BY ED FELIEN
When Mark Dayton called it “The People’s Stadium,” he knew from reading Orwell’s “Animal Farm” that all people are equal, but some people are more equal than others. Ticket prices for the Super Bowl will probably reach $5,000. Not a price that a lot of lesser equal people in Minneapolis can afford.
We can’t afford to go inside the Winter Palace, but we’re expected to pay for it.
Joe Kimball said in MinnPost, July 17, 2015: “Minneapolis, meanwhile, will end up paying $678 million over its 30-year payment plan once interest, operations and construction costs are factored in.”
Most of that $678 million will come from a .5% citywide Viking Sales Tax—a tax that’s driving department stores and small businesses out of the city.
Roman Emperors provided free bread and circuses to the plebeians so they wouldn’t revolt.
Today, the plebeians are taxed to pay for gladiatorial sports for plutocrats.
Watching football is watching grown men trying to give each other brain damage.
The Chicago Tribune reported Jan. 9, 2018: “The largest report to date on chronic traumatic encephalopathy included 202 brains from football players at the youth, college and professional level, all donated post-mortem to a Boston brain bank. CTE was detected in all but one of the 111 NFL players studied, 90 percent of the college players and 20 percent of the high school players.”
We are witnessing a criminal event.
“Minnesota Statute 609.224; ASSAULT IN THE FIFTH DEGREE. Subdivision 1.Misdemeanor. Whoever does any of the following commits an assault and is guilty of a misdemeanor: (1) commits an act with intent to cause fear in another of immediate bodily harm or death; or (2) intentionally inflicts or attempts to inflict bodily harm upon another.”
By witnessing a criminal event and not doing anything about it, we are condoning it. And, as taxpayers in Minneapolis, we are also subsidizing it.
The odds are 110 to 1 against a gladiator coming out of that game without brain damage. They are all but one condemned to an early and painful death.
And young people watch. And they see someone get hit and fall to the ground. And they see that, and they can feel themselves how that would feel to be hit and knocked down. And then they see how the guy gets up and walks away like nothing happened. And the young kids want to be like that. Indestructible. Tough.
A civilized society would end this.
It will begin to end when a victim, someone damaged by football, steps forward and acts to stop it by filing a motion in Hennepin County District Court.
The court will listen best to someone who can prove damages.
In the meantime, welcome to the Madness.
You can join the Resistance at Franklin and Chicago on Sunday, Feb. 4, at 3 o’clock.
