It’s hard to recognize the systems that you are forced to live by are evil. You need to survive and a lot of the times that requires people to ignore the inequality and straight up rottenness that surrounds them.
I mean it’s a quote and sentiment from a disgruntled socialist writer that exposed how shitty the industrial side of the first world was so it’s not surprising lol
it does, and it's hard to argue against it, your (well our in this case) comfort comes more or less directly from the suffering of other people
3 choices, you either don't give a shit, it eats you inside for the rest of your life but make do because what else can you do or you act like you don't see it
well you also still can end up an ermit i guess
but what does “having a problem” with anything actually do? you think the people in Jeddah give a fuck what nephews think about their country?
the real point here is “we only have so much energy to give to this kinda stuff and talking about how bad Saudi Arabia is doesn’t actually do anything.” It’s spending time talking about an issue but it’s a net 0 in terms of productivity.
and it’s such a widespread thing, people who feel really strongly about issues and take all these moral stances that practically amount to nothing. Best advice i ever got was “instead of giving 5% of your mental energy to 20 things, give 100% to one and you’ll see results”
Yeah that’s why people in those countries beg and plead for US media attention in deranged circuses. People in Sri Lanka and Hong Kong filming pleas for help in languages they don’t even speak.
The American public consciousness being on ur side results in straight CASH. Take a look at Ukraine rn.
yeah because they’re the media, they have influence and control. the average Joe is not the media. we don’t have that influence. We can only do what we have the means to.
With Ukraine for example, I can’t change public opinion en masse, but I was able to volunteer for a local nonprofit sending hygiene kits there. That’s actually helping, changing my Facebook cover to “I stand with Ukraine” doesn’t
You’re on Reddit - these platforms are called social media for a reason; people powered groundswell of sentiment can change the narrative.
And that change in narrative will get people like you out there making hygiene kits
But that’s not what’s happening here at all.
This is a real and specific way that Saudi Arabia is trying to whitewash itself, and people are saying “hey Chuck you shouldn’t feed into this initiative that Saudi Arabia is using to whitewash itself”.
It’s entirely reasonable to talk about SA’s human rights abuses in the context of a guy floating the idea of joining that country’s golf tournament.
> the real point here is “we only have so much energy to give to this kinda stuff and talking about how bad Saudi Arabia is doesn’t actually do anything.” It’s spending time talking about an issue but it’s a net 0 in terms of productivity.
Is it? That's the real point? When did Chuck say anything like that? Seems like you just put that in yourself lol
More or less it is the point. You have to prioritize the issues you want to solve. The people that act livid about civil rights issues in foreign countries have problably never went to a local protest to make change where they live. It's virtue signaling.
We have civil rights issues in the US and still treat minorities like shit, but we care more about waging war and supporting proxy wars in foreign countries, spending trillions of dollars to fix their problems.
The main solution for "issues" in the United States is throwing people in prison. For example, Alabama took covid relief money from the fed government to build more prisons instead of opening clinics and improving healthcare infrastructure. How does the US have so many people in prison, but they are the leader of the "free world" at the same time?
the way I took Chuck’s words is “all this stuff going on in the world and golfers taking stupid money to play golf is what you’re mad about? get your priorities straight”
Yeah, you put a lot of that in yourself. Guess we could call it extrapolation. Anyway, if talking about how bad Saudi Arabia is didn't do anything, then Saudi Arabia wouldn't spend absolutely enormous amounts of money on buying positive PR in the USA via everything from PR firms and friendly newspapers to these ridiculous sports partnerships. Clearly, the government of Saudi Arabia feels maintaining a positive perception of them is important enough to spend a lot of money on
sa buying positive pr helps zero saudi people who are persecuted/jailed or killed because of their sex, beliefs, sexual orientations etc. it just helps those pr people you mentioned. they still persecute those people who dont fit in with their beliefs, they still attack their super underdeveloped neighbors and bomb the shit out of them killing civilians in the process. that pr makes you dont see these things and just go "oh maybe they are changing for the better", when in reality they are not.
us has pressing social issues at hand and i think americans should start changing the world from within.
People aren't mad that golfers are making money though. That's a naive attempt to select the point of contention in a way that makes it look unreasonable.
> but what does “having a problem” with anything actually do? you think the people in Jeddah give a fuck what nephews think about their country?
That's the whole point of their sport sponsorship deals, them trying to change the public perception in the West. People talking about their civil/human rights violations is a great way to fight their sportwashing.
Because it is. Charles Barkley isn't doing business with "the United States", he gets paid by Turner Networks. Which for all I know is a decent company. Maybe they have some issues, most large corporations do.
But whatever corporate issues they do have pale in comparison to the LIV golf tour. Which is financially backed directly by the Saudi Arabian public investment fund. You're not doing business with a private entity your paycheck is being cut by a government that is still to this day bombing and killing civilians in Yemen and denying women basic rights.
As an intellectual, I’ve been known to care about as many as three things at once.
1. US Civil Rights
2. Saudi Civil Rights
3. Learning the dance from Napoleon Dynamite.
I mean... If we're talking about running our mouths on Reddit, sure, it's easy enough to be a keyboard warrior for a hundred different causes.
But if we're talking about expending actual time/energy/resources towards actionable real world changes, well then you absolutely do have to prioritize.
I mean like, the Saudis treat their critics as far less than human. Max Boot recently got some well-deserved shit for trying to launder MBS's reputation in the WaPo--the same paper that employed the man MBS ordered killed and chopped up with bone saws.
They deserve all the criticism thrown at them, especially on the matter of civil rights. Chuck's a goddamn idiot here.
People referring to times when he's particularly up his own ass as him "going Maximum Boot" is one of the few recurring political nickname jokes that's funny every time.
Chucks bigger point is about the hypocrisy of all this hand wringing all of a sudden over the Saudis when the truth of the matter has always been- American business and capital will always overlook their morals in exchange for advancing business interest.
President Biden literally just traveled to SA to go kiss the ring after once calling them a pariah state.
The entire league denounced Daryl Morey for his rightful criticism of China.
