5/18/07 Thrones of Tyranny:
My cousin and I often engage in spirited discussions about football. Not so much about the games themselves, but because I tend to be as interested in player personalities as much as their performance. This leads to differing perceptions of character quality, team 'playerness', etc. Recently Ricky Williams was dismissed from football because a drug test once again found traces of marijuana in his system. Ricky is a mild mannered, pensive, light hearted running back who often spends off season living in a tent somewhere's in the wilderness or participating in some sort of off the wall group activities to improve his depth of life understanding. Whether any of this ever achieves much would not be for me to judge. Nothing about Ricky would lend any stranger to think he would ever remotely be one of the better running backs in the league. In football Ricky would be the square peg the League bosses try to fit into a round hole, a gentle pensive soul in a rough and violent sport. It appears that what the League has done to Ricky is legal, at least in the absence of any court challenge. It is also clear that what the league did was a willful act, in no way or form was it an action mandated by any laws outside of football. Marijuana does not have to be listed by the league as one of the drugs to be tested for in random drug tests. It behooves any boss, but especially any bosses responsible for the employment of large numbers of employees---and even more especially if the industry is a monopoly---to make decisions which ensure no employee is denied the opportunity for the wrong reason to pursue their career. After all, in this case Ricky can't just go work for a different employer---there is only one professional football league in this country.
In matters of individual freedom, justice, ethical behavior, and just logic in general I always turn to Lincoln. His understanding of human nature and the best form of governance to achieve the highest level of justice and freedom for all remains the 'last best hope' for good governance. This is probably the reason there are more books written about Lincoln than any other figure in history with the exception of Jesus.
"If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could then better judge what to do, and how to do it." This is where it always starts in matters of achieving justice for any situation. To logically put any drug on a list of banned drugs for any sport requires evidence that the drug impacts in a negative or positive way to performance. It is understandable and forgivable for the general public to be sold a bill a goods about anything from a particular war, economic policy, taxes, the medical impact of recreational drugs, etc. But corporate employers paid huge amounts of money and exalted titles are obligated to adequately and accurately research anything which impacts on the welfare and career of their employees. To implement employment policies solely based on 'league image' or to serve political purposes, is to be a corrupt employer, an unjust employer, an irresponsible employer. An employer should never sacrifice a good employee for the sake of corporate 'image'. But I jump the gun. As I indicated Lincoln is the best place to start in matters of justice, freedom, and responsibility.
"I trust I understand, and truly estimate the right of self-government. My faith in the proposition that EACH man should do precisely as he pleases with all which is exclusively his own, lies at the foundation of the sense of justice there is in me. I extend the principle to communities of men, as well as to individuals............I object to the assumption that there can be a moral right in the enslaving of one man by another. I object to it as a dangerous dalliance for a free people---a sad evidence that, feeling prosperity we forget right---that liberty, as a principle, we have ceased to revere.......it is the eternal struggle between these two principle---right and wrong---throughout the world. They are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle. The one is the common right of humanity and the other is the divine right of kings. It is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. It is the same spirit that says, 'You work and toil and earn bread, and I'll eat it.' No matter what shape it comes, whether from the mouth of a king who seeks to bestride the people of his own nation and live by the fruit of their labor, or from one race of men as an apology for enslaving another race (or one nation using 'free labor' to live by the fruit of foreign labor) or (an employer seeking to bestride the necks of the employees of his own corporate business), it is the same tyrannical principle........The world has never had a good definition of the word liberty, and the American people, just now, are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not all mean the same thing. With some the word liberty may mean for each man to do as he pleases with himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean for some men to do as they please with other men, and the product of other men's labor. Here are two, not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name--liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by two different and incompatible names--liberty and tyranny.....I am for the people of the whole nation doing just as they please in all matters which concern the whole nation; for those of each part doing just as they choose in all matters which concern no other part; and for each individual doing just as he chooses in all matters which concern nobody else.....This is a world of compensations; those who deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves; and under a just God, can not long retain it."
