According to Governor Mark “Bored DIlettante” Dayton, NFL players get into trouble – bar scuffles, DUIs, shooting each other, dogfighting – because they’re just like you:
Football players aren’t ordinary citizens, [the Governor] said, and compared the game to combat.
”It’s basically slightly civilized war, and then they take that into society, much as solders come back, and they’ve been in combat or the edge of it and then suddenly that adjustment back to civilian life is a real challenge,” Dayton said.
You heard him right. The Governor – who got a draft deferment by staying in college and then working as a substitute teacher until his number went away – says that NFL players, many of whom started on the fast track to stardom in high school, waltzed through college in dumbed-down academic programs and “work” at playing an overgrown sandlot game for millions of dollars a year, misbehave because they’re just like you are after you get home from a tour or two in Afghanistan or Iraq (or Desert Storm or Vietnam).
who got a draft deferment by staying in college and then working as a substitute teacher until his number went away
Don’t forget that he had to pay the school to “hire” him as a teacher!
Well, obviously the “rigors” of his life, caused him a challenge with adjusting to real life. What an idiot!
Sounds like Gov Jim Beam is doing the talking again.
And now…deep thoughts…by Governor Jim Beam…
What do you expect from a congenital idiot?
Such an asinine statement by Governor Mini-Me to compare football and combat. It makes it painfully obvious he’s never experienced either one.
Kermit is calling Dayton a congenital idiot?
Rethink it gentlemen; this is not a unique idea to Dayton. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes brought it up – comparing conflict in our non-combat life to weaponless war in the 17th century. The analogy comparing war to sports has been well documented in academic research, notably for one example, in the International Journal of Business and Social Science, in a piece written by Dr. Steven Aicinena, in October 2010, entitled Sport as War or a Means to Peace? Thomas Hobbes Law of Nature. The author is a professor of kinesiology at the University of Texas.
Opening line of the Abstract:
The work of 17th century philosopher Thomas Hobbes found in Leviathan is used to explain the motivation for antisocial and harmful behavior obsered in human beings and particularly in modern sport..
There is a long list of academic papers you can find addressing similar analogies and comparisons, ranging from athletic to business to diplomacy. You can go find and read them for yourselves.
It is not a concept unique or original to Dayton, and it appears to have some practical validity.
Similarly, George Orwell made the famous quote: “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard for all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”
There is nothing insulting in it to the struggles and sacrifices made by war veterans in what Dayton said. There is however a serious question raised in my mind here about why you are using this Mitch in one more effort to misrepresent statements so as to rev up the partisanship of your base, to create more opposition and hostiility where it is not justified.
There are plenty of instance where there are legitimate grounds for criticism, so why create this unjustified outrage where it is NOT appropriate?
And what does it say about your readers who grab their pom poms or pitchforks, depending on their degree of uncritical thinking and intensity, and join in with you instead of making the intelligent query, is the core premise of your post valid?
It is not.
Kermit wrote:
What do you expect from a congenital idiot?
Ah! Our inbred upper classes.
I’ve heard that if Dayton hurts himself only Al Franken can stop the bleeding.
In the latest installment of her descent into verbal psychosis, Mrs. Teasdale dragoons Hobbes into her ravings. There’s some poetic justice in this, because Mrs. Teasdale’s ravings are solitary, poor, nasty and brutish. They are never short, however.
A number of comments come to mind, but I will keep them to myself for obvious reasons.
But I would like to point out the irony that when NFL players get in trouble with the law, they invariably get suspended sentences and community service in all but the most heinous crimes. When a veteran gets in trouble with the law, he/she still only has about a 1 in 100 chance of being tried in a veteran’s court that can give a similar sentence.
Ah the MC1R mutant puppy-mill operator (do you still wean your puppies at 4 weeks? ) speaks up with her usual specious logorrhea. DG wasn’t there some homework you were supposed to provide?
Dog Gone quoted Orwell:
“Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard for all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”
Orwell had serious issues with sport because he was terrible at them when he was young. One of those public school things.