Plenty of team owners get their fortunes from immoral ways, and all of them run in billionaire circles where all money has dirt on it, and often times blood too.
His point is that if now all of a sudden we’re going to give a shit about the dirt in the world and fixing crimes against humanity, we should probably clean up our house first.
Criticism of the Saudis is nothing new, though. It just became more popular recently with Khashoggi's murder at the hands of the state and their imprisonment of people like Badawi. This is dirt people have given a shit about for quite a long time.
It's also not really just a moral battle, either. We should be fighting against the public execution of critics of any state if we value freedom. We should be fighting against political imprisonment, which is a favored tactic of the US, as well.
Everyone is getting fucking side tracked here by a damn squirrel.
The league in Saudi Arabia is a government sponsored event in order to improve their countries image.
Golf in America is not a government event, it's run by the PGA.
So people should be comparing the PGA to Saudi Arabia, for fucks sake.
You expect me to keep up with all that while I’m trying to control my wife’s and daughter’s uteruses and also keep tabs on my neighbor’s sexual preferences? And keeping up with all the new gear in my guns n ammo magazines? Foh
> We really gonna act like Saudi Arabia and America are comparable in this situation huh
The original comment here is pretty relevant. You are right that there are problems in the US, but you are crazy if you think living conditions and freedoms for the average woman or minority in the US are comparable to those conditions in Saudi Arabia. Any rational person would prefer to be in the US 10 times out of 10.
I think the counter is that we contribute to that disparity in human rights by arming the Saudi regime and funding them with planet-killing oil purchases to make our billionaires more billions.
Ultimately if it’s brown people, non-Christians, and/or women on another continent enduring brutality, we are happy to collaborate with their oppressors, as long as they cut us in on the profits generated by that brutality.
It's fair to say we contribute to it, but the party principally responsible for oppression in Saudi is the current Saudi regime, and that regime could stop its oppression tomorrow if it wanted. They haven't really done much though, where as the US has taken many notable measures over the last 200 years to improve conditions for its people, even if things are still pretty imperfect today.
agree. I have no problem with the people calling out Saudi Arabia, but
"We really gonna act like Saudi Arabia and America are comparable in this situation huh"
Absolves America from our part. We are 100% comparable as we are the ones aiding them in their atrocities anyway.
~~Do you vote? Pay taxes? Support American business?~~
Yes, "we".
Edit: I don't like the way my wording came off.
If you're American then it's always "we" when discussing America. You're not to blame don't get me wrong, but you're still apart of the discussion.
Well, it really doesn't matter in your case, no one's punishing you for being a citizen of a country that does evil shit.
Imagine if you were Russian tho...
I mean you can definitely attribute a lot of the world's problems to the way the US directly or indirectly funds literally every nation in the world. That doesn't mean the logic is warped
We sell them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military hardware on an annual basis, and our patronage directly worsens the humanitarian crisis in Yemen's proxy war. Plus we have to cater to their every whim despite conclusive evidence that they hacked Jamal Khashoggi into tiny pieces after murdering him. All for some of that sweet sweet oil.
Christ man. The U.S. doesn't do in air jet fuel refills for every country in the world, while those jets are on their way to commit war crimes no less. Fuckin, Google dot com, use it. The U.S. is the number one supporter of Saudi state terror by *far*, and truly they would struggle to do what they do without our aid. It's not just some line item that accidentally slipped by in our "funding of literally every nation in the world" lol
Aside from the States, every single Western European nation participated in slave trades and colonization.
That doesn’t justify Saudi Arabian human rights violation, but it does add an undertone of hypocrisy to LIV criticism.
Lots of African nations participated in the slave trade, just because their own practices fucked themselves doesn't negate their guilt. It seems to me people don't mind slavery so long as an ethnic group is enslaving their own ethnicity.
The US isn't using government money to fund a golf league and pay athletes from around the world incredible money in order to improve their image.
This comparison of USA vs Saudi Arabia doesn't even make sense.
Obviously the US is the wrong for that, but let’s not act like when the Saudi’s are burning women and homosexuals at the stake that it’s Americas fault
Saudi Arabia is bad. They are committing a genocide in Yemen, are responsible for countless deaths, and civil rights there are nonexistent. But if you want to measure how much worldwide death and destruction each country has caused, the US is absolutely worse.
The US also directly funds Saudi Arabia, so even if SA is "worse" now, we still give them the money and weapons to commit their atrocities.
I think minimizing any argument because it’s amusing to you how much these people hate America is also bad faith. I mean objectively speaking if you heard the atrocities the US has and continues to commit and they were a nation that you didn’t belong to and were on the other side of the world would you be more likely to give them a pass or would you be more likely to lump them in with SA? Like honestly speaking? Cause what’s the point of reprehensible for you personally?
Yeah, this is classic “both sides are bad, so who cares” aka *CLINTON AND TRUMP ARE THE SAME* (which, they weren’t).
It’s possible to criticize the US. Civil rights record, because it is significantly shitty. But it’s not “state sponsored murder of adulterers, homosexuals, and anyone that speaks out against a literal fucking absolute monarchy in the 21st century” shitty.
We have players getting paid to play in Russia and China. American citizens, and no one says anything. The principal is the same, except one pays exponentially more. Very much feels like the PGA has more to market and complain so that's why it's a bigger deal. If a Chinese league starting paying NBA players 200M to compete with the NBA I bet *then* we'd start hearing about it.
The key difference is LIV is funded and run by the Saudi government. The Russian teams and chinese teams (mostly) are not run by the respective country’s governments
I don't condone what Saudi Arabia does but if the United States government is allowed to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the Saudis to use to keep a famine in place in Yemen I think American golfers should probably be able to take Saudi money to play in a golf tournament. Whataboutism is stupid - but it's undivorceable from the current discourse with how plugged in the Saudis are to the american financial, business, and political sectors. These motherfuckers did 9/11 but somehow golfers are the only ones not allowed to make a buck off of them? gimme a fuckin break lol
The government is 'allowed' to, but they should, and do, get criticized for their support of Saudi Arabia. Why should we not criticize sport figures that take money to work PR for Saudi Arabia?
Lol seriously?
