Strib link. Headline and excerpt -
I'm through with the Vikings
Cousins' apparent vaccine refusal has me reassessing my loyalty once more.By Paul H. Anderson -- August 5, 2021
[...] I was once an avid Vikings fan. Sunday afternoons centered around their games, chips, hot sauce, a good beer and the company of a good friend. That ended after I heard and then authored the Minnesota Supreme Court's opinion in the case dealing with the death of lineman Korey Stringer.That opinion describes the negligent disregard the Vikings exhibited for Stringer's well-being, a disregard that resulted his death. What transpired with respect to Stringer was so disturbing that for years I could not bring myself to watch a Vikings game.
The team did institute some reforms, which allowed my interest in the Vikings to return, especially during Brett Favre's first year with the Vikings. That renewed interest was short lived, however. It ended quickly during the New Orleans playoff game when the New Orleans coaches, enabled by incompetent referees, promoted a vicious on-the-field assault upon Favre.
[... Present Vikings starting quarterback Kirk Cousins declines Covid vaccination.] The apparent failure of this $31 million salary-cap player to be vaccinated is unwise and demonstrates a profound lack of loyalty to his teammates and Vikings fans. I am unable to find rational scientific, philosophical, theological or ethical grounds to support his decision.
Cousins is a native of Holland, Mich., and a graduate of Holland Michigan Christian School, a legacy he shares with the likes of Betsy DeVos and her brother Erik Prince. Holland has a strong Dutch Reformed Christian tradition dominated by postmillennial evangelical fundamentalist thinking. This may explain, in part, Cousin's apparent refusal to get vaccinated. Many who share these religious beliefs believe it is against God's will to get vaccinated and that God will protect them from COVID-19.[...] What Cousins and others like him fail to comprehend is that God is protecting us. God has given humankind the ability to discover, within a very short time, a vaccine that protects us from this deadly disease. I believe that it is God's will that we accept this gift and get vaccinated. It is wrong for us not to accept God's grace.
Cousins' decision has caused me to reassess my interest in the Vikings. I ask why should I once again invest time and loyalty in a team whose franchise player is so willing to toy with that loyalty?
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian executed by the Nazis said, "Stupidity is a more dangerous enemy of the good than malice." He said we are often defenseless against stupidity because stupidity is deaf to reason and pushes facts aside, treating them as inconsequential.
[italics added] Of course one can applaud scientific achievement without any recourse to mythological constructs. Anderson does otherwise, but that is him thinking like a lawyer. That is not the message. The message is italicized in the last quoted paragraph, and applies to Trump voters, Cleveland Shontel Brown voters, and space-takers in the White House and both houses of Congress. Of which some are rational thinkers, the bought ones, licking the feeding hand, not biting.
As the Crabgrass headline notes, opinions can differ. Beyond that, Cousins is not Farve, not Brady, not Rogers. Nor Broadway Joe. Not a big-stage winner. Given the contract, yes. Deserving that contract and pay level, you decide, vaccine or not. The impecunious unquestioning market-loving capitalist will say the market worked, the contract exists. Again, the message is the italicized content in the final quoted paragraph. The super-wealthy capitalists, the Bloombergs among us, will say the system works like clockwork. We built it that way, bought, paid for.
Our way or the highway.