i don't 100% agree but good read:
Straight Bangin': A Synagogue of Satan
know thy works (behold, I have set before thee a door opened, which none can shut), that thou hast a little power, and didst keep my word, and didst not deny my name. Behold, I give of the synagogue of Satan, of them that say they are Jews, and they are not, but do lie; behold, I will make them to come and worship before thy feet, and to know that I have loved thee. Because thou didst keep the word of my patience, I also will keep thee from the hour of trial, that hour which is to come upon the whole world, to try them that dwell upon the earth. I come quickly: hold fast that which thou hast, that no one take thy crown.
Revelation, 3:8-11
The Book of Revelation is many things, most of them fodder for passionate debate on all sides. For instance, it may or may not portend how this mortal world shall end. Skeptics might point to the hallucination-like levels of violence as evidence that John's apocalyptic vision is insane and fictional, but at the same time, the world doesn't end every day. Maybe the cataclysm foreseen in scripture is of an appropriate magnitude if time is to end.
As a piece of literature, Revelation stands out for its patent efforts to literally demonize "others." The excerpt above is a perfect example: non-believers are not only guilty of forsaken faith, but they are from a gutter system. The alleged heretics are tarred as evil minions of the Devil--not merely as those with different beliefs--and then cast as the wrongful Jews who worship in a house of damnation, a "synagogue of Satan." Given the historical cleavage which saw some Jews stake a claim to the "true Judaism," Christianity, Revelation makes sense on this level as propaganda. An effective way to legitimize something new is to undermine the alternative. The net effect is that Jews are made out as inferior, and those who would opt to participate in a debased tradition shall be punished through subordination. Particularly clever is the threat that non-believers shall know that the Lord loved their righteous conquerors. Turns the idea of chosen people on its head, doesn't it?
Constructing frightful "others" is a human tradition, and its practice is well honed in America. That so many religions--not just Christianity, of course--traffic in this process only serves to illustrate how foundational it can be. (It does seem fair to point out, though, that Christianity is the dominant faith in the United States, and it professes a distinctly graphic conception of how dissenters shall perish and suffer.) From American Indians, to black people, to Asians, to Communists, to Muslims, and beyond, American history is filled with synthesized villains. Americans just like things to be this way.
Aside from Christianity, America's reigning faith is football. The NFL has become a civic religion, consumed year-round, treated as sacrosanct, and even worshiped on Sundays. It reaches into all communities, driving social life and Main Street commerce (games shown here!) around the country. Only Americans play it well because we invented it, and yet, football is a cultural export important enough to draw more viewers to its yearly signature event than anything else on the planet. The NFL is massive business with the power to preempt, or merely trump, almost everything else. The beer industry, the car industry, the entertainment industry, the gambling industry--they all need football. In turn, the economy does.
Over time, as a result of these deep, far-reaching roots, the league has become a microcosm for the nation. It's now a venue where American issues, not just football ones, play out. Geopolitics, social concerns, cultural zeitgeist all regularly intersect with the league. As a collective people, we project so many emotions onto the NFL and its personnel. Persistent matters of national constitution--like drugs, violence, domestic abuse, class strife, race relations, gender identities--all find a football theater. And it's not just that these externalities influence the sport; rather, we place tremendous emphasis on how they interact and what results. Witness Justin Timberlake and Janet Jackson. Or Michael Jackson's legendary halftime show. Or Terrell Owens hugging Nicolette Sheridan. Or even Lyle Alzado.
So we've turned football into any other of our sacred belief systems. Like Christianity, we now ask it to read a moral compass, to wield righteous power, to villify and then punish others. That's how Americans like it.
Roger Goodell is the high priest of the NFL, and it's a role he relishes. Since ascending as Paul Tagliabue's successor, he's rarely hesitated to mete out moral punishment, almost always with the weight of an approving public making the sentence that much heavier. The NFL under Goodell's direction specializes in morality plays, and in almost all of them, the black player engaging in moral terpitude gets it as the audience cheers. The legal system may have its say in these affairs, but ultimately, it is the NFL that renders true judgment.
This is why Plaxico Burress will ultimately have to answer to Goodell, regardless of what a court decides. This is why Adam Jones had to do everything but pee into a cup as Goodell watched. And this is why
Michael Vick will now be suspended after having already gone to jail. The civic religion of the NFL does not suffer black men who offend moral sensibilities. Matt Leinart can drink with minors and neglect his child. Tom Brady can rule the world and sire children out of wedlock. That's fine. But black men? That they're systematically summoned to New York as supplicants who must satisfy Goodell's skepticism concerning their remorse only invites echoes of "I will make them to come and worship before thy feet." Goodell's NFL appears to view these black men as members of Satan's synagogue.
How else can we reconcile the punishment doled out to Vick? He, like Jones, and Burress, committed a crime. No one argues otherwise, and no one excuses running afoul of the law. However, the legal system has already rendered its judgment and exacted its measure of retribution. A debt to society has been paid. What remains for Vick, then, is purely theater, one of Goodell's "scared straight" exercises in embarrassment, one meant to satisfy the lusting masses who find Vick repulsive. It's disgusting.
Since he was first covered by the media, prosecuted by the government, and admonished by the NFL with such brio, Vick has served as a vessel for the country's anger toward black men. There was
little effort made to understand what he did and why he did it, as though stopping to do so would necessarily excuse it. Beyond this lack of general curiosity and empathy, there was an ugly racial element. To be blunt, Vick's crime was a black one. This does not mean that dog fighting is an exclusively black precinct. Rather, it means that Vick's crime naturally came out of the specific poor, black community in which he was raised, and in which dog fighting was a norm for him and his peers. There wasn't much room in the narrative to acknowledge this caveat. Instead, it was easier and more satisfying to carry that knowledge unspoken and merely draw upon the emotion it engendered to make an example out of an abject black sinner. There was perverse zeal behind the collective desire for an other--a poor, black other who suddenly represented the things people don't like about poor black people--to answer for not only his actions, but for being different in the first place. Newport News might as well have been Smyrna.
Beyond the the much-embraced absurdity which sanctions the NFL's elevation above the governing legal system, this formalized, wink-wink racial hostility sits next to an unnerving sense that Vick hasn't suffered enough as the disturbing results of the entire ordeal. The latter first: the man is bankrupt and spent two years in prison. That is punishment, and punishment dictated by the law. Why must he be punished again? What is the point? What is the value? And sorry to crass, but for dog fighting? When people who kill others or hit their spouses do far less jail time?
And about the former: how can the NFL countenance its treatment of Vick when contrasted with its treatment of white offenders? Vick committed a crime, but again, we have a legal system for that. The NFL takes action on moral grounds. It says nothing about the moral transgressions of white stars, as noted above. Further, it did almost nothing to a white man, Bill Belichick, when he was proven to have undermined the integrity of the league's greatest asset, it's games. Belichick paid a fine and lost a draft pick. For cheating. Michael Vick went to jail, and now he is suspended and subjected to boundless paternalism that dictates he submit to Goodell and Tony Dungy. Why wasn't a white sinner, any white sinner, placed under similar league monitoring for his sins?
Race is the answers, of course. The NFL, a civic religion and as American as apple pie, adjudicates the moral conflicts which inhere to its privileged position. It embodies American values. And as such, it treats black men with a disdain that is oft reserved for those others whom we wish to cast out.