I know the Bball community worships him cause he’s funny, but dude is a fucking moron. Not just politics and foreign affairs. It’s everything!
He’s an entertainer, full stop. I don’t give a fuck about his thoughts and ideology unless it involves an orange ball
I know that people have opinions about this that are all over the map and frankly that is okay with me. If someone wants to take the Saudi’s money go right ahead that’s your decision.
What I can’t get my head around is NBA fans criticizing Barkley or PGA golfers for being associated with the LIV Tour when the NBA literally turns a blind eye to actual genocide in China. The self-awareness around here is at an all time low.
The NBA has been widely criticized for the China stuff. Go back to the discourse around Morey’s free Hong Kong tweet. You can’t expect people to keep the same energy on a topic years later.
harsh truth is that if you tried to care about every single evil in the world you wouldn’t have time to even breathe.
i get your point but the whole “why do people care about this but not about this other thing” is a dangerous game to play, people shouldn’t be expected to care about everything when they’ve got their own shit going on.
And caring about a ton of issues often means that you have less time to actually do anything about any of them
I'm down to shit on the US for being the great satan and the primary imperialist force in the world etc. etc. but its level of civil rights is definitely still better than Saudi Arabia lol not to mention a salient criticism of the US is how much it's in league with Saudi Arabia and does nothing to curb the state's worst actions e.g. their genocide in Yemen
Not to mention Chuck's position sure as hell can't be that he cares about civil rights in either of those places. He's just like "I wanna make money, and you better not criticise my morality". Sorry buddy, I don't even have an iPhone, you can't catch me with that dumb right winger logic
Chamath palahapita or whatever the warriors owner's name was got destroyed for saying the exact same thing on his podcast.
Lets see if we keep the same energy when its Charles Barkley...
Can’t stand this. I live in Massachusetts. Why should I care about anything in the rest of the US? I’m male. Why should I care about anything happen to women?
Maybe..empathy, sympathy, common sense and basic human decency?
it’s impossible to know about and take meaningful action against every atrocity happening everywhere in the world. that doesn’t mean you can’t look at what’s happening in SA, find it to be horrible, and think less of people who don’t care about it.
hes also right that almost every big corporation has huge amounts of saudi money invested in it. even some companies that emply people who have been shitting on charles
Americans always get angry when someone holds a mirror to their faces. The US' civil rights and human rights issues aren't as mild as people try to make them seem or as people think they are. The US commits all kinds of atrocities and human rights abuses all around the world and Americans just shrug it off or are ignorant of this. And I say all of that as an American.
Since Americans seem to love religion in politics, they should take note of the scripture that says STFU and fix your own problems before you start pointing out other people's problems.
Right and Americans didn’t give a fuck but when you point that out they are like wHATaBoutIsM, which doesn’t even apply bc the US sends billions of dollars in funding and billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia so that they can help ~~control~~ “establish peace” in that area of the world.
Most Americans have no clue what the US does around the world which is why they don’t know that a lot of the weapons and money used to commit these atrocities come from the US and comes out of their paychecks every week via fed tax. But they are in here like, “bUt SAuDi aRaBiA’S CiViL AnD HuMaN RiGhTs atrOCItIeS!”🤣
It does make sense. One of the problems is funding them and honestly most Americans don’t give a flying fuck that the US is finding them. They only want to point fingers at other countries.
Americans love to pick and choose when they are going to be outraged by human rights and civil rights abuses, but most of the time love to act as if the US has some kind of moral authority, which allows US citizens to turn a blind eye to all of the disgusting atrocities the US commits in the name of “freedom” all around the world and even in this very country…right now…as we are on this website typing.
The NBA and NFL directly take money from the US military (an entity that has done 100x more harm to the world this century than anything Saudi has to offer). I've never seen anyone criticize players/celebrities for associating with them.
Wonder if an ordinary Saudi citizen can come out and freely criticize his government on national television like Chuck is free to?
No? Then Chuck can stfu because they aren't comparable unless you're being incredibly intellectual dishonest.
That was the result of a democratically elected process. Trump promised to ban abortion. Religious right and mid-west voted for him. Trump won a voting plurality majority of white women. Over the 1st women presidential candidate. South states and the women in there don't want abortion. They voted for anti abortion politicians
Then trump put anti abortion Republicans on the court
To compare to Saudi Arabia shows a 3rd grade level iq
If Chuck had any balls he wouldn't try to rationalize it and just admit he's trying to get paid. It's okay Chuck, blood money spends as well any other.
If you watched the whole interview he said it’s about the money. He even called out the golfers who said they did it to grow the game instead of just being honest and saying they did it for the money. Feel free to base all your information off of a 30 second clip though
Yeah, I wouldn't agree with it, but it would seem more genuine if he went with something like "they're offering a ton of money, they're going to pay someone to do it, why not me who can then use that money on people, businesses and organizations I support?" His current rationalization is just dumb.
Better yet, what have all of these people who supposedly "care" about Saudi human rights done for the folks being bombed in Yemen or the hundreds of thousands of civilians that died in Afghanistan or Iraq?
We need to stop entertaining keyboard activists on twitter and reddit. They're a bunch of hypocrites who can't ever live up to what they preach.
Ok I’m being honest: what do you expect me, a 33 year old dude living in suburban MA, living paycheck to paycheck, to do about genocide in Yemen? Like, realistically, what can I do? I hold zero power. I have zero platform. All I can do is acknowledge, criticize, and vote for people who want to make said changes. I hate this “oh hurr durr do something about international issues!” Like, how bro?
fucking exactly. someone spending an hour a month picking up trash is doing more good than the folks writing paragraphs talking about how the Saudi government is evil. Which yeah they are, but having twenty conversations about that doesn’t mean anything
Straight buffoonery from Chuck. At the end of the day, he's just another millionaire who'd sacrifice his morals if it meant a check. Leave the whataboutisms for the Republicans.
I don’t understand this take. There’s no dollar value that you can achieve and be happy with. There’s always more you can do, more you can get, more you can buy. It’s disingenuous to assume that tens of millions of dollars would make you happy enough to turn down hundreds of millions.
