Understand that it’s fucking Mordor.
It’s totally evil.
It really is.
Entertain for a moment the idea that the NFL might actually be nothing more than a flashy delivery system for gambling. The games are just accessories created to facilitate the exchange of a mind-bending amount of money. It’s impossible to calculate how much cash– both legally and illegally– is bet on the NFL each year, but it’s hundreds of billions of dollars. It might be a trillion. The NFL, and the owners of each of the the 32 teams that comprise the league, make pornographic amounts of money– so much so that even the pathologically greedy Donald Trump wanted in on the action back in the 80’s.
Working beneath these overlords are the players. About 70% of them are black, and the average length of a career is about 3 1/2 years. It is a brutal, collision-based sport, but beyond the mechanical failure of knees, hips and such, there is CTE, a brain disease that virtually every football player seems to acquire due to the concussive nature of the sport. And because the NFL is evil, they withheld this information from the players even as symptoms set in and raged amongst them.
Essentially, what the NFL does is hire people to engage in combat while America bets on who the winner will be.
It’s the bread and circuses we’re fed.
The game itself is about martial precision rather than athletic improvisation. The players are armoured and anonymous, strategically deployed by the technocrats on the sidelines, and whatever exuberance or individuality they bring to the game is swiftly crushed. When celebrating and dancing after a touchdown became a thing, the league outlawed it. It was considered “disrespectful,” ( but not in the same way that calling a team The Redskins might be “disrespectful”) which put another way means it was considered too black. In effect, they took an African-American product, subordinated it to the tastes of a conservative white audience, and profited obscenely from it.
Colin Kaepernick, a talented black quarterback, ( It was not that long ago that a black quarterback in the NFL was unheard of, the belief being that they didn’t have the “faculties” to perform the job) began the practice of taking a knee during the national anthem as a protest against against racial injustice.
He was subsequently black-balled from the league, even though his talents should have been in high demand. In his absence, others players stepped up to continue the practice, all of which came to a head when Trump started calling for the sons of bitches to be fired. This cynical and amoral manipulation of existing divisions in the nation forced the players and owners to respond.
Siding with those who are against racial injustice and for freedom of expression seems like a pretty obvious choice. I mean, this is a no-brainer, right? History is unfolding in such a way that it’s forcing people to make a choice, whether they want to or not, and many players took the knee. And the photographs–all so familiar, inevitable and urgent– were deeply moving. They gave me chills, and for a moment it was easy to believe that things might finally be changing for the good.
But then again, this movement was taking place largely within the pitiless machine that is the NFL, and so many sought a middle road that they hoped wouldn’t interrupt any revenue streams. The Dallas Cowboys, led by their owner, took a knee before the anthem, and then standing, locked arms as a team during the anthem.
It was a muddle of a message, one that managed to suggest the players had some sort of solidarity with ownership instead of a grievance with institutional racism, but that was the point. It was supposed to mean all things to all people. Ultimately, they co-opted the symbolism of Kaepernick’s protest to support the idea of “protest” without actually joining the protest. It was nothing more than damage control, a gesture as empty of meaning as a Pepsi commercial, and one more thing the NFL can add to it’s wall of shame.
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It wasn’t the first time I’ve seen a video of this kind, and each time that I do have the same visceral, almost emotional response. Instinctively, like my primal core has suddenly been activated, I know that something’s wrong. I know it in my bones.
The stripped and ruined landscape, stretching endlessly around you, is awesome in the worst sense of the word. It’s a sincere horror, and looking down at it you feel like you’re viewing a crime scene where acts of unspeakable cruelty and evil have taken place. It’s like that lofty view, which grants such scope and perspective, completely alters one’s view, orienting it toward the eternal. I know that I’m coming in at a pretty high pitch here, but it’s truly how it makes me feel.
The oil being extracted from the tar sands, as I’m sure you know, is very costly to process, with the emissions created from developing it being 12% greater than conventional oil. It couldn’t be dirtier, and each barrel of oil requires three barrels of water to produce it. The question of whether oil is more valuable than water is a fundamentally ridiculous one, and that this question was even open to rational inquiry will be seen as a tragedy in 50 years.
