Woke NBA - Mark Cuban style

[merjet]

13 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

I'm not the only one watching the NBA commit suicide.

Tim Pool is not quite as blind as you to the pertinent fact of weekday afternoon games. But he does sweep it under the rug when citing the 27% drop in viewers at 6:48.

Given your doomsday projection, are you willing to bet big $$ that the NBA will no longer exist in 2021? 2022? 2023? I will be glad to take the other side.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

39 minutes ago, merjet said:

Given your doomsday projection, are you willing to bet big $$ that the NBA will no longer exist in 2021? 2022? 2023?

Merlin,

Nah...

But so long as professional basketball keeps promoting the virtue of institutional racism as one of its main marketing messages, it will keep losing money and audience. Not just any old kind of institutional racism, either. Marxist institutional racism (BLM).

If pro basketball insists on keeping to this policy, I predict it will become like, say, volleyball in importance. Maybe shuffleboard.  

After President Trump's reelection, I predict it will not be too long before the Marxist institutional racism promoted by professional basketball players and teams disappears from pro basketball courts and marketing. Then maybe the money and audience will return to normal.

Some people think promoting Marxist institutional racism is a correct marketing plan for professional sports, though.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

 

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

Michael, you forgot the Zombies! They're all over the place, especially the Blue States.

--Brant

there's even Zombie Ayn Rand, but no one knows what she's gonna do

[Brant Gaede]

14 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Merlin,

Nah...

But so long as professional basketball keeps promoting the virtue of institutional racism as one of its main marketing messages, it will keep losing money and audience. Not just any old kind of institutional racism, either. Marxist institutional racism (BLM).

If pro basketball insists on keeping to this policy, I predict it will become like, say, volleyball in importance. Maybe shuffleboard.  

After President Trump's reelection, I predict it will not be too long before the Marxist institutional racism promoted by professional basketball players and teams disappears from pro basketball courts and marketing. Then maybe the money and audience will return to normal.

Some people think promoting Marxist institutional racism is a correct marketing plan for professional sports, though.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

 

Michael

Not his reelection. His inauguration. Almost three months of horrible legal chaos is coming down.

--Brant

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

16 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

Michael, you forgot the Zombies! They're all over the place, especially the Blue States.

Brant,

At least Victor Davis Hanson didn't forget about zombie scandals.

Desperately Derailing Donald

Quote

What then can we expect in the next 60 days from the Biden campaign?

About every week or so there will be a media/Democratic/leftist fusion zombie scandal that suddenly arises from the past but with new unnamed sources and anonymous rumors, and pushed as the long lost magic spike to drive into Count Trump’s heart. 

The reason these future scandals will be zombies is because the sheer number of old dead scandals. There is literally nothing out there the press hasn't already tried to find and spin. Especially the Hillary Clinton machine.

More from Hanson:

Quote

One always expects the media surprise leak of a purported hidden scandal as a presidential campaign winds down. Remember the last-minute “discovery” of George W. Bush’s undisclosed 24-year-old DUI arrest in 2000? Or the October 7, 2016 effort of the Washington Post to publish the hoarded 11-year-old “Access Hollywood” tape, just two days before Donald Trump’s second debate with Hillary Clinton?

We should expect lots of these “bombshells” and “walls are closing in” pseudo derailments. Except Trump has been the most widely investigated, probed, attacked, and smeared president in history. And so the scandal-field has pretty well been picked over, as those fired like Omarosa Manigault Newman, Anthony Scaramucci, John Bolton, and others have long ago more or less lectured us that Trump is nuts, crazy, dangerous, stupid, ignorant, and so forth. 

In terms of bombshells, what does the Left do after the 2016 suit to decertify voting machines, the FISA court abuse, the effort to sabotage electors’ votes, the first impeachment drive, the Logan Act gambits, the Emoluments Clause joke, the 25th Amendment ruse, the Russian collusion hoax, the 22-month-asleep-at-the-wheel Mueller and his “all-stars,” Ukraine! Ukraine!, the second impeachment drive, and the 2020 trifecta of Trump as Typhoid Mary, Bull Connor, and Herbert Hoover?

The point is, in Jussie Smollett fashion, the demand for scandals is outrunning the supply and time grows short.

As Hanson noticed, the reason the zombies are running around is old fashioned supply and demand. There are no living things to supply, but the demand is great, so enter the dead.

