Regarding football players, MMA fighters, boxers, wrestlers: men can be trained to achieve a frighteningly successful level of instant violence in their day job, and are often rewarded most based on the level of violence they can generate. And the question here that no one is asking is: Is it difficult or impossible for some of these men to build a wall between what they do for a living - who they ARE, in America - and how they treat people outside of their trained field? Are we asking men who often started their training in violence at a single-digit age to behave as schizophrenics, to switch from body-slamming warriors to coo-coo diaper changers in an unexamined blink? And, the reason no one is asking this question - is it because we intrinsically know, and HATE, the answer?
Below the fleeting yellow wisp of ideas:
I have long thought that being a genuine pacifist and a fan of college and professional football was a morally indefensible position, but I generally applied this from the comical side of the fence. However at this time, where the ongoing abuse, torture and death of women and children by our heroic athletes is at the forefront, it's a good time to drop the humor - remember the very recent promotion of Nobel Peace Prize winners as soccer fiends? Obviously the comedy lies in the fundamentally violent nature of soccer - Ha Ha! Ha..? ha....
In beasts such as we, where prospective mothers select inseminators based on their perceived ability to protect and feed children until they're grown, sexual selection of partners is a double-edged sword, to say the least. Obviously greed, size, and a propensity for violence have been rewarded at every step of the way among sexual breeders, and this stuff runs DEEP. It's not just us apes, or just us mammals, or air-breathers or just the four-limbed two-eyed creature model, we're talking sharks and bugs and plants and little crawly "ick" things. That yellow pollen that settles on your car and wafts up your sinuses to varying effect every spring? That's horny male TREES, squirting tree jizz up your nose! SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX = Violence = Size = Greed. And take a four-limb two-eye football player, whose worth in the world is largely determined by his ability to make sub-second decisions that unleash rapid & sudden violence in reaction to a rapidly evolving situation - and he has learned this since the single-digit-age days - isn't it perhaps a wonder there isn't more domestic violence (or more REPORTED violence - the whispers are that the anomalies surrounding Rice and Peterson are that they're the ones who GOT CAUGHT, not that it never happens elsewhere in the first place....) Whose job is it to build that wall?
We have got a fucking mess. Violence against women or children is categorically evil, and the greatest violence you can summon up against the Dallas Cowboys or Pittsburgh Steelers or Florida State Seminoles is your key to a great career. Or against Floyd Mayweather or your MMA opponent or your WWW opponent or... I don't "do" soccer players, but I would predict there is more domestic violence there than in pro bowling or tournament chess.
In Adrian Peterson's case the open-wound "switching" was the result of one of his non-married, non-domiciled children pushing around another of his children from a different mother, no indication of whether that one lived with him or relative closeness, but certainly neither were offspring from a "wife." And another unspeakable aspect - don't say it! There's no excuses! - Adrian Peterson had five children, by four mothers? Nowhere near the record holder, but actually quite common among the traveling warriors. Apparently, the hotel bar of every visiting pro sports team is a coach's worst nightmare, and "the women who love them" can be quite determined in their search for, above all, an affluent sperminator. The fame - and the endurance and the size - are just side benefits. And while one might say "Can't those stoopid athletes keep it zipped?" that is ignoring the fundamental biological purpose of the male. Well, sorry, Missy - but propagation of the species IS our job. Our real, bound and determined job, commanded in the Bible and wildly applauded and agreed-to by gonads & peckers everywhere.
And surely it's totally evil, blaming the victim, excusing the crime, to even bring up the specter of an aging exotic dancer, a model, some sort of "professional beauty" with no extended career prospects, willfully and consciously choosing a new career as the baby mamma of a rich sporty man before gravity and time wipe out their ass-ets, but - what the hell is going to change and improve if we can't even breathe a hint of the frankly bizarre situations here? I guess I DO have to bring up the record holder - Antonio Cromartie, now of the Arizona Cardinals, who has 12 children by 8 different women. Is there any way for a "normal" man or woman to understand the dynamics of "family" life there? Cromartie has apparently settled down, marrying a E! network "Candy Girl" in 2010. Coincidentally, he received a good spot of his early career training playing football at - Florida State University. Yes, THAT one, which appears to be evolving well past the "Free Shoes U" days to printing licenses to rape. But only if you win Heismans & championships.
I don't have an answer, but I do know that if there is to be ANY sort of improvement it MUST run through the cultures and situations surrounding the toxicity of the events. This is out a limb, but I would personally guess that footballers and boxers and fighters and trackers and soccerers aren't, actually, beating & abusing & killing women and children at any kind of an increased rate lately - we are just finding out about it and seeing it on our own screens far more easily. And THAT is a good thing, we all have to agree. But.... Except.... (?) - between the concussions, premature dementia, suicide-by-steroids, rapings and beatings and killings we may well be starting the process by which full-contact football will be replaced on Saturdays and Sundays with championship shuffleboard. And I'm not out on no limb nohow to say that THAT serves as a powerful reason to not look too deep, ask too many questions, connect too many dots because we DO know the answers will be damn well uncomfortable. Who, ultimately, is actually paying for the monster factory and enjoying, lauding on, then even heroitizing it's athletic products? Me! You....
Yes we can simply lean over and tweezer-pluck a few men, once in a while, because the cameras happened to be on at the "right" (wrong?) time - and those nasty men who are offending us, we simply can punch the discard button - then kick back to enjoy another rousing football game. "And now I feel good about myself!" Cheer the big hits, humorously tut-tut an announcer who dares mention that foxy ladies are a-abounding round them parts - but if we leave the monster factory's processes alone, we will continue with the same old shit forever. AND WE ALL FUCKING KNOW IT, RIGHT? Right?
Last week, the TMZ network was semi-odious sleaze, not to be found on the "bookmark" list of us good clean people. Yet now do they deserve praise for tanking the careers of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson? And/or, save the children! Save the women! And, it's the same exact thing. Now I will crawl a bit out the limb: I think (and hope) that there may be some benefit from researching and experimenting with the thought processes right at the triggering moment of a man trained for rapid, violent responses. The defensive end jukes left, so our hero the ball carrier instantly switches directions, in a sub, sub-second response drilled into his muscle memory through constant repetition and a strong awareness that violence will be applied to him rather drastically if he's not quick enough. And the bitch mouths off in the elevator and our hero's hand flies up and knocks her out in an instant, a sub-second response with absolutely NO filtering through the right/wrong switching channels, or even the slightest awareness that "the bitch" is quite a hideous label or category to tote around in the first place. So where do they learn to love and respect? Florida State University? Penn State? USC? Ohio State? U of Miami....
- molding the pride of American youth into liars, cheaters, thieves and rapists.
If there is to be peace on all fronts - AND football on Saturdays and Sundays - something rather major has to be first acknowledged, then studied, THEN treated. The largest hardest question is simply: CAN we acknowledge the connections here?
(Bombs away here, I'm hoping that thoughts towards progress - any progress - may be contained even within incensed messenger-shooting).