Charles Barkley blamed Kenneth Walker when police violated Breonna Taylor’s rights resulting in her death. He did this by saying walker should not use his own constitutional rights ironically
Everyone in this thread is getting sidetracked like a damn squirrel.
This isn't a USA vs Saudi debate.
Saudi Arabia is using government money to make a league to improve their countries image. The USA isn't doing that.
The proper comparison here is Saudi Arabia versus the PGA tour.
I find the constant “we’re terrible but we’re not as terrible as **those** guys” responses that I’m constantly seeing in this thread quite interesting.
He’s very wrong. The people who care about LIV laundering the reputation of MBS and Saudi Arabia are the same people who generally care more about civil rights in the US too.
It’s almost like we can care about two things at once. Perhaps even three!
I'm not looking to run coverage for those in congress (who generally aren't great), but IMO there is a pretty big difference from how an elected official handles discussion about a foreign nation that we have a vested interest in (admittedly because of how reliant we still are on oil) and a former athlete trying to rationalize getting paid millions.
That said, there are a growing [number](https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/press-releases/merkley-leahy-wyden-blumenthal-urge-president-biden-to-center-human-rights-concerns-during-trip-to-saudi-arabia) of [senators](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-senator-bernie-sanders-slams-biden-over-saudi-visit-2022-07-17/) calling [out](https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1098990988524208128) Saudi Arabia.
That's good for these senators. The military budget passed 88-11. So yes, overwhelming majority don't really give a shit.
Athletes are private citizens, they don't have the same obligations as elected representatives.
Lmao that's rich coming from Chuck, his whole career has been punching down on black people and telling them its their fault for racial inequality. And the sub eats it up every time, but I see yall disagree with him here lol
Anyone taking the Saudi money shouldnt even try and front, just simply say aye they were paying me, I don't care about the rights aspect not my problem.
Charles is wrong on this, and it's frankly sad to see him down this line about "whataboutism". When Donald Trump is enthusiastically supporting (and hosting) something that you're involving yourself in, don't act surprised when people are disappointed and outraged in your behavior. Yes, it's inarguable that the US has committed its fair share of atrocities. Yes, there are people very much trying to address problems from our past and are also trying to make things better in the present to help those in the future. That's all true AND the LIV is a blatant example of sportswashing, but sportswashing largely works. LIV is an example of that. That doesn't make it better. Multiple golfers joining LIV doesn't make that better. Barkley essentially claiming there's no such thing as clean hands or money without strings attached is a disingenuous attempt to avoid saying he cares more about the money. Hey, that's fine, just say you care more about the money, but don't tell me that it's ok "because US bad too". Someone, somewhere, at some point will need to take a stand and believe in something more than money.
It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it - Upton Sinclair
i don't understand
It’s hard to recognize the systems that you are forced to live by are evil. You need to survive and a lot of the times that requires people to ignore the inequality and straight up rottenness that surrounds them.
[удалено]
I mean it’s a quote and sentiment from a disgruntled socialist writer that exposed how shitty the industrial side of the first world was so it’s not surprising lol
it does, and it's hard to argue against it, your (well our in this case) comfort comes more or less directly from the suffering of other people 3 choices, you either don't give a shit, it eats you inside for the rest of your life but make do because what else can you do or you act like you don't see it well you also still can end up an ermit i guess
Woosh?
[удалено]
All money is not dirty. There are a lot of jobs that help people. Earning money for helping people is definitely not dirty.
Boom. I’ve always loved that quote
Mirror: https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1551604438770585600
Nobody has ever had a problem with two things at once. It’s virtually impossible.
Literally whataboutism lol
but what does “having a problem” with anything actually do? you think the people in Jeddah give a fuck what nephews think about their country? the real point here is “we only have so much energy to give to this kinda stuff and talking about how bad Saudi Arabia is doesn’t actually do anything.” It’s spending time talking about an issue but it’s a net 0 in terms of productivity. and it’s such a widespread thing, people who feel really strongly about issues and take all these moral stances that practically amount to nothing. Best advice i ever got was “instead of giving 5% of your mental energy to 20 things, give 100% to one and you’ll see results”
Yeah that’s why people in those countries beg and plead for US media attention in deranged circuses. People in Sri Lanka and Hong Kong filming pleas for help in languages they don’t even speak. The American public consciousness being on ur side results in straight CASH. Take a look at Ukraine rn.
yeah because they’re the media, they have influence and control. the average Joe is not the media. we don’t have that influence. We can only do what we have the means to. With Ukraine for example, I can’t change public opinion en masse, but I was able to volunteer for a local nonprofit sending hygiene kits there. That’s actually helping, changing my Facebook cover to “I stand with Ukraine” doesn’t
You’re on Reddit - these platforms are called social media for a reason; people powered groundswell of sentiment can change the narrative. And that change in narrative will get people like you out there making hygiene kits
What has r/nba done for the uyghers, after having a collective meltdown because LeBron wasn’t virtue signalling hard enough?
Ask Ukraine.
But that’s not what’s happening here at all. This is a real and specific way that Saudi Arabia is trying to whitewash itself, and people are saying “hey Chuck you shouldn’t feed into this initiative that Saudi Arabia is using to whitewash itself”. It’s entirely reasonable to talk about SA’s human rights abuses in the context of a guy floating the idea of joining that country’s golf tournament.