And, to tie this post to the basketball theme, the anti-Trump movement made its own Frankenstein monster (with a Marxist head on it at that) and duped certain institutions with large audiences (like pro basketball) into proudly promoting it. The BLM Frankenstein monster looks like a cause, but it's actually institutionalized racism of the KKK variety. Just switch the human colors and a few fashion statements and, voilà! Institutionalized racism in all its glory.

Wait until some of the remaining pro basketball fans realize this and start bitching about it in the media.

More zombies are coming...

But they will not defeat the reelection of President Trump.

Zombies don't elect presidents.

People do.

And a zombie is a zombie is a zombie, even it it plays basketball for wages...

 

Michael

[merjet]

22 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

But so long as professional basketball keeps promoting the virtue of institutional racism as one of its main marketing messages, it will keep losing money and audience. Not just any old kind of institutional racism, either. Marxist institutional racism (BLM).

If pro basketball insists on keeping to this policy, I predict it will become like, say, volleyball in importance. Maybe shuffleboard.  

After President Trump's reelection, I predict it will not be too long before the Marxist institutional racism promoted by professional basketball players and teams disappears from pro basketball courts and marketing. Then maybe the money and audience will return to normal.

Some people think promoting Marxist institutional racism is a correct marketing plan for professional sports, though.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess...

That’s a lot of hyper hyperbole and propaganda.

There is an element of Marxism in Black Lives Matter. However:

1. Most of its Marxist origins has been removed from the Black Lives Matter website, and is otherwise not mentioned.

2. Racism, real or imagined, is the dominant idea of Black Lives Matter. And it is to eliminate it, not promote it like you say.

3. Marx is mentioned in this critical race theory page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory only twice – once in References and once in the Bibliography.

4. Propaganda saying that a person who supports BLM equally supports Marxism is hyper hyperbole. For many supporters of BLM, the meaning of “Black Lives Matter” is something pretty simple, such as police should not treat blacks more harshly than non-blacks, ceteris paribus. Others might include less inequality of income or wealth. The meaning of the slogan Black Lives Matter varies widely among people who support it.

About 80% of NBA players are black. When they went to college, it was mostly to improve their basketball skills, not intellectual ones with a STEM major or philosophy major. How much do they really know about Marxism? I suspect very, very little. If you asked LeBron James – who did no college – about changing player salaries to be far more equal based upon their need – Marx’s slogan “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” – I’m very confident he would emphatically reject the idea.

NBA players have been peaceful protesters and have not advocated violence, looting, and killing.

Being that about 80% of players are black, I’m not at all surprised that NBA and league execs agree, or at least not disagree, with the sentiments of most players. An employer or organization that alienates its best employees or revenue makers does not reap rewards for the employer or organization.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Tim didn't formally say it below, but the idea is that if the big corporations pull out the money from sports celebrities doing this social justice stuff, the social conscience of these celebrities will suddenly be interested in other things.

Case in point. Granted, this is football, not basketball, but the principle is the same.

Nobody wants to call on Kaepernick to play. And, it looks like, he himself isn't interested. He's making a shitload of money without having to worry about doing any real work. And he wasn't very good when he did play.

At the top, it's a grift, not a movement for real.

Social justice in pro sports is a parasite where a few people will make a butt-load of money, the press and advertisers will squeeze it dry, and the sport itself will take a hit in audience and money.

Once the parasite kills the host, the parasite doesn't care. It will move on to a different host.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

3 hours ago, merjet said:

That’s a lot of hyper hyperbole and propaganda.

There is an element of Marxism in Black Lives Matter. However:

1. Most of its Marxist origins has been removed from the Black Lives Matter website, and is otherwise not mentioned.

2. Racism, real or imagined, is the dominant idea of Black Lives Matter. And it is to eliminate it, not promote it like you say.

3. Marx is mentioned in this critical race theory page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critical_race_theory only twice – once in References and once in the Bibliography.

4. Propaganda saying that a person who supports BLM equally supports Marxism is hyper hyperbole. For many supporters of BLM, the meaning of “Black Lives Matter” is something pretty simple, such as police should not treat blacks more harshly than non-blacks, ceteris paribus. Others might include less inequality of income or wealth. The meaning of the slogan Black Lives Matter varies widely among people who support it.

