Damar Hamlin's America, 2023 versions
reflexions on last night
I doubt many of you missed the devastating news that professional footballer Damar Hamlin literally went into cardiac arrest on the field in Cincinnati in front of tens of thousands of fans in the stands and millions of spectators online and on television. It was gripping. It was heart-breaking. It was tragic. It was infuriating. The responses that I alone had, much less the millions who watched in utter shock, went on for quite a while. It was too horrible to watch yet we so desperately wanted him to stand up or to sit on the golf cart waving as they took him off the field. Instead, after ten minutes of professional pulmonary resuscitation, an ambulance carried the highly fit safety to a Level One Trauma and critical care center. Hamlin remains in critical condition this afternoon. And I am embarrassed I spelled his name incorrectly when I first published this earlier today. Absolutely no disrespect was meant.
Announcers, the faces of network sports, confronted the uncomfortable task of filling time as it became clear that Hamlin had not simply lost his balance. As the minutes dragged on without official word to contradict the video feed, the networks finally cut to sports commentators around a table with no visible link to the frantic actions trying to save the player’s life. Eventually, the network toggled between that remote, sterile location and the faces of the players, especially the Buffalo team members, on the field, visibly in shock as they watched emergency personnel helplessly.
The announcers had to provide rationale for any circumstances under which the National Football League could ask those same highly-paid teammates to complete more than three-quarters of the contest as if Hamlin’s absence resulted from a coaching decision to substitute someone while he rested. Twitterdom soon devolved into incredulous pleas to League Commissioner Roger Goodell to suspend the game rather than asking these young men—and most are still shy of their thirtieth birthdays—to hang around processing what they had seen before resuming the physical battle that could repeat a similar life-threatening outcome on each and every play. Common sense won after a long period of thought by the League but I personally do not understand how they will be able to complete this game any time.
As the networks held off speculating whether Hamlin would survive or face permanent injury, the anti-vaccinating nutcases were ran rampant on the internet. As I noted several times in posts, I believe in the scientific method which indicates that vaccinations work to curb the effects of Covid so I simply think any discussions about inoculations causing of this event are ludicrous and disingenuous. The anti-Vaxxers, however, were out in full force, challenging any assertion that a professional like Hamlin could have suffered any other possible problem other than having taken the Covid shots. Seriously? I mean seriously?
Just Sunday I had had a conversation with my son about a hit in the Michigan-TCU game the prior evening, a bone-crushing one in the fourth quarter. My son who has been raised on a diet of watching football for his entire life said he could not even watch the end of the Michigan game because he asked himself how he could watch a game where men were being so violent against one another in ‘sport’. He noted it sickened him Saturday night.
Questions have been arising all season about the health of the Miami Dolphins quarterback, Tua Tagovailoa, who has been on a ‘concussion protocol’ resulting from damaging hits earlier in his career; he is 24 years old as well. The focus on tramatic brain illness diminished during the Covid period but concerns will return after last night. It’s hard to imagine what happened last night and Covid vaccinations in the same sentence, regardless of anti-vaxxer challenges.
More traditionally, however, Americans advocated that the nation pray for Hamlin. We are predominantly a nation that defaults to a belief that prayer can ease agony on field or can provide solace to a family. Announcers, news personnel, individuals on the streets of Cincinnati and Buffalo, teammates, and just regular Joses and Josefinas online talked about supporting Hamlin’s family. We default to looking at the good he has done with his GoFundMe charity, Chasing Ms. The generosity of that focus led people to contribute more than $4 million dollars since the medical emergency last night. People reveled in his willingness to stay close to his home town when he chose the University of Pittsburgh for college because he wanted to be close to his much younger sibling.
It’s simple to say people always do good things when someone has had a terrible accident but no guarantee in our current environment. People could have attacked him for being black or a Buffalo Bill or who knows what. We have become a country of division in far too many instances rather than one where we pull together. I am no longer certain that we would ever have the unity of 9/11 should we suffer such a national tragedy again because we are all so entrenched in the need to be right and the fear that compromise will prove the end of us.
As of late this afternoon, Damar Hamlin is getting top-notch medical assistance. We won’t know whether he comes through for a while but we definitely will see a new spotlight on the violence that U.S. football creates. We also will see condemnation of the networks choosing to slow their decision to call suspend the game. Many critics will say the NFL did not care about the player but only about advert revenue while the League will point out this is the sport, with all its attributes, that Americans have long loved. The Anti-Vaxxers will still demand that we stop using vaccines but it also will probably mean that the current vaccination rates will remain relatively lower than they were two years ago. Our lives are shaken by incidents like this or Covid yet we have a rhythms sustain our lives.
We get no guarantees about anything we do in life, none. A person can trip down a staircase, then die. An individual can sit at home watching television, only to be hit by a stray bullet from the street. A tree limb can break through the roof in a freak spring storm. A car can cross into oncoming traffic after the drunken driver loses control, hitting a tee-totalling family on their way home from midnight church services. And a twenty-four year old man in some of the most spectacular physical condition can tackle another player, stand up, take two steps, then collapse in cardiac arrest as occurred last night. Life is precious and fragile and that is the real reflexion in 2023.FIN