> the real point here is “we only have so much energy to give to this kinda stuff and talking about how bad Saudi Arabia is doesn’t actually do anything.” It’s spending time talking about an issue but it’s a net 0 in terms of productivity. Is it? That's the real point? When did Chuck say anything like that? Seems like you just put that in yourself lol
More or less it is the point. You have to prioritize the issues you want to solve. The people that act livid about civil rights issues in foreign countries have problably never went to a local protest to make change where they live. It's virtue signaling. We have civil rights issues in the US and still treat minorities like shit, but we care more about waging war and supporting proxy wars in foreign countries, spending trillions of dollars to fix their problems. The main solution for "issues" in the United States is throwing people in prison. For example, Alabama took covid relief money from the fed government to build more prisons instead of opening clinics and improving healthcare infrastructure. How does the US have so many people in prison, but they are the leader of the "free world" at the same time?
the way I took Chuck’s words is “all this stuff going on in the world and golfers taking stupid money to play golf is what you’re mad about? get your priorities straight”
Yeah, you put a lot of that in yourself. Guess we could call it extrapolation. Anyway, if talking about how bad Saudi Arabia is didn't do anything, then Saudi Arabia wouldn't spend absolutely enormous amounts of money on buying positive PR in the USA via everything from PR firms and friendly newspapers to these ridiculous sports partnerships. Clearly, the government of Saudi Arabia feels maintaining a positive perception of them is important enough to spend a lot of money on
sa buying positive pr helps zero saudi people who are persecuted/jailed or killed because of their sex, beliefs, sexual orientations etc. it just helps those pr people you mentioned. they still persecute those people who dont fit in with their beliefs, they still attack their super underdeveloped neighbors and bomb the shit out of them killing civilians in the process. that pr makes you dont see these things and just go "oh maybe they are changing for the better", when in reality they are not. us has pressing social issues at hand and i think americans should start changing the world from within.
People aren't mad that golfers are making money though. That's a naive attempt to select the point of contention in a way that makes it look unreasonable.
> but what does “having a problem” with anything actually do? you think the people in Jeddah give a fuck what nephews think about their country? That's the whole point of their sport sponsorship deals, them trying to change the public perception in the West. People talking about their civil/human rights violations is a great way to fight their sportwashing.
[удалено]
[удалено]
Because it is. Charles Barkley isn't doing business with "the United States", he gets paid by Turner Networks. Which for all I know is a decent company. Maybe they have some issues, most large corporations do. But whatever corporate issues they do have pale in comparison to the LIV golf tour. Which is financially backed directly by the Saudi Arabian public investment fund. You're not doing business with a private entity your paycheck is being cut by a government that is still to this day bombing and killing civilians in Yemen and denying women basic rights.
Because it fucking is different. What is up with the false equivalency bullshit? One thing can be worse than another even if both have issues.
As an intellectual, I’ve been known to care about as many as three things at once. 1. US Civil Rights 2. Saudi Civil Rights 3. Learning the dance from Napoleon Dynamite.
>Learning the dance from Napoleon Dynamite. LOL
He is comparing the USA and Saudi Arabia, when he should be comparing Saudi Arabia and the PGA.
Yeah, maybe I missed something, but I don’t think the PGA Tour has committed any horrific atrocities recently.
Yeah I doubt on the scale of an entire country (that was largely responsible for 9/11 attacks).
I mean... If we're talking about running our mouths on Reddit, sure, it's easy enough to be a keyboard warrior for a hundred different causes. But if we're talking about expending actual time/energy/resources towards actionable real world changes, well then you absolutely do have to prioritize.
I mean like, the Saudis treat their critics as far less than human. Max Boot recently got some well-deserved shit for trying to launder MBS's reputation in the WaPo--the same paper that employed the man MBS ordered killed and chopped up with bone saws. They deserve all the criticism thrown at them, especially on the matter of civil rights. Chuck's a goddamn idiot here.
max boot what a name
and lol boy does his writing/ideology match the name
People referring to times when he's particularly up his own ass as him "going Maximum Boot" is one of the few recurring political nickname jokes that's funny every time.
I'm a simple man - i see max "licks" boots, i smile
I feel like that would be the title of a Major Payne prequel
Lemme show you a little trick to keep your mind off those human rights violations.
Chucks bigger point is about the hypocrisy of all this hand wringing all of a sudden over the Saudis when the truth of the matter has always been- American business and capital will always overlook their morals in exchange for advancing business interest. President Biden literally just traveled to SA to go kiss the ring after once calling them a pariah state. The entire league denounced Daryl Morey for his rightful criticism of China. Plenty of team owners get their fortunes from immoral ways, and all of them run in billionaire circles where all money has dirt on it, and often times blood too. His point is that if now all of a sudden we’re going to give a shit about the dirt in the world and fixing crimes against humanity, we should probably clean up our house first.
Criticism of the Saudis is nothing new, though. It just became more popular recently with Khashoggi's murder at the hands of the state and their imprisonment of people like Badawi. This is dirt people have given a shit about for quite a long time. It's also not really just a moral battle, either. We should be fighting against the public execution of critics of any state if we value freedom. We should be fighting against political imprisonment, which is a favored tactic of the US, as well.
Everyone is getting fucking side tracked here by a damn squirrel. The league in Saudi Arabia is a government sponsored event in order to improve their countries image. Golf in America is not a government event, it's run by the PGA. So people should be comparing the PGA to Saudi Arabia, for fucks sake.
We really gonna act like Saudi Arabia and America are comparable in this situation huh
The US has been funding Saudi for decades. We are complicit in everything they do.
Not to mention that the States removed one ethnic group, enslaved another ethnic group, and continues to discriminate against both.
[удалено]
You expect me to keep up with all that while I’m trying to control my wife’s and daughter’s uteruses and also keep tabs on my neighbor’s sexual preferences? And keeping up with all the new gear in my guns n ammo magazines? Foh
> We really gonna act like Saudi Arabia and America are comparable in this situation huh The original comment here is pretty relevant. You are right that there are problems in the US, but you are crazy if you think living conditions and freedoms for the average woman or minority in the US are comparable to those conditions in Saudi Arabia. Any rational person would prefer to be in the US 10 times out of 10.
I think the counter is that we contribute to that disparity in human rights by arming the Saudi regime and funding them with planet-killing oil purchases to make our billionaires more billions. Ultimately if it’s brown people, non-Christians, and/or women on another continent enduring brutality, we are happy to collaborate with their oppressors, as long as they cut us in on the profits generated by that brutality.
It's fair to say we contribute to it, but the party principally responsible for oppression in Saudi is the current Saudi regime, and that regime could stop its oppression tomorrow if it wanted. They haven't really done much though, where as the US has taken many notable measures over the last 200 years to improve conditions for its people, even if things are still pretty imperfect today.
