I don’t watch football but I know the National Football League (NFL) has a hard-on for the war effort. Football games are chock-full of American flags, soldiers in uniform, socialist pledges, and people covering their hearts to do a shitty job of singing a shitty anthem. This entire dog and pony show appears to be put on voluntarily by the NFL as an act of piety but it’s actually paid good money to propagandize:
WASHINGTON — The Department of Defense doled out as much as $6.8 million in taxpayer money to professional sports teams to honor the military at games and events over the past four years, an amount it has “downplayed” amid scrutiny, a report unveiled by two Senate Republicans on Wednesday found.
Arizona Sens. John McCain and Jeff Flake began looking into the Defense Department’s spending of taxpayer dollars on military tributes in June after they discovered the New Jersey Army National Guard paid the New York Jets $115,000 to recognize soldiers at home games.
The 145-page report released Wednesday dives deeper, revealing that 72 of the 122 professional sports contracts analyzed contained items deemed “paid patriotism” — the payment of taxpayer or Defense funds to teams in exchange for tributes like NFL’s “Salute to Service.” Honors paid for by the DOD were found not only in the NFL, but also the NBA, NHL, MLB and MLS. They included on-field color guard ceremonies, performances of the national anthem, and ceremonial first pitches and puck drops.
The NFL has to be one of the largest welfare recipients in this country. Not only does it receive government funding to build stadiums and receive sweetheart tax breaks (it is, after all, a “nonprofit”) but it’s also getting money to promote the war effort.
In all fairness the NFL’s other sportsball siblings are on the dole as well, which is why it’s almost impossible to go to a sporting event without having to first sit through an hour of vomit inducing propaganda. And it makes sense when you think about it. How else could you get people to surrender their wealth so it can be used to bomb people all around the world? Unless you brainwash them into worshipping everything the military does few would be terribly happy about it.