Violence, Straight Up

YESTERDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2012, armistice day, three quarterbacks in the national football league suffered concussions. The one good thing about this is that all three were reported, and dealt with medically. There was a time in the NFL, quite recently in fact, when the reporting and medical treatment never would have occured. Instead, the player would spend a few minutes on the bench, clearing his head, while his teammates would joke with him about having had his "bell rung", and  jokingly asking him if he could remember his own name.

For those of you in countries other than the united states, american football, you may know, is a version of english rugby, with greatly enhanced violence and "protective" body armor. Worldwide, rugy is a much more popular sport, and probably a superior one, but here in amerca our special brand is all consumingly popular.

As american cultre becomes ever more violent, so does the popularity of american football. We all love it here, or at least a large majority of us, including yours truly. Anyone with discernment might well ask why. The answer is probably  that american culture was founded on violence, evolved in violence, and we americans take our violence anyway we can, the best way we know how; vicariously.

Anyone who has watched football for, say, the past fifty years can easily see that the game has become more violent. There was a time when the essential skills were "blocking" and "tackling". Now, the essential skill is "hitting". It simply is no longer enough to block and tackle effectively; one must do it with excessive brute force.

WE are becoming more aware and responsive to injuries only because we are forced to by their frequency and severity. Also because retired professional football players almost to a man have debilitating physical conditions brought about by having spent a partial lifetime on the gridiron, (football field), and because many of them have filed lawsuits, still unresolved, against the national football league. .

All over our great nation men in their forties and fifties are experiencing dementia, quite likely the result of brain damage from playing, and from the cultural feature of using the football helmet not as a protective measure, but as a weapon. Football helmets used to be made of leather. Now they are made of harder than hell plastic, which seems to the touch like steel.

To suggest that football return to blocking and tackling, leather helmets, gentlemanly play and  that it  start penalizing anyone using excessive and unnecessary force while making physical contact with another player would be tantamount to sacrilege.

In america, we take our violence straight up.