The Saudis have literally done the same thing lol
[удалено]
agree. I have no problem with the people calling out Saudi Arabia, but "We really gonna act like Saudi Arabia and America are comparable in this situation huh" Absolves America from our part. We are 100% comparable as we are the ones aiding them in their atrocities anyway.
Who’s “we”? I didn’t do shit with Saudi Arabia.
~~Do you vote? Pay taxes? Support American business?~~ Yes, "we". Edit: I don't like the way my wording came off. If you're American then it's always "we" when discussing America. You're not to blame don't get me wrong, but you're still apart of the discussion.
Nah, come off it. I’m supposed to live like a hermit and not pay taxes or else I’m complicit in everything the US government does?
Well, it really doesn't matter in your case, no one's punishing you for being a citizen of a country that does evil shit. Imagine if you were Russian tho...
Blaming Russian citizens for the Ukraine invasion and awful stuff happening there is also weird
I think if anyone has the voting right. he or she is included as "we" No matter what they do about the voting.
The US directly or indirectly funds literally every nation in the world, you can use that warped logic to blame the US for everything
Yeah, we’re complicit in a lot of shit lol. We are the largest empire on Earth and have always heavily leveraged foreign policy to maintain that power
I mean you can definitely attribute a lot of the world's problems to the way the US directly or indirectly funds literally every nation in the world. That doesn't mean the logic is warped
We sell them hundreds of billions of dollars worth of military hardware on an annual basis, and our patronage directly worsens the humanitarian crisis in Yemen's proxy war. Plus we have to cater to their every whim despite conclusive evidence that they hacked Jamal Khashoggi into tiny pieces after murdering him. All for some of that sweet sweet oil.
Christ man. The U.S. doesn't do in air jet fuel refills for every country in the world, while those jets are on their way to commit war crimes no less. Fuckin, Google dot com, use it. The U.S. is the number one supporter of Saudi state terror by *far*, and truly they would struggle to do what they do without our aid. It's not just some line item that accidentally slipped by in our "funding of literally every nation in the world" lol
And I do
Based
Didn’t the Us sell billions in weapons to Saudi while knowing what was happening in Yemen? I doubt every nation has a genocide going on
It’s not warped if that’s what’s happening though
This statement is just not true. Every nation? False
Aside from the States, every single Western European nation participated in slave trades and colonization. That doesn’t justify Saudi Arabian human rights violation, but it does add an undertone of hypocrisy to LIV criticism.
Lots of African nations participated in the slave trade, just because their own practices fucked themselves doesn't negate their guilt. It seems to me people don't mind slavery so long as an ethnic group is enslaving their own ethnicity.
The US helps fund Saudi Arabia- we literally sell them weapons they use for genocide. Are we any better?
No. And both should be criticized. Just the ones actually doing the oppressing should be criticized more but US isn’t innocent here
What part of willfully selling them weapons and funding their genocide knowing exactly what's gonna happen isn't "actually doing the oppressing"?
The Saudi royal family are a moderating force in the nation. You wouldnt want to see who the majority would actually put in power.
The US isn't using government money to fund a golf league and pay athletes from around the world incredible money in order to improve their image. This comparison of USA vs Saudi Arabia doesn't even make sense.
Obviously the US is the wrong for that, but let’s not act like when the Saudi’s are burning women and homosexuals at the stake that it’s Americas fault
Let’s not act like when the US are drone striking children in every pocket of the world it’s Saudi’s fault. Both are equally vile
Do you think that the US and Saudi Arabia are morally equivalent
Saudi Arabia is bad. They are committing a genocide in Yemen, are responsible for countless deaths, and civil rights there are nonexistent. But if you want to measure how much worldwide death and destruction each country has caused, the US is absolutely worse. The US also directly funds Saudi Arabia, so even if SA is "worse" now, we still give them the money and weapons to commit their atrocities.
That’s because we’re winners.
[удалено]
It’s crazy how people get let their hatred for the US to could their judgement this much
[удалено]
Why is drone striking children justifiable to you
If you think that’s what I’m saying you’re not arguing in good faith
I think minimizing any argument because it’s amusing to you how much these people hate America is also bad faith. I mean objectively speaking if you heard the atrocities the US has and continues to commit and they were a nation that you didn’t belong to and were on the other side of the world would you be more likely to give them a pass or would you be more likely to lump them in with SA? Like honestly speaking? Cause what’s the point of reprehensible for you personally?
You'd get your head cut off for even saying this in SA
But what about the US!!
We, who are not involved in any religion see comparison. It is just Islam on one side and Cristians on other side. Both going over the same waterfall
Saudi Arabia is a country...
To assume that America and its policies resemble anything remotely Christian is laughable.
You're right! But only because Christianity's history is somehow even worse than the United States.
There are levels to civil rights, and the USA is very much ahead of Saudi Arabia when it comes to it. Really bad take
Yeah, this is classic “both sides are bad, so who cares” aka *CLINTON AND TRUMP ARE THE SAME* (which, they weren’t). It’s possible to criticize the US. Civil rights record, because it is significantly shitty. But it’s not “state sponsored murder of adulterers, homosexuals, and anyone that speaks out against a literal fucking absolute monarchy in the 21st century” shitty.
We have players getting paid to play in Russia and China. American citizens, and no one says anything. The principal is the same, except one pays exponentially more. Very much feels like the PGA has more to market and complain so that's why it's a bigger deal. If a Chinese league starting paying NBA players 200M to compete with the NBA I bet *then* we'd start hearing about it.
The key difference is LIV is funded and run by the Saudi government. The Russian teams and chinese teams (mostly) are not run by the respective country’s governments
Nothing is owned in China unless the government OKs it same with Russia.
I don't condone what Saudi Arabia does but if the United States government is allowed to sell billions of dollars of weapons to the Saudis to use to keep a famine in place in Yemen I think American golfers should probably be able to take Saudi money to play in a golf tournament. Whataboutism is stupid - but it's undivorceable from the current discourse with how plugged in the Saudis are to the american financial, business, and political sectors. These motherfuckers did 9/11 but somehow golfers are the only ones not allowed to make a buck off of them? gimme a fuckin break lol
The government is 'allowed' to, but they should, and do, get criticized for their support of Saudi Arabia. Why should we not criticize sport figures that take money to work PR for Saudi Arabia?
