Respect (noun)
/rɪˈspekt/
Admiration felt or shown for someone or something that you believe has good ideas or qualities.

I always had a problem with authority. I don’t like dogmas; I never felt safe around the police and always irritated me when my dad used to tell me: Because I say so. I need to understand the reason of a command, and more so, I need to agree with it. If I find an order utterly stupid, it’s very hard for me to blindly follow them towards the darkness. This is why I never clicked with religion. The storytelling is great, and I admire seeing lots of senior Basque citizens (My few memories of Christian rituals were thanks to my very Basque grandparents) eating the body of Christ and drinking his blood, but that’s it. Today I feel like criticising two religions that have deeply affected me in my life.

An Abrahamic belief system and soccer.

Yes, the world cup is in Qatar this year.

And how did I find out this if I don’t care for football? Well, because is inescapable. People are going to work with sports attire (and not in a kinky way) and TVs everywhere play it. I don’t know how it started it and I do not have the interest to research the history. Bread and circuses, I guess. This is one of those situations in which I don’t even know how to approach the situation and my brain collapses. Everything is awful.

A largely corrupt capitalistic entity plans to celebrate some worldwide games in a country where dogmatic beliefs bleed into how the estate enforces the laws. I do not respect late-stage capitalism killing oppressed human beings. The infrastructure of the world cup meant the death of thousands of abused migrants. Go down that google rabbit hole if you want the details, it’s upsetting.

I do not respect systematically attacking and raping people just because you differ with their sexual orientation. Like somehow toxically perpetrating the same sexual act but in a non consensual is ok I guess.

I do not respect killing people under the law for having an specific sexual orientation.
And the president of this corrupt entity had the balls to prepare a little performance to honour all this.

Then, why is not everyone boycotting the World Cup? Mainly because people don’t think them not watching it is going to make a difference because everyone else is. The same way that a vote does not change anything. Or an individual being vegan does not change Anything. A single protester fighting for a fair cause do not change anything. People fail to connect the dots, and are very happy to condone a country that smashes basic human rights on a daily basis because “the funny sports men are happening on TV bro”. It’s the scary globalised social version of that middle class white friend that refuses to participate in any conversation that sparks an ounce of intelligence, because KILLS THE VIBE.

“JUST GOOD VIBES BRO”

In this world cup, every single person enjoying it in any way is Maluma walking out from an interview when confronted with this.

“JUST ENJOY BRO, GOOD VIBES BRO. DON’T BE A DOWNER BRO, IT’S JUST ABOUT THE GAME BRO”

And then all the bros got mad when in an Islamic country they couldn’t get shitface drunk to enjoy their little oppressive and patriarchal activity. Bread and circuses bro, bread and circuses.