Control over our 'national' professional sport teams is firmly in the hands of select members of the 1% Club in America---the 1% who own as much wealth in the country as the bottom 90%. These professional sport team owners are off in a world pretty much of their own, protected by Congress from the kind of regulations and legal restraints imposed on other businesses in the country. They have a monopoly, there are no restraints as to how much money they can make off this monopoly, they rarely have to answer to the legal system the rest of us are so obligated to do, and for the most part, whatever the owners and Players Union agree to, become the laws upon which they are governed. The TV networks fawn all over the owners, always casting them and the Commissioner in the light of haloed benevolent guardians of keeping our national sports squeaky clean. I don't believe any major league owner has ever been hauled into our court system to answer any charges of illegal financial actions, fraud, etc that other businesses, at least on rare occasions, face. There is just something about owning a professional sport team which does not attract the kind of greedy and shady operatives that too often show up in other industries. Sure. It is so bad, this monopoly of secrecy and privilege, that any new owner has to be approved by the existing owners. There are really two cabals, the owners and the Players Union. Both are free, in the absence of any competition or normal legal restraints, to extract from the public as much money as they can pile up. The only nasty hassle is over how much the Owners get and how much the Players get. We all know what the fans get and Ricky Williams just got.
To keep the public compliant with the situation, professional sport operations become a massive public relations endeavor. The really neat thing about this effort is the eagerness of the media to cooperate---after all the media compete for the lucrative TV and radio contracts. To ever attack, or uncover any of the greediest operations of the leagues would cost any network a small fortune in lost revenues from TV contracts. So I guess in some respects we have a triumvirate---the owners, the players union, and the networks. The whole thing is closer to a mobster operation than the operation of the mob itself. My case here is with the system, not the individuals. When people are left free to abuse power, money, and control, they inevitably will with the possible exception of you and I. And sometimes I wonder about you. The losers here are the public, both the fans (especially the low income fans) and the general public. Cities are routinely blackmailed, select college sports are perverted, the fans are forced to pay exorbitant prices for tickets, teams from one year to the next become often unrecognizable, off the field bad behavior by specially treated wealthy 'brats' from junior high on becomes increasingly frequent and violent, most citizens are no longer able to afford tickets to games (in some instances all the tickets to all the games are season held by the wealthy and corporations). To protect this 'Kingdom' from any reform or investigations the 'Kingdom' has the biggest public relations operation outside of the Presidents of our country. It works. Most every person will complain about prices, player behaviors off the field, player salaries, etc. but suggest city ownership of our national sport teams and this is not received as a good idea. Probably 90% will disagree. Amazing. Like so many other things out of control in our modern society one has to wonder where this is all leading.
One of the public relations objectives of the Owners is to project an image of getting tough on recreational drug abuse. The public eats that up. The public has been eating that up for 50 years, fed on a steady diet of political fear-monging and disinformation. Getting tough on recreational drug abuse, unless the drug in question is used by the majority population, is invariably a toughness applied to the recreational drugs used by a minority of the population. Only when cigarette use, through education, became a bad habit of a distinct minority, was there any crackdown. Rather than go off on my usual tirade here, I will limit this to two principles: Only medical scientists knowledgeable in the science of these recreational drugs should be allowed to let their findings become laws which govern their toxicity to the body or to prohibition of their use. Secondly, recreational drug abuse never was, and never will be, just a bunch of bad ass evil people hell bent on disrupting social tranquility. Recreational drug abuse is a medical problem which develops in response to mental stresses of various sorts---some are mental conditions with a genetic origin and some a product of environmental stresses. We ought never to jail people with medical problems, and for the most part we seldom do, unless they they are poor, the wrong race, or members of a despised group. The ones we jail by the hundreds of thousands are the sellers, which conveniently tend to be the poorest of our youth living in the bowels of communities destroyed by our War on Drugs. It is not much exaggeration to state that most people have no comprehension of the nature of recreational drug abuse until someone close to them has one. Then, just like that, they suddenly realize the problem is a sad mental condition needing treatment. It upsets them, at that point, that there are laws which could lock up their young son or daughter for decades.
Many of us develop mental states which are alleviated by drugs. We go to the doctor and get our drugs by prescription. No one labels us a dopehead, tries to arrest us or the doctor who gave us the drug, or threatens to put us or our doctor in jail for decades. The day all drug use to alter our mental state is controlled by the medical field and not the police and politicians is the day when progress will begin toward really helping those with needs. Marijuana is by far less toxic than almost all other popular recreational drugs of abuse and far less toxic than some of the prescription drugs used to treat mental conditions. Doctors should be deciding to what extent, if at all, any drug is used to alleviate mental stresses. It should never be under the control of public opinion, politicians, police, or the Commissioner of Football.
Playing professional football is surely immensely stressful. In fact life for everyone is stressful. I take a glass of wine with my supper every night (unless I eat out, then I am too cheap to pay the cost) because it gives me a pleasant buzz. Some can't do that because they have a genetic makeup such that they will likely not be able to stop and end up alcoholics. Some combat stress by smoking pot instead of a glass of wine. The poor in the ghetto, under high levels of stress and frustration, may turn to heroin to relieve the mental pain while the affluent under similar strain for differing reasons, may get a prescription for valium or other sedatives. Any of this should be under medical supervision, period. And this medical supervision should be available to all citizens, ESPECIALLY those in the most dire of environments.
