Brain Damage

     "I like watching football. I used to like watching those hard hits. The refs have ruined football, but it needed to be ruined because what people like me enjoyed watching is killing people. The fact that the players were OK with with the risk doesn't change that."

           Robert Warren, Age 93, sheltered in place in an assisted living facility

Bob Warren created a stir last month. He said something ahead of its political time. He said it before Trump said it.

He wrote here that we should open up the general economy because it was crazy to arrange society for the benefit of a small group of vulnerable people, people like himself. People who were old and sick. People who were going to die pretty soon anyway.

When public figures like the Texas Lieutenant Governor first said it, the liberal media, blogosphere, and Democratic officeholders went crazy. Whatever happened to the sanctity of life? What about old people who want to live? They said they were shocked and offended that someone would say aloud some version of the Eskimos being placed on the ice meme.

The GOP is OK with letting grandma die!! 

They also pointed out the hypocrisy, since the political right has as a defining issue opposition to abortion. Unborn life is precious but old people aren't.

Democratic framing

Now, two months later, the issue has changed. Americans have tired of social distancing. Nearly a thousand people showed up at county offices in my home community to demand an end to government tyranny. Let the vulnerable shelter, let the rest of us work and play, the protesters said. And besides, the virus is just bullshit anyway, hardly anybody gets it, and if one is worried, protect yourself. It is every person for himself. 

Warren himself lives in comfortable, boring lockup. His assisted living facility does what is common practice. Isolate the residents. The dining room is closed and group activities are cancelled. People stay in their room and food is brought to them.

Open the economy and let the worried protect themselves. That is the Trump position, the position of Fox news hosts, and it is increasingly the standard Republican candidate and officeholder position. This contrast with Democrats, the job killing, worry wort, tyrants, as they frame it. 

Polls show that Trump is losing some support among what had been his strongest demographic, seniors, and Biden is slightly ahead in Florida polls. There are far, far more young people than seniors and they appear to be voting with their feet and mask-less faces. They are back in restaurants and bars, mingling. Young people consider the virus to be a small risk, one worth taking. Democrats are taking the short straw in this divide. They are leaning against a majority. Worse, they are leaning against what people want to do.

Warren cannot bring himself to say we should ban football, although that is the only realistic way to provide the safety he says we need. He demonstrates the Democrats political peril. We are the land of the free and the home of the brave. 

Guest Comment by Bob Warren 

Football is another coronavirus, a silent killer.

A cataclysm is often described as a violent event, often causing great change and the Corona virus certainly qualifies as a “game changer.”  While the loss of life directly attributable to this pandemic is tragic, some good may still be garnered if the current policy of discouraging and prohibiting public gatherings should result in the cancellation of the football season. 

Bob Warren, sheltered.

I myself confess to being a longtime follower of the sport and enjoy every aspect of the game, the overall strategies, the athleticism and yes, the violence that is an essential aspect of the sport. However, my enthusiasm for the sport has waned as continuing research into CTE (Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy) a serious brain disorder previously known to us as “punch drunk”) confirms that the disease, caused primarily by the brain being repeatedly struck, or concussed, has been a primary factor in the premature deaths of an ever growing list of retired football players.  

The debilitating effects of concussions, like exposure to radiation, is both cumalative and permanent. Time does not heal the wounds of either disease. Recently a long suspected link between the disease and total time of exposure has been established tying those who have participated for the longest period of time in the sport as the most vulnerable to CTE. Unfortunately, short of an autopsy there is no way to determine the presence of these insidious injuries to the brain. Only after death occurs, often caused by suicide or extreme physical disability, and the brain is sliced open to reveal the tell-tall lesions can a diagnosis be certain.          

An ever growing number of premature and unnatural deaths have now been traced to this deadly condition as part of the CTE research now being conducted at Boston University. After the death of ex-Steeler great Mike Webster, the first to be diagnosed as a victim of CTE, and the suicide of  legendary pro footballer Junior Seau, did full awareness of this devastating disease emerge to spur research. 

Perhaps the greatest stumbling block in exposing the inherent dangers of CTE has been the utterly hypocritical response of the NFL and its Commisioner, Roger Goodell. Directed by Goodell, the NFL adopted an obstructionist policy of denial and obfuscation, stubbornly ignoring a growing mass of evidence that signified that something was terribly wrong. The immense profitability of the NFL was being threatened by some heretofore unknown malady, an unthinkable and unacceptable concept to the NFL and its franchise holders, a group of money-grubbing multi-millionaires. Unknowingly, we may have been “dumbing down” a goodly number of our youth as the popularity of the sport has soared. 

Perhaps the time has come to view all aspects of the sport realistically and determine the inherent risk factors from a life and death viewpoint, just as we have been forced to do in dealing with the Corona Virus.