Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

Sure. Dallas wears a star. It wouldn't be any worse than that as far as I'm concerned. I watch and enjoy the game for what it is. I don't care what players do or wear. I'm simply not that fragile.

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

Principles do not equal fragility, comrade.

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

George Floyd was more a victim of himself than of the police.

NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

Personal principles are a basic set of rules that guide your life. Principles vary from person to person. What falls within one person's set of principles may very well not fit within yours. Your principles guide what you say or do, not what others say or do. Understandably, you personally would not wear a swastika or hammer and sickle on your helmet because it is against your principles. Someone else may not have the same boundaries within their set of principles. What they do or say should not affect your principles, or what you do or say. So what you say is true. Fragility doesn't equal principles. Fragility in the sense that I used it refers to a lack of tolerance of another's set of rules or principles ... what they choose to do or say.



I personally would not wear a swastika or hammer and sickle on my helmet because it is against my principles. However, I must be far more tolerant of others' principles. I do not let them upset me because they have no personal impact upon what I say or do. It all comes down to tolerance, or lack thereof, I suppose.

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

This should be the national message. We are idolizing a man who recently robbed a pregnant woman at gun point. Black folks are picking the wrong heroes. That is the type of thing that has helped hold them back. Black men and women love to holler at the police.

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

Conflating two different things. Everything about George Floyd is about the day that he died. It would not have mattered if he was a serial killer earlier in his life. Nothing he did on the day he died deserved the torture and death he received under the knee of that police officer.

No unarmed, cuffed person deserves that treatment no matter who they are or what they did. That's what folks who are calling for change are motivated by.

He's not a hero. He's a victim.

SFIAH

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

But he set himself up for failure by not cooperating with the police. But I guess that's what happens to ex-cons. Ex-con lives matter. To me all lives matter but I'm not supposed to say that because I'm offending someone.

Why do black people call each other the N word and yet it is offensive from whites? Is it offensive if a native American says it? What about Hispanics? We've got to stop the double standard.

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

This attitude is exactly what's wrong with some policing. Floyd was no threat to 4 armed police officers. The man was unarmed and cuffed. There was no reason for him to be prone with 3 grown men laying their bodyweight into him. Victim blaming simply doesn't work here.
None of this has anything to do with police brutality. So it's just a distraction from the issue at hand.

Point me to one thing and I'll go back to being quiet. Show me one instance where police shot an unarmed white guy in the back (Walter Scott, South Carolina, 2015), or choked to death pleading "I can't breathe" (Eric Garner, 2014), or a white child playing in a park gunned down by police (Tamir Rice, 2014), or a white woman gunned down by police in her own home while asleep (Brionna Taylor, 2020), or a white guy gunned down at a traffic stop while trying to explain possession of a legal firearm in the car (Philando Castille, 2016). Or an unarmed naked man being gunned down (Anthony Hill, Air Force Vet, 2015). I'll wait...

It's exactly the "must be an ex-con" or "they say the n-word to one another" or "that music" or whatever cultual reference that makes Black people "the other" that is the trigger for such brutality and death. Presuming guilt, performing the execution, then blaming the victim. This is a cycle that needs to stop.

SFIAH

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

I think the police should just argue the same thing as black people. "You don't know what's it's like being....a police officer. You don't understand what's it's like to have people look at you and hate you just because of the color of your uniform. You don't know what's it's like to have people treat you differently because of the color of your uniform. Because some cop on the other side of the United States made a bad decision or got scared and ****ed up. You don't know what it's like to be judged by people just because of your occupation. You don't know what it's like to have people want to hurt you or your family because of your occupation. "

Re: NFL To Allow Players To Wear Helmet Decals For Victims Like George Floyd et al
 

That is absolutely true for 99.9% of officers out there. They just want to come in, do their job, go home, and be with their families just like the rest of us. And nothing that I've pointed out so far does not negate the fact that there are bad actors of all stripes.

The difference is that police officers have a state sponsored mandate that allows for them to apply force, up to and including lethal force, against the public. With that mandate comes the responsibility and the restraint needed not to kill people in the public unless they are in fact in a situation where their lives are threatened. And a civilian, especially an unarmed one, who happens to not immediately comply with an order from an officer isn't immediately a threat to the life of that officer.

And unfortunately it happens everywhere. So while this week it's police in Aurora, Colorado taking a 6 year old and her family out of a car, cuffing her, and forcing her to the ground, next week it'll be somewhere else where someone's brother, father, sister, or aunt will be subject to similar or worse treatment. Does anyone expect that child to ever trust a police officer again?

Bad actors in uniform need to be stopped. When there are tasers, guns, radio, backup, and an entire force available to you, it's not too much to ask not to mistreat unarmed civilians, especially ones who are cuffed, no matter how they are acting.

SFIAH