But enough, what happened to Ricky Williams, by the ignorance of the Commissioner of Football should not be permissible. No one, to my knowledge, who ever was a coach, teammate or friend of Ricky Williams has ever remotely indicated he was not a valued employee however that is measured, and thus his firing, based on any job performance criteria, is a travesty of justice.
My cousin won the argument on the legality of what happened. I was naively under the impression that you could only fire a person for job related poor performance or the firing was discriminatory. It turns out that in most states I guess you can fire an employee at will unless you state the reason to be one of selected protected categories, like based on sex, or age, or race or sexual orientation etc. Otherwise I guess you can kind of fire them without cause. This puzzles me though. It seems that the existence of these exceptions kind of creates a reverse protection for the protected categories. Like anyone else can be fired for any reason unless they are a minority race or a certain age, etc in which case they could go to court and claim you fired them for reasons of race or age in this case. Crazy. My lawyer also pointed out, that for the most part a lot of this is moot. Larger businesses often have unions and unions invariably put into the contract the specific reasons for which an employee can be fired and these tend to be all work related causes. Work for the government and I guess it is virtually impossible to be fired. Small businesses rarely fire employees except for work related matters or personality conflicts of some sort. My lawyer pointed out that it is very rare for anyone to be fired for marijuana use on the side except in security jobs with random drug tests. Acoholics often have problems because of the after affects of the drinking which become evident on the job. She then humorously told me that the most common personal off the job indulgence which leads to bad job performance is staying up too late and being tired on the job because of that or working two jobs and not getting enough sleep. Her point is that few people in small businesses are being fired for wrong reasons since they value a good worker and personally tend to know them and be protective. The likelihood of a small business owner running drug tests to check for marijuana use is almost unheard of she pointed out. Were it otherwise millions of Americans would be at risk of losing their jobs.
Well good luck to Ricky. He is lucky. He has made a lot of trusted and faithful friends in football and I am confident he will be given opportunities to make a decent living at something. He never did put money as a high priority. Even when making a huge salary he lived in small houses and often in a tent off season. He always was smiling, pleasant, fair, cooperative, a hard worker, and unusually unselfish for a football player. He never seemed at all competitive about how much he played or what asked to do. He seemed always to enjoy what was on his plate. I think maybe I need spend a few months in a tent. Nah, I am a spoiled creature of comfort now, too far along in life to be sleeping in a tent. But I admit, one learns a lot from observing people like Ricky. He gives you food for thought about priorities and perspectives in life.
I still find it odd and unjust that the Commissioner of Football can be an inebriated sop a great deal of the time, or a notoroious womanizer, a gopher for the owners, or a greedy amasser of great wealth on the backs of the common citizens, raise ticket prices to any level to support outrageous salaries for themselves and the better players, or blackmail the taxpayers of one city or another---any of this and more, and by the laws agreed to by the Commissioner and the Player's Union, such a commissioner would not be considered detrimental to the game of football. Poor Ricky, he smokes pot on his own time to relax and reduce the stresses in his life instead of roaring from bar to bar in a drunken binge, and he is considered detrimental to the best interests of football. Perhaps noting this oddity is clearly peculiar to me. I would rather keep Ricky in the game and change the whole structure of how professional sports are run, giving the fans a place at the bargaining table. Professional sport teams are essentially national endeavors and should meet the needs of all citizens and operate on reasonable salary schedules and rules of behavior. Maybe just then, sport fans would find a measurable trace of Terrell's "fair is fair" in league contracts and rules.
P.S. I suppose I need add the following statement: I do not now, or ever have, used marijuana to relieve the stresses in my life. Hey, maybe I should have. Smile. The perspective above comes from my career as a Physiologist who taught for decades a course titled: "The Physiological Aspects of Drugs and Drug Abuse" Most of the recreational drugs of abuse have been around for a long time. In almost all cases we know exactly on which kind of cells the receptors are found, the physiologic effects on varied body systems, the side effects, the toxicity, etc----just like we know all this for many other drugs. The real challenge in Drug abuse is to better understand the origin and best treatment for those mental states which generate recreational drug abuse. It has been the misfortune in this country to have politicians and police get the control over these drugs. The result has been a total disaster, one that would take a book to adequately document.