About 80% of NBA players are black. When they went to college, it was mostly to improve their basketball skills, not intellectual ones with a STEM major or philosophy major. How much do they really know about Marxism? I suspect very, very little. If you asked LeBron James – who did no college – about changing player salaries to be far more equal based upon their need – Marx’s slogan “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” – I’m very confident he would emphatically reject the idea.

NBA players are peaceful protesters and have not advocated violence, looting, and killing.

Merlin,

Vladimir Lenin used to call people who argued like this "useful idiots."

I'm not saying you are an idiot and I don't believe you are, but you are putting a smiley face on the Marxist rot underneath BLM.

Beside, I, for one, am never convinced by the argument that since the bad guy doesn't say he's a bad guy, that's evidence that he isn't a bad guy.

In other words, the Marxists stopped saying they are Marxists and found that the smokescreen of racism to cover their Marxism was effective in fooling followers. Thus, this is evidence that Marxism is not the root. 

I doubt few people will be persuaded by this argument.

But wait! There's more!

The Marxists made it worse because they can't help themselves. The form of racism they promote is institutional racism. It cannot be otherwise.

Notice that BLM gets weird when people say "all lives matter." That's because "all lives" as a slogan makes for poor class warfare. 

Marsixts are collectivists and collectives need institutions to run them. In class warfare, the oppressed class must take over the institutions of the oppressor class. And since the current of class warfare the Marxists are promoting is a racism class war, that means blacks (as a class) must take over what they perceive to be white institutions, and do so based on skin color. What will happen after that? The new "dictatorship of the proletariat" will become a new "dictatorship of race," meaning a "dictatorship of blacks."

Institutional racism.

Notice in my comment right now, there is no smiley face. Marxism is evil and it's serious. Piles and piles of dead bodies to me are serious.

Michael

[ThatGuy]

1 hour ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

Beside, I, for one, am never convinced by the argument that since the bad guy doesn't say he's a bad guy, that's evidence that he isn't a bad guy.

That's because you don't understand. Michael. They stopped saying bad things. So they must be on the up-and-up. Because they said so. Because. They. Said. So. No fact-checking needed, there. Now, Trump? He said it was hot, yesterday. But it was two degrees cooler than the day before. Trump is no weatherman. And you don't have to be a weatherman to know in which the direction the wind blows...

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Here's a little extra syrup and butter on the pancake.

Michael

[Dglgmut]

3 hours ago, merjet said:

About 80% of NBA players are black. When they went to college, it was mostly to improve their basketball skills, not intellectual ones with a STEM major or philosophy major. How much do they really know about Marxism? I suspect very, very little.

The difference between leftist ideologies is like the difference between different sects of a religion. They still worship the god of Equality (non-competition). and there is major overlap in the history of their ideas. Sticking with this analogy, there are many self-identified Catholics who have not studied their religion on an academic level.

Quote

If you asked LeBron James – who did no college – about changing player salaries to be far more equal based upon their need – Marx’s slogan “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” – I’m very confident he would emphatically reject the idea.

This is true about all kinds of Marxists, though... if it wasn't, communism would have worked.

 

[tmj]

Racism is the dominant aspect of BLM the organization, those who ostensibly support the idea/movement are more likely to believe their support for the organization will help to eliminate racism. But the organization has not ever voiced that idea. The organization's recognized goals are the elimination of the alleged systemic police brutality of blacks and the promotion of black liberation. The main vehicle driving BLM(tm) is black identarianism, aka racist ideology.

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

2 hours ago, tmj said:

But the organization has not ever voiced that idea.

T,

But it has openly voiced Marxism.

I posted the video here on OL where one of the founders said--in these terms--that her philosophy was Marxist. She wasn't trying to hide it. She was bragging about it.

I also posted a video of a BLM black male coming up to college-age white female in the street. He told her, politely, he wanted her to kneel before him and apologize for her white privilege. She looked confused, but once she understood, she said, "Sure." She knelt down on both knees and asked for him to forgive her for her white privilege. He accepted her apology. Then she got up and continued on her way.

I had to get up from my desk. I didn't want to vomit on my computer screen. 

This is America. That kind of shit, regardless of race or anything else, is for other cultures.

Not for this one.

Fuck them both.

