As a guy

I will never understand why some people think that somehow a girl can be "asking for it" based on what she wears. Is there anything stupider than that? Guys walk around in skinny jeans that they are wearing halfway down their legs and people never think that they are asking for it. We don't dismiss other crimes as people asking for it,why is it that rape is something someone can be asking for? It doesn't matter if someone is walking around naked nobody is 'asking' to be assaulted and yet people still go with this idea that if she is drunk or dressing a certain way that she is somehow doing something wrong, it just boggles my mind that this is something that women have to deal with. But its something so engrained in our society that even women think this kind of thing, we push this idea in media too and kids grow up seeing this thing and continue to think thats just the way things should be.
This obviously doesn't just stop  at women either everything in Ferguson, Missouri and with Trayvon Martin has shown that many people view being a young black man is enough of a reason to judge someone guilty of whatever crime that they have been accused of according to white America and I am speaking as a guy who is part of white America. It has apparently never crossed anybodies mind that maybe we just should try and make a point of not shooting and killing everyone, in my mind it doesn't matter if Mike Brown robbed a convenience store, which is doesn't sound like he did, police should try and do everything they can to not shoot and kill people as should everyone else. This is not something that we can fix with a law or any other one action, it needs our society to change its mindset; this is something that it is fully capable of doing but will take time. In 1996 27% of people were in favor of gay marriage while 65% opposed it, today 55% support gay marriage and that number will continue to grow.
We can change these perceptions but first we need to recognize the problems and as of today the vast majority of people do not recognize them and are still blaming the victim.

There are no Antiheroes

The Dictionary defines an Antihero as "a protagonist who lacks the attributes that make a heroic figure, as nobility of mind and spirit, a life or attitude marked by action or purpose, and the like." We often still see the character as a hero despite their flaws, and my point in this is really that most antiheroes really don't have true flaws. What is batman's real flaw? he is broody and wears black, that kind of makes him sound like me in high school except Batman is a billionaire who has kept on being broody for way longer than most high school kids who shop at hot topic. What does Batman really do that's really makes us question if we should be supporting him? He basically does the same thing as any other superhero but is kind of standoffish, that's it. To me the idea of an antihero is kind of funny because most times antiheroes are still heroes but they just have some flaw that makes them imperfect, having a flaw though doesn't suddenly make someone a bad guy. It seems like most antiheroes are simply not able to be shown as too flawed or else they are a villain, but people have flaws and no person is entirely good so it does not seem like much a of a deviation if your "antihero" simply respond as we might expect an average person would. There are definitely good antiheroes out there with several of the characters from the Watchmen being good examples of truly flawed individuals still trying to act as forces of good. A great example that was brought up to me is actually Magneto from X-men, who is actually the villain in most of the X-men, the thing with Magneto though is that what he is doing isn't to kill humans because he thinks that would be fun its because in the X-men world Mutants are hated and feared by many and what he is doing to try and help mutants could be seen in a way as being something of a Civil Rights movement for Mutants, his methods would be considered morally wrong by most but its not as though this threat to mutant kind is in his imagination its very real in the mutant universe.Magneto is also supposed to be someone who has seen the worst of humanity as he is a German Jew who survived the holocaust and someone who has seen Mutants butchered at the hands of humans. I am not sure if its intentional or not but the difference between Magneto and Professor-X in the X-men world is not that unlike Malcolm X and Martin Luther King junior in the American civil rights movement, Charles Xavier like MLK advocates peaceful interaction and living together, while Magneto advocates Mutant supremacy much like Malcolm X advocated Black supremacy. The end result though is that most people see Magneto as a villain, a complicated villain but a villain nonetheless but he is the level that Antiheroes need to go to if they are truly antiheroes and for the most part that moral ambiguity is not somewhere most story-lines want to go to with their protagonist.

A Mongol Europe

In April of 1241 the armies of the Mongol empire decisively defeated the forces of Medieval Europe in both Poland and Hungary leaving the road to further conquest in Europe open, however the Mongol armies soon withdrew and many in Europe believed that they must have weakened the Mongol forces so badly that they withdrew to their holdings in Russia.  The truth of the matter was that the Great Khan Ogedei had died and the leader of the Mongol forces in Europe, Subutai was forced to withdraw until a new Khan was elected.  Despite this many historians have theorized that the Mongols did not want to advance into the European principalities as their tactics would not be effective or that the Mongols never intended to go any further into Europe and were simply dealing with a perceived threat to their territory in Russia. Both of these theories are simply just wrong as the Magyar peoples, who would become known Hungarians, had succeeded in conquering a huge area around the turn of the 9^th and 10^th centuries and Atila the Hun had crushed the Roman Empire in the mid-5^th century. The insistence that the Mongols would not have been able to deal with the heavily fortified Europe is also absurd as China possessed far larger and more sophisticated fortifications and were still defeated by the Mongols. The Mongols possessed a huge advantage over the Nobles and Kings of Europe and the only thing that saved them is the death of Ogedei Khan and the subsequent infighting among the decedents of Genghis Khan.  If Ogedei had not died what might have happened and how would Europe have been altered?