Orwell had some interesting blindspots. He was hopeless with any kind of tech. In the home guard in WW2 he nearly killed his men when he accidentally discharged an explosive. Later he nearly killed his family while boating when he misjudged the tide and at the worst moment the boat’s motor fell apart from lack of maintenance.
You really need to be careful when quoting Orwell. For God’s sake, he thought restaurants were an instrument of oppression for both the employees and the diners, and wrote that they should be banned.
Dayton and Dog demonstrate that they are truly mental midgets.
Football is a game, a sport. Combat is a matter of life and death. You can’t compare a ball game to bullets and hand grenades. SHEESH!!
tl;dr
DG,
People ask me why I respond to some of the howlers you leave in this comment section.
Depending on my mood, I respond “for the same reason a wolf snacks on mice while waiting for a deer”, or “for the same reason Tiger Woods goes to the driving range”.
Your comment, by the way, is perhaps more egregiously wrong-headed and conceptually invalid than most of your oeuvre.
More, perhaps, in a bit here.
OK. Where to start? The beginning? It’s no less unrewarding of scrutiny than any other part, why not?
Rethink it gentlemen; this is not a unique idea to Dayton. Philosopher Thomas Hobbes brought it up – comparing conflict in our non-combat life to weaponless war in the 17th century. The analogy comparing war to sports has been well documented in academic research,
Dayton wasn’t making a literary point, and he wasn’t citing any academic research. He was invoking some parlor pop-psychology; soldiers sometimes decompress (or manifest PTSD) in the same ways as football players, therefore there’s a comparison.
Oh, I know what you’re trying to do – link the governor’s stupid remark to some sort of literary or academic line of thought. He did nothing of the sort, and has at least apologized for the gaffe.
Which is apparently more than you can manage.
Maybe another?
Similarly, George Orwell made the famous quote: “Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard for all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting.”
What Terry said. And beyond that, Orwell was referring to the mindset of the successful athlete (as he saw it), one of the inputs needed for a successful sportsman.
He was not commenting on the psychological or social affects of war or sport, much less comparing them.
Strike two. (There – there is a valid sports reference!)
Onward:
There is nothing insulting in it to the struggles and sacrifices made by war veterans in what Dayton said.
I dunno, DG. Ask Dave Thul – above.
Dave? Would you care to comment on DG’s claim that there was nothing insulting about Dayton’s gaffe? We will then wait to see how DG tries to negate your service in pursuit of her (vacant) point.
There is however a serious question raised in my mind here about why you are using this Mitch in one more effort to misrepresent statements so as to rev up the partisanship of your base, to create more opposition and hostiility where it is not justified.
Because it is justified!
And clearly Dayton thought so himself. He apologized!
Finally:
There are plenty of instance where there are legitimate grounds for criticism, so why create this unjustified outrage where it is NOT appropriate?
Says you.
No, really, DG – you’ve “shown” it’s “unjustified” how? With a pointless diversion into academia, and an out of context Orwell quote.
You don’t want it to be justified. You disagree with it, certainly. But it’s justified. 0
And what does it say about your readers who grab their pom poms or pitchforks, depending on their degree of uncritical thinking and intensity, and join in with you instead of making the intelligent query, is the core premise of your post valid?
It says nothing. Because your paragraph, in context with your completely erroneous defense of Dayton, speaks only to the unearned contempt you feel – and ooze in every word of your blog – toward those with whom disagree, based entirely on the degree to which they diverge from your chanting points.
At least Dayton did the right thing.
BTW, DG, it’s been four months since I asked you to explain, in actual detail, why Minnesota’s “Stand Your Ground” bill was “crap”.
I’m humoring you, of course. You don’t know. You never did, because your premise was entirely taken from lefty chanting points, uncritically repeated but not quite understood (because as I repeatedly showed in this space, the writers of the chanting points don’t understand either).
I could be wrong, of course. I doubt it, but it’s possible. On the off chance I am, feel free to favor us with your legal analysis.
The lesson here is clear. All of us, combat vets or not, must scour the worlds of literature and academia to find even the most tenuous, context-challenged connection to our beliefs, lest DG call you contemptuous names.