The Athabasca Tar Sands are utterly massive. Covering about 140,000 square kilometres of boreal forest, it’s larger than countries like England, Greece and North Korea. The land will be obliterated, as if from a nuclear apocalypse, and the equipment and structures that are used to mine the oil are so large that they command their own weather systems. It’s a dystopian vision, as if a predatory alien culture had descended upon the planet and began to ruthlessly drain it of all resources while maintaining absolute indifference to whether the host organism lived or died. (There are two smaller Tar Sands, Peace River and Cold Lake, each about a fifth of the size of Athabasca.)
The Prime Minister of this country has said that he won’t do anything to address climate change that would cost Canadians any jobs. The Tar Sands, ruinous and retrograde in so many ways, is a job creator, and so in the face of all other reason it goes forward. However, one glance at the razed, apocalyptic world it inhabits, this kind of Mordor, and even a child can cut through all the rhetoric, economics and complex global politics to see that what’s taking place is plainly wrong.
michaelmurrayca: We’re finally leaving the cold, dark ice cave of Toronto!
michaelmurrayca: First, passing through the Rosedale Valley of Death. The forest is looming bent and horrible over road, like tree in Poltergeist.
michaelmurrayca: Oh. All of Toronto also fleeing apocalypse city.
michaelmurrayca: Avoid highway unless you find tranquility in stillness. Move through car wash at much greater velocity.
michaelmurrayca: Red tail lights in front of us stretching from here to Mordor. # LikeDeathLava
michaelmurrayca: Time of winter day when everything is the same colour– even salt-wretched cars in traffic jam.
michaelmurrayca: Now moving like pre-twilight wolves through landscape! Oh. Never mind. Traffic jam again. #BoxingDayBestDayOfYear
michaelmurrayca: Empty, Dark Onroutes, like post-apocalyptic tumble weeds, litter the side of highway like reminder of life we once knew.
michaelmurrayca: Very hungry. #Hangry
michaelmurrayca: Port Hope Pizza Pizza is a crime scene. 40 customers, 1 employee. #ThereWillBeBlood
michaelmurrayca: Now full of McDonald Happy Meal. You know how I feel.
michaelmurrayca: Now trapped in an actual parking lot. Feel like punching things.
michaelmurrayca: Now moving as fast as flying dolphins! Our lives redeemed!
michaelmurrayca: Flying dolphins tricked into traffic jam cove! Hate tricks!
michaelmurrayca: 3 hours 46 minutes to not yet Belleville.
michaelmurrayca: My wife doesn’t so much like me playing Nick Cave in a traffic crisis.# BadTasteWife!
michaelmurrayca: Can’t believe wife doesn’t like listening to Sting! # WhoIsThisWoman?
michaelmurrayca: Now playing girl music. #MarriageTipsForTrafficJam
michaelmurrayca: Retract usage of “girl music,” meant “good music.” Very lucky to have wife like Rachelle!#MarriageProTip
michaelmurrayca: Apparently I “yell” when I speak on the phone, and ” should have gotten your (my) fucking driver’s license decades ago.”# whatever
michaelmurrayca: Stony silence for an hour and a half good for both our morale.
michaelmurrayca: Now listening to Christian motivational CD. God wants us to succeed.
michaelmurrayca: Let Jesus be your co-pilot, says voice on CD. No idea how to apply that to a traffic jam.# UselessChristianTips
michaelmurrayca: If I was King of Kings, would create traffic removal trucks instead of just snow removal trucks. #UsefulThingsGodCouldDo
michaelmurrayca: Also, if King of Kings would move Toronto and Ottawa closer together. 3 hour trip regardless of transportation method. #SoSayethTheLord
michaelmurrayca: Just didn’t expect to hit a deer while in a traffic jam. Very demoralizing, especially since deer Rachelle’s spirit guide.
michaelmurrayca: Pretty sure Christmas now very, very ruined.
michaelmurrayca: Very dark stretch of the road, like Cormac McCarthy novel only without spears and fancy language.
michaelmurrayca: Traffic loosening up after Kingston, but now icy and douche trucks everywhere!!
michaelmurrayca: We both tried to love you and the world the best we could!
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1. Operation Jesus Walks With Me
2. Operation Syrius Shit
3. Operation Assault on Mordor
4. Operation Bash Assad
5. Operation We’ve Been Drinking
6. Operation Destroyacus
7. Operation Mediterranean Diet of Death
8. Operation Twerkstorm
9. Operation Arab Sting
10. Celebrity Death Strike