After his victory at the Battle of Mohi all of Europe was open for conquest by the Mongols and despite what some historians think conquering Europe would not have been very difficult for the Mongols to do. The Mongols had already begun setting up an administration in Hungary and had sent scouts throughout Europe; Subutai had begun preparing an invasion of the Holy Roman Empire and the first place that he would have looked to was the city of Vienna. The Mongol forces were highly mobile and Vienna was already close to Hungary so laying siege to the city would have been done very quickly and very effectively as the Mongols wars in China had given them some highly skilled siege engineers who unlike their European counterparts would actually build the siege equipment on site. The Mongols and Chinese used gunpowder weapons in various forms in their wars against each other but it is not known how many gunpowder weapons the Mongol army in Europe possessed and either way it was not an advantage the Mongols would truly need to win. One of the tactics of the Mongols was to force or impress people into their army and that is exactly what they would have done here, with Poland and Hungary decisively defeated they would have likely rounded up large numbers of men from the country and forced them to help lay siege to Vienna to be used as cannon fodder troops. This meant that when the Mongols army broke the walls of Vienna the defenders would be fighting Europeans not valuable and highly skilled Mongols but conquered eastern Europeans who had been promised their lives if they succeeded in taking the city. It might seem strange, as some might expect these impressed soldiers to turn on the Mongols but this is a tactic that the Mongols as well as many other armies had used many times before and it is not as though Europeans had any real qualms with fighting one another.  The Holy Roman Emperor could not have raised an army in time to try and relieve a Siege of Vienna and even if he had it any attempt to relieve the city would have been unsuccessful; I can say that without hesitation as the Hungarian army, which was much larger than the Mongol army was destroyed rather easily and with few casualties by the Mongols as was the European army in Poland. The problem for the Europeans is that the Mongol army was just so much better than anything they or anyone else for that matter had ever faced in terms of skill and tactics. The sack of Vienna would have been brutal as all Mongol sacks were; if Vienna did not surrender then the population would have been massacred and city itself utterly and completely destroyed. 

After the conquest of Vienna the Mongols could have moved into Italy or Germany and in both places the tactics would have been very similar. The Mongols could have gone in and simply defeated the European armies in Germany or Italy but the Mongols loved to use diplomacy to get others to do their fighting on top of their normal impressment of men into their army. If the Mongols moved into Italy they would have found that the Italian states were constantly feuding with one another and while they may have tried to band together to fight the Mongols the Mongols would have easily defeated any army that was sent against them or broken up any alliance by playing the various states, lords and republics against one another.  In fact the Mongols had already signed a secret treaty with the Venetians in 1221 and at the very least the Mongols would have pressed Venice for support from its impressive Navy to help them subjugate the rest of the Italian Peninsula; the only real interesting point would have been what happens with Rome? Pope Gregory IX died in August of 1241 and his successor Pope Celestine IV died soon after his election and the new pope was not elected until 1243 leaving a power vacuum that the Mongols could have exploited; installing a Pope of their own who had submitted to the Mongols and they could use to further their conquest. It’s possible that with this new Pope they could get Rome to submit without a siege but it really would have made no difference in terms of the campaign itself as Italy would likely have been subjugated with relative ease.

After this the Mongols could either move into the Holy Roman Empire or modern day France and in each the strategy would be the same as it was in Italy, divide and conquer. Let’s assume that Frederick II is still the Holy Roman Emperor and Louis IX is still the King of France, but the Mongols would have been spending this entire time trying to play these two kingdoms off of one another and do whatever they could to undermine them.  The minor fiefs and many different lords and Dukes of Europe would have been easy to exploit by the Mongols as some will capitulate without a fight and most would likely be concerned with trying to hold onto their own territory rather than helping their neighbors against the Mongols, some lords would likely ally with the Mongols in the hope of expanding their holdings. The fall of Europe would have happened and the only places that the Mongols would not have conquered were places where it might not have been worth it for them to launch an expedition to but it’s likely they would have subjugated anyone whom they viewed as a threat.  The real question is what would Europe have looked like after the conquest?

I was going to do this all in one post, but I think I will spread this out into two parts and in the next post I will take a look at what would happen after the conquest.