Yes, we’ve got to make the analogy to being a soldier, because otherwise we have to admit that coddling good football players is bad for their personal morality, and then we have to ask the same question about coddling heirs to department store fortunes, trophy husbands of ketchup widows, and Presidents whose personal histories were never vetted by the media.
Bubba for the win.
In the Rifftrax takedown of “Revenge of the Sith,” there’s a riff that applies to practically every one of Dog Gone’s lengthy brain farts.
“Blar! It’s worse than C-SPAN, it’s C-SPAN 2!!”
Isn’t there some “carpet” that needs “tending to” by the bitter man-hater Seeuentee.
Mitch: Someone threw up on your blog again.
I did find the remarks insulting, as did other combat vets I know. One guy made the connection that it was like comparing the pampered celebrities of the Roman gladiator games to the foot soldier in the Roman Legions. At least the gladiators actually faced death.
But the governor did apologize, and he did so before it was a story, so that tells me that it wasn’t an intentional slight but one of those analogies you say out loud before you realize it doesn’t hold up to the facts.
But what I really take offense to is Dog Gone’s repetition of the meme that combat veterans take ‘sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence’. DG’s progressive friends slandered an entire generation of veterans after Vietnam with the crazy combat vet myth-my generation wont let that happen again.
What Dave said.
Also this, DG: you’ve taken the writing of some academic as the single dispositive truth about the sociology of war – and arbitrariliy set him up as the objective truth on a question, and sneered that everyone who doesn’t see your muzzy-headed academic as the dispositive truth as some sort of bunpkin.
Sadly, it’s the kind of reasoning – utterly non-reasoning solopsism, really – we’ve come to expect from “Penigma”.
Sorry to be so blunt, but there you are.
I think that Dayton’s mistake was in not assigning moral agency to people based on some generalization — a problem with pundits & pols on the right as well.
There is something dehumanizing about saying that so-and-so committed some moral outrage not because they decided to do it, but because they were driven to do it.
That being said, there is a greater tendency for people on the Left than the Right to believe that the State has moral agency but individuals do not.
“Sadly, it’s the kind of reasoning – utterly non-reasoning solopsism, really – we’ve come to expect from “Penigma”. ”
DG/Penigma is a poseur – she wants people to believe she’s an intellectual because she can execute a google search then cut and paste, when in fact she lacks the discipline and mental rigor that any public thinker must evince. Additionally her appalling incapacity for reflection is marked and obviously limiting.
But what I really take offense to is Dog Gone’s repetition of the meme that combat veterans take ‘sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence’. DG’s progressive friends slandered an entire generation of veterans after Vietnam with the crazy combat vet myth-my generation wont let that happen again.
Don’t quote me on this Dave but I believe that the first time someone kills another human they usually get sick, literally (it’s one of the few things hollywood gets right about war movies) and I think that meme has been dispelled pretty well over the most recent past. It’s either kill or be killed out there and most Americans do understand that. Oh and DG since you so ungracefully brought up Orwell here’s a few more quotes he’s famous for.
“Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility”
“People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf.”
Mitch: Someone threw up on your blog again.
no TBS, someone just let their dog take a massive shit in the comment section 🙂
POD; From personal experience, I can tell you that you’re belief is pretty much spot on. Further, the fear induced adrenalin rush of combat, caused many men to lose control of other bodily functions. With very few exceptions, no one wants to take a human life, even when it is you or them. No man ever makes fun of another for it, either.
Another thing that I would like to point out, is this quote from the memoirs of General Vo Nguyen Giap, the brilliant military leader for the North Vietnamese army. ”
What we still don’t understand is why you Americans stopped the bombing of Hanoi . You had us on the ropes. If you had pressed us a little harder, just for another day or two, we were ready to surrender! It was the same at the battle of TET. You defeated us!
We knew it, and we thought you knew it. But we were elated to notice your media was helping us. They were causing more disruption in America than we could in the battlefields. We were ready to surrender. You had won!’
This proves what most of us already knew. The Vietnam war was lost at home, due to the likes of people like Doggy Doo!
I think we should start a PayPal account for Doggone to encourage her to comment more often.
And yes, Mark Dayton is a congenital idiot. He proved that when he evacuated his Senate office to the bunker in an undisclosed Minnesota suburb.