Michael

 

EDIT: btw - I thought this might have been staged, but the more I have learned about the way critical race theory is taught in higher education, especially to young females, the more I see this as indoctrinated.

[Peter]

To get rid of the prejudice in pro basketball we need to have racial quotas with more short, Asian guys given their rightful spots on the teams. 

[tmj]

Michael,

I agree the  whole shebang is vomit worthy. My point was directed to Merlin and his #2, apropos btw.

The founders of the organization are open Marxists, not sure how that point can be contended. they are and the group is a racist , marxist organization and most if not all their supporters are being duped. Not that there aren't willing adherents who know full well the intent, but I suspect the majority of the supporters lack critical thinking skills and are easy prey for indoctrination.

Not sure what the motivations are for all the different varieties of apologists out there are, but I suspect moral cowardice.

 

[anthony]

"To eliminate [racism]".

No, in order to foster racism merjet.

BLaMe.

When race is one's tool it must cut both ways. For your 'group' against the other 'group'. Denigrating the white race because of true or imagined racism, past or present, is equally racist-collectivist. When you hear of "equality" today, you can know that it's supremacy they want. 

What it is is a minority of dissidents and cop-outs within the blacks, who could not succeed in one of the freest and wealthiest nations, have taken the easy route of pointing out everybody else by race for their lacks. (Then we get the sadly ironic spectacle of a wildly successful American black like Oprah proclaiming "unconscious racism" by whites, and kindly offering them re-education, perhaps oblivious that it was largely the US white women and their unconscious racism who got her there). 

I cannot believe how close is America for ideological takeover, in large part because of the good will and sympathy of Americans. Who else knows that benevolence and self-sacrifice are mutually exclusive, outside of Objectivism? And even there...

[Brant Gaede]

2 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

T,

But it has openly voiced Marxism.

I posted the video here on OL where one of the founders said--in these terms--that her philosophy was Marxist. She wasn't trying to hide it. She was bragging about it.

I also posted a video of a BLM black male coming up to college-age white female in the street. He told her, politely, he wanted her to kneel before him and apologize for her white privilege. She looked confused, but once she understood, she said, "Sure." She knelt down on both knees and asked for him to forgive her for her white privilege. He accepted her apology. Then she got up and continued on her way.

I had to get up from my desk. I didn't want to vomit on my computer screen. 

This is America. That kind of shit, regardless of race or anything else, is for other cultures.

Not for this one.

Fuck them both.

Michael

 

EDIT: btw - I thought this might have been staged, but the more I have learned about the way critical race theory is taught in higher education, especially to young females, the more I see this as indoctrinated.

When a man asks a woman to do that, it's not about an apology.

--Brant

[Ellen Stuttle]

5 hours ago, tmj said:

Michael,

I agree the  whole shebang is vomit worthy. My point was directed to Merlin and his #2, apropos btw.

The founders of the organization are open Marxists, not sure how that point can be contended. they are and the group is a racist , marxist organization and most if not all their supporters are being duped. Not that there aren't willing adherents who know full well the intent, but I suspect the majority of the supporters lack critical thinking skills and are easy prey for indoctrination.

Not sure what the motivations are for all the different varieties of apologists out there are, but I suspect moral cowardice.

 

I'm doubtful that the percentage of BLM supporters who are being duped is "most if not all."  I'm suspicious that only a small percentage of supporters are being duped, mainly the young supporters.  Among older supporters, I suspect that a high percentage are virtue-signaling as a status-garnering ploy.

I'll repeat something I wrote on the "Current Riots" thread - here:

Quote

As I've mentioned, I live in a neighborhood which is about 95% black, mostly Caribbean-Island-descended people.  There is not one "Black Lives Matter" placard in the yard of any of my black neighbors.  One neighbor, who lives next door to Larry's and my house, used to own a mom-and-pop grocery store.  (He sold it a few years ago - he's getting on in age, and the daily grind of running the store had become too much.)  I haven't actually gotten into a conversation with him about the rioters, but I can easily imagine what he'd have to say about them.

Meanwhile, in West Hartford, which is the wealthiest community in the Greater Hartford complex and is where many of the people in the state government, and many prominent business people and university people, live, and is predominantly white, the "Black Lives Matter" placards are thick.

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

4 hours ago, Brant Gaede said:

When a man asks a woman to do that, it's not about an apology.