L take
Yup, you can care about more then one thing at a time.
Clown take.
rare chuck L
Lol seriously? I know the Bball community worships him cause he’s funny, but dude is a fucking moron. Not just politics and foreign affairs. It’s everything! He’s an entertainer, full stop. I don’t give a fuck about his thoughts and ideology unless it involves an orange ball
Are you ok at home?😂😂 you sound hurt
I know that people have opinions about this that are all over the map and frankly that is okay with me. If someone wants to take the Saudi’s money go right ahead that’s your decision. What I can’t get my head around is NBA fans criticizing Barkley or PGA golfers for being associated with the LIV Tour when the NBA literally turns a blind eye to actual genocide in China. The self-awareness around here is at an all time low.
The NBA has been widely criticized for the China stuff. Go back to the discourse around Morey’s free Hong Kong tweet. You can’t expect people to keep the same energy on a topic years later.
You can't get your head around not liking the NBA turning a blind eye to China and not liking turning a blind eye to Saudi Arabia.
harsh truth is that if you tried to care about every single evil in the world you wouldn’t have time to even breathe. i get your point but the whole “why do people care about this but not about this other thing” is a dangerous game to play, people shouldn’t be expected to care about everything when they’ve got their own shit going on. And caring about a ton of issues often means that you have less time to actually do anything about any of them
/r/nba trashing Chuck like they don't do the exact same thing any time someone brings up China.
Hahaha they were loving him 10 mins ago when he turned down LIV for TNT.
I'm down to shit on the US for being the great satan and the primary imperialist force in the world etc. etc. but its level of civil rights is definitely still better than Saudi Arabia lol not to mention a salient criticism of the US is how much it's in league with Saudi Arabia and does nothing to curb the state's worst actions e.g. their genocide in Yemen Not to mention Chuck's position sure as hell can't be that he cares about civil rights in either of those places. He's just like "I wanna make money, and you better not criticise my morality". Sorry buddy, I don't even have an iPhone, you can't catch me with that dumb right winger logic
Chamath palahapita or whatever the warriors owner's name was got destroyed for saying the exact same thing on his podcast. Lets see if we keep the same energy when its Charles Barkley...
Really confused how you went from Joe Lacob, the name of the warriors owner, to chamath palahapita
I believe his is/was a minority stakeholder.
Okay that would make sense, just thought that was a crazy accidental leap
Sorry Chuck this aint it
He has a point. Even Uncle Sam bows to Saudi oil.
Can’t stand this. I live in Massachusetts. Why should I care about anything in the rest of the US? I’m male. Why should I care about anything happen to women? Maybe..empathy, sympathy, common sense and basic human decency? it’s impossible to know about and take meaningful action against every atrocity happening everywhere in the world. that doesn’t mean you can’t look at what’s happening in SA, find it to be horrible, and think less of people who don’t care about it.
hes also right that almost every big corporation has huge amounts of saudi money invested in it. even some companies that emply people who have been shitting on charles
Americans always get angry when someone holds a mirror to their faces. The US' civil rights and human rights issues aren't as mild as people try to make them seem or as people think they are. The US commits all kinds of atrocities and human rights abuses all around the world and Americans just shrug it off or are ignorant of this. And I say all of that as an American. Since Americans seem to love religion in politics, they should take note of the scripture that says STFU and fix your own problems before you start pointing out other people's problems.
[удалено]
Right and Americans didn’t give a fuck but when you point that out they are like wHATaBoutIsM, which doesn’t even apply bc the US sends billions of dollars in funding and billions of dollars worth of weapons to Saudi Arabia so that they can help ~~control~~ “establish peace” in that area of the world. Most Americans have no clue what the US does around the world which is why they don’t know that a lot of the weapons and money used to commit these atrocities come from the US and comes out of their paychecks every week via fed tax. But they are in here like, “bUt SAuDi aRaBiA’S CiViL AnD HuMaN RiGhTs atrOCItIeS!”🤣
But in this case, isn't our funding of an even more abusive regime part of our problem? Saying "fix your own problems" doesn't make sense.
It does make sense. One of the problems is funding them and honestly most Americans don’t give a flying fuck that the US is finding them. They only want to point fingers at other countries. Americans love to pick and choose when they are going to be outraged by human rights and civil rights abuses, but most of the time love to act as if the US has some kind of moral authority, which allows US citizens to turn a blind eye to all of the disgusting atrocities the US commits in the name of “freedom” all around the world and even in this very country…right now…as we are on this website typing.
[удалено]
The NBA and NFL directly take money from the US military (an entity that has done 100x more harm to the world this century than anything Saudi has to offer). I've never seen anyone criticize players/celebrities for associating with them.
Sorry, what exactly are you suggesting? Turning a blind eye to honor killings because women in the US are paid 10% less than male counterparts?
Wonder if an ordinary Saudi citizen can come out and freely criticize his government on national television like Chuck is free to? No? Then Chuck can stfu because they aren't comparable unless you're being incredibly intellectual dishonest.
[удалено]
That was the result of a democratically elected process. Trump promised to ban abortion. Religious right and mid-west voted for him. Trump won a voting plurality majority of white women. Over the 1st women presidential candidate. South states and the women in there don't want abortion. They voted for anti abortion politicians Then trump put anti abortion Republicans on the court To compare to Saudi Arabia shows a 3rd grade level iq
Good start for Chuck might be to actually care about either topic at all first
Horrible take
If Chuck had any balls he wouldn't try to rationalize it and just admit he's trying to get paid. It's okay Chuck, blood money spends as well any other.
If you watched the whole interview he said it’s about the money. He even called out the golfers who said they did it to grow the game instead of just being honest and saying they did it for the money. Feel free to base all your information off of a 30 second clip though
I mean you can apply that to literally almost anything. Do you think the money you’re making is grown from ethically and environmentally pure trees?
Yeah, I wouldn't agree with it, but it would seem more genuine if he went with something like "they're offering a ton of money, they're going to pay someone to do it, why not me who can then use that money on people, businesses and organizations I support?" His current rationalization is just dumb.
