities and metropolitan areas are as safe as they’ve ever been.

Long-term trends can obscure short-term variations, however, and there’s contested evidence that we’re in the middle of a violent crime spike, sparked by a so-called Ferguson effect where less aggressive policing—fueled by “Black Lives Matter” protests—encourages criminals.
[H]umans are built to see patterns in unrelated events, and the crime increase—plus a rash of high-profile shootings aimed at police officers—has brought new partisan attacks on Black Lives Matter, even while 2015 stands as an unusually safe year for police officers, so far. “In the last six years under President Obama, we’ve seen a rise in anti-police rhetoric,” wrote Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker in an op-ed last week, citing “demonstrations and chants where people describe police as ‘pigs’ and call for them to be ‘fried like bacon.’ ” Walker was referring to a small group of protesters in Minnesota who by all accounts are unrepresentative of the larger movement.

A struggling Christie—who, along with Huckabee and Cruz, lags far behind in the polls—has picked up on this, and run with it. On Tuesday, during an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, the New Jersey governor slammed Democrats on crime. “It’s the liberal policies in this city that have led to the lawlessness that’s been encouraged by the president of the United States,” he said. “And I’m telling you, people in this country are getting more and more fed up.”

With crime and killings in the news, Democrats may be vulnerable to claims of indifference or even encouragement, given their support for Blacks Live Matter. Indeed, this violence threatens the whole project for criminal justice reform.

By blaming Obama and Black Lives Matter for an increase in crime or new attacks on police officers, they’re working to conjure the fear and uncertainty of the ’80s and ’90s—when violent crime was at an all-time high—and capitalize on them. And it’s worth noting the extent to which these appeals come at the same time that Republicans need to increase their share of the white vote to win a national majority. It’s no accident, . . .