Tribal witlessness

Everything is kneeling here. I believe Trump is a genius at distraction. The repeal of Obamacare just crashed and burned, and Trump’s endorsed candidate just lost a senate primary, but he has everyone talking about kneeling at NFL games. To his great benefit even aside from the distraction. This is a fight Trump cannot lose.  

What strikes me though is how blind the NFL was and is to what they done to themselves. A commenter name buwaya made an point I thought insightful. Sports fandom is based on a hallucination: the idea that your team are warriors for your tribe.

That might be true for high school football, but it’s not even remotely true for professional sports. That’s why the NFL’s mistake here is so big. Now people see their supposed tribal warriors being rude to them. People see disrespecting the flag as rude.

And worse than being rude to them, being rude about them.  Especially those to whom the main appeal of the NFL is rooting,  that tribal appeal I mentioned, the flag too is a tribal symbol that they value. Dissing it is dissing them. There's your tribal hero, attacking your tribe.  

So the NFL has punctured the illusion; hallucination is harder to maintain. This will be catastrophic for the NFL. One telling thing I have seen a lot of is people giving up fantasy football.  That should scare the NFL witless, but I think they already are witless. 

UPDATE: Ouch!

UPDATE Oct 19: Ouch!