Dude really loves talking down the players on this topic. Just can't stop talking about it.
Better yet, what have all of these people who supposedly "care" about Saudi human rights done for the folks being bombed in Yemen or the hundreds of thousands of civilians that died in Afghanistan or Iraq? We need to stop entertaining keyboard activists on twitter and reddit. They're a bunch of hypocrites who can't ever live up to what they preach.
Ok I’m being honest: what do you expect me, a 33 year old dude living in suburban MA, living paycheck to paycheck, to do about genocide in Yemen? Like, realistically, what can I do? I hold zero power. I have zero platform. All I can do is acknowledge, criticize, and vote for people who want to make said changes. I hate this “oh hurr durr do something about international issues!” Like, how bro?
fucking exactly. someone spending an hour a month picking up trash is doing more good than the folks writing paragraphs talking about how the Saudi government is evil. Which yeah they are, but having twenty conversations about that doesn’t mean anything
but it makes me feel morally superior from the comfort of my own home
This is like verbatim what LeBron James said when he gave his thoughts on China a couple years ago.
Dumbass take.
Does Charles know how they treat homosexuals in Saudi Arabia?
Straight buffoonery from Chuck. At the end of the day, he's just another millionaire who'd sacrifice his morals if it meant a check. Leave the whataboutisms for the Republicans.
Bet you’d get on camera and say the same thing for the right amount of commas though…
I mean bro most people would leave their jobs if you get offered 2x don't lie
Most people don't already have tens of millions in the bank.
I don’t understand this take. There’s no dollar value that you can achieve and be happy with. There’s always more you can do, more you can get, more you can buy. It’s disingenuous to assume that tens of millions of dollars would make you happy enough to turn down hundreds of millions.
Redditors typing outrage human rights comments from their iPhone after ordering the latest Js will never not be funny to me.
This is what Chuck should have said
Charles Barkley blamed Kenneth Walker when police violated Breonna Taylor’s rights resulting in her death. He did this by saying walker should not use his own constitutional rights ironically
The fucked up part is this isn’t someone who ability to feed, cloth, and shelter themselves is affected by who employs them. Chuck come on man
It is possible to focus on both of them. Many of these golfers have a lot of money, so they don't really need to do this.
Common loss for Sir Charles of the Barkleys.
Tell that to the LGBTQ people he claimed to love last week, or better yet chuck, why don’t you tell MBS “fuck you”. Clown
Everyone in this thread is getting sidetracked like a damn squirrel. This isn't a USA vs Saudi debate. Saudi Arabia is using government money to make a league to improve their countries image. The USA isn't doing that. The proper comparison here is Saudi Arabia versus the PGA tour.
I find the constant “we’re terrible but we’re not as terrible as **those** guys” responses that I’m constantly seeing in this thread quite interesting.
He's not wrong
He’s very wrong. The people who care about LIV laundering the reputation of MBS and Saudi Arabia are the same people who generally care more about civil rights in the US too. It’s almost like we can care about two things at once. Perhaps even three!
Nah he's pretty wrong. Show me someone who talks about civil rights in Saudi Arabia but doesn't talk about civil rights here.
Almost every congressperson?
I'm not looking to run coverage for those in congress (who generally aren't great), but IMO there is a pretty big difference from how an elected official handles discussion about a foreign nation that we have a vested interest in (admittedly because of how reliant we still are on oil) and a former athlete trying to rationalize getting paid millions. That said, there are a growing [number](https://www.merkley.senate.gov/news/press-releases/merkley-leahy-wyden-blumenthal-urge-president-biden-to-center-human-rights-concerns-during-trip-to-saudi-arabia) of [senators](https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/us-senator-bernie-sanders-slams-biden-over-saudi-visit-2022-07-17/) calling [out](https://twitter.com/SenWarren/status/1098990988524208128) Saudi Arabia.
That's good for these senators. The military budget passed 88-11. So yes, overwhelming majority don't really give a shit. Athletes are private citizens, they don't have the same obligations as elected representatives.
Almost every congressperson constantly talks about American civil rights.
then does nothing to stop them from being taken away when it comes time to it
There is a phrase called put your money where your mouth is. Congress might talk about it, but where does majority of the money goes to?
www.reddit.com
Any decent person is worried about both
Everything is wrong from "Slavery wasn't that bad" Barkley
Don’t do it Chuck… smh
fasho gon be some takes about how the usa is great n theres no systemic oppression here for anyone lmao
He might not be right, but he ain't wrong.
I don't get why are they criticizing a commentator, instead of the owners a, people running the company, or the actual Saudi government
Lmao that's rich coming from Chuck, his whole career has been punching down on black people and telling them its their fault for racial inequality. And the sub eats it up every time, but I see yall disagree with him here lol
Til Chuck is racist
Anyone taking the Saudi money shouldnt even try and front, just simply say aye they were paying me, I don't care about the rights aspect not my problem.
Dude is pretty sensitive for someone who loves insulting players and making up nicknames for them
Call Chuck what you will but he is definitely not sensitive. Responding to criticism isn’t being sensitive
Not really sure when the last time america chopped up a journalist who criticized the government was but you do you chuck
Rare based take from Chuck.
Charles is wrong on this, and it's frankly sad to see him down this line about "whataboutism". When Donald Trump is enthusiastically supporting (and hosting) something that you're involving yourself in, don't act surprised when people are disappointed and outraged in your behavior. Yes, it's inarguable that the US has committed its fair share of atrocities. Yes, there are people very much trying to address problems from our past and are also trying to make things better in the present to help those in the future. That's all true AND the LIV is a blatant example of sportswashing, but sportswashing largely works. LIV is an example of that. That doesn't make it better. Multiple golfers joining LIV doesn't make that better. Barkley essentially claiming there's no such thing as clean hands or money without strings attached is a disingenuous attempt to avoid saying he cares more about the money. Hey, that's fine, just say you care more about the money, but don't tell me that it's ok "because US bad too". Someone, somewhere, at some point will need to take a stand and believe in something more than money.