Michael Sam and breaking down barriers

Michael Sam

Jackie Robinson made his debut for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947 and baseball was changed forever, no longer would black athletes be excluded from the majors based solely on their race. However we didn't see all teams integrate until 1959 when the Boston Red Sox promoted Pumpsie Green. However the NFL did not fully integrate until 1962 when the Washington Redskins were threatened with eviction if they did not integrate. Its gets very tough for homosexuality because its hard to discriminate against someone when you do not know who is and who is not, Michael Sam is not going to be the first gay NFL player he is just going to be the first openly gay NFL player. There are 1,696 players on active NFL rosters at any one time and that's not counting players who are on the practice squad, injured reserve and the numerous number of players who bounce around the league and some of them are gay, same with all other sports. Michael Sam is from Texas and until 2003 Texas, as well as 12 other states, had anti-sodomy laws that either prohibited persons of the same sex in engaging in anal or oral sex. So until Michael Sam was 13 it was illegal in the state he lived in to be gay and its still illegal for him to get married in his home state as well as many others.
There are some who believe that Sam should have stayed in the closet, that its his business and they don't want to know about it, other doing the whole "I wouldn't have a problem with it but somebody else would" line which is just utter and complete crap. One anonymous NFL executive stated
"In the coming decade or two, it's going to be acceptable, but at this point in time it's still a man's-man game. To call somebody a [gay slur] is still so commonplace. It'd chemically imbalance an NFL locker room and meeting room."

People have used the try in a decade or two argument before and its again complete crap, should baseball have given it another decade or two to integrate or should the civil rights movement waited another twenty years to fight for equality, no and neither should Sam; will this be an issue for some players sure, but a team will get over it you know why? Because they are a team of 53 different players all of whom have different opinions and somehow they manage to work together despite these differences because its for the team. As I said before there are already gay players in the NFL and with some of them their teammates already know and the team has been able to move on. The idea that Michael Sam is not a man's-man is probably the stupidest part of that statement, Michael Sam is going to play in the NFL and in his last season at one of the best College football teams in the best College football conference he has 11.5 sacks and 19 tackles for a loss and was named the Defensive player of the year in addition to being an all American and he is not a man's man?
The use of slurs in the locker room is an interesting one as most people are not privy to what NFL locker room's are like but if somebody is going to try and call Michael Sam a Fag then I think he will respond as well as if someone would call him any number of racial slurs, the use of those terms used to be commonplace but now its to the point where most white people have to actually describe the word by calling it the N-word rather than use the term itself. Maybe its time for the men in those locker room's to rethink how they use a term that directly insults their teammate and you know what, they will. Open interaction leads people to question preconceived notions; people often believe that gay men are more feminine and gay women are more masculine but here we are with a man who completely destroys that stereotype and more importantly has been and will continue to completely destroy that notion on national television. We already have Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender  people  openly in the military for 3 years now and the military has not completely fallen apart or become any less tough since this occurred. The NFL wont be any less of a sport because Michael Sam is in it and maybe this can lead some people to question some of their preconceived notions about the LGBT community. Dismissing Sam as an 'off field distraction' is true only because we as a society have made it into one, Robinson was an 'off field distraction' and yet somehow everyone got over it, breaking down barriers is something that not everyone is comfortable with, that's why you have to Break them down. Not everyone is going to be okay with this change and while it is not socially acceptable to publicly homophobic or racist some people will continue to do everything they can to stop Sam from having a successful NFL career.
Many NFL players have already expressed support for Sam, but the real challenge come now because somebody is going to have to draft him and many teams do not want to for reasons varying from homophobia to homophobia. Some people had the audacity to try and claim that Sam did this now to help boost his draft stock, which is just stupid and is just another way people are trying to justify their beleif that he should have continued to lie and stayed in the closet. Sam is a player who should absolutely be in the NFL but some teams are going to find ways to diminish him so that they can justify not drafting him or at least they draft him late enough that they do not have to justify why they cut him. Deadspin talked about how some of these executives are going to spend the next few months until the draft trying to lower his draft stock as much as possible and they very well might succeed, we wont know until the draft. If you are interested here is a scouting report from October that talks about Sam and another from November that calls him one of the five best pass rushers in the draft. What I would really like to see is after Sam is drafted that other players feel that they too can come out and be open about who they are, if a team is upset because they feel its a distraction then they can get over it because they certainly have for players driving drunk, assaulting women, killing dogs, weird fake girlfriend story and any number of other off field distraction. Its exactly what former player Donte' Stallworth said that if an NFL team cannot handle Michael Sam then 'team is already a loser on the field'. This step by Sam is a big one for the NFL and for sports in the United States but its still just a step and its a long road that we are all traveling on. This is also going to need to be one of those times where the media steps up and calls out the people who try to mask their homophobia by talking about 'distractions' and call it for what it is homophobia under the guise of whats best for the team just like what Jackie Robinson went through before breaking that barrier down.