Brant,

Behold.

Michael

[tmj]

Ellen 

Are they cynically signaling , or trying to garner a stature that possessing that virtue would enable one to claim said stature? 

I suspect aside from the truly cynical, which is probably a sizable amount , the signallers at the very least believe the ‘gist’ of it. Meaning they don’t have a reasoned counter to the idea that to fight racism one needs to embrace racism and weaponize it. 

The KKK and other supremacists were ‘just’ (only) racists, this current movement feels different , racism 2.0. I don’t recall stories of black self flagellists.

 

[Ellen Stuttle]

3 hours ago, tmj said:

I suspect aside from the truly cynical, which is probably a sizable amount , the signallers at the very least believe the ‘gist’ of it. Meaning they don’t have a reasoned counter to the idea that to fight racism one needs to embrace racism and weaponize it. 

I doubt that they realize that what they're doing is racism, but I think that they sense that it's "in."  The placards are like advertisements - "We are people with the correct attitudes."  It isn’t as if putting placards in the yards of their expensive homes is doing a thing actually to help any disadvantaged black people, and I bet that if the surface were scratched, a lot of the wealthy whites advertising solidarity with BLM secretly harbor prejudices and a feeling of guilt because of the prejudices.  Plus they would have been taught a message of white guilt in their education.

The display has a "for show" feel to me, like the purpose is to convince themselves and their neighbors and passers-by of the exhibitor's rectitude.  I wonder what they'd do if rioting came to their neighborhood, if they'd change their tune pronto and call for the police to rescue them.

Ellen

[merjet]

23 hours ago, Michael Stuart Kelly said:

you are putting a smiley face on the Marxist rot underneath BLM.

Hogwash. Borrowing your notion of “logic” and turning the table 180 degrees, I made this. You put smiley faces on critical race theory and postmodernism by sweeping them under the rug.

I didn’t put smiley faces on Marxism, or critical race theory, or postmodernism.

I saw your switcheroo. It’s very clear that I wrote about NBA players, their awareness (or lack thereof) of Marxism, and why they support Black Lives Matter, the slogan or popular movement. Of course, this does not imply they wholly support the founders of Black Lives Matter and their political philosophy. Also, I said nothing about the founders. I won’t speculate about your motivation for whimsically deciding that the only thing relevant regarding the NBA is the ideology of said founders.

I have seen several things on the backs of NBA jerseys – Black Lives Matter (many), Equality, Say Her Name, I Can’t Breathe, Peace, Respect Us, Vote, Justice, Freedom, Liberation. I have seen not Marxism, nor the name of any BLM founder.    

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

1 hour ago, merjet said:

I didn’t put smiley faces on Marxism, or critical race theory, or postmodernism.

Merlin,

Sure you did.

Except for postmodernism. I don't know why you said that.

But I wouldn't put it past you to do it so you could later say you didn't.

Michael

 

EDIT: Dayaamm, I didn't even see it on the first pass.

You just did it again.

1 hour ago, merjet said:

I have seen several things on the backs of NBA jerseys – Black Lives Matter (many), Equality, Say Her Name, I Can’t Breathe, Peace, Respect Us, Vote, Justice, Freedom, Liberation. I have seen not Marxism, nor the name of any BLM founder.    

There is it in full flower. Smiley face on the Marxism underlying BLM.

Lenin would have loved you. That is, until he got the power he wanted. Then he would have had you shot. He wasn't good at tolerating gotcha arguments, much less gotcha qua gotcha.  

[anthony]

We can do it too!

Shampoo ad about frizzy hair 'causes' our own thuggish Marxist crew to attack and force closures of major SA pharmacy group, Clicks.

 Plainly they mimic the US and the success they saw of holding businesses and their unwitting, 'racism' to ransom.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIgI7GIcsuc

 

[anthony]

Inspired by the Marxist Black Lives Matter, this was predictable, I saw something like this coming our way next.

And there is almost zero overt white on black racism remaining in SA, I know (but plenty of the reverse, systemic and legal to shut whites out of the economy)

- AND all lives taken are by blacks on blacks. This is Malema of the EFF (Economic Freedom Front, sounds good? Except that it wants to nationalize banks, property and everything).

https://www.thesouthafrican.com/news/black-people-cannot-be-racist-effs-shivambu-ignites-blm-debate/