1. The Chiefs releasing Kareem Hunt, their star running back, in the midst of the franchise's best season in memory due to violence against a woman is yet another example of how businesses are stuck enforcing rules that the law ought to handle.
2. In a better world, it would be unnecessary for sports teams - or other businesses - to judge such cases. The proper authorities would do so.
3. For the woman at the center of this, it's a horror show. But Hunt's actions affect a whole lot of other people, too, some more directly (his teammates), some less directly (Chiefs fans). All end up worse off due to things they couldn't control.
4. The need for businesses to step in and handle matters of basic protection of the vulnerable is a sign that our systems are broken at doling out the justice they should in these cases. This is the sort of thing that government exists to do.
5. Meanwhile, yes: they're the lesser victims here, but a whole lot of people in the Chiefs organization have worked & sweated for this day, & a whole lot of Chiefs fans waited a long, long time for it. Hunt betrayed all of them.
6. On so many levels, these situations are wrong. This isn't a "oh, NFL is getting PC" situation; violence against women is bad on the most primitive levels of moral conduct. What is appalling is that we are even having the discussion about men who do these things having liberty.
7. In more elemental times, men like Hunt would be subject to the rough justice of the community. So the question is, if we don't want rough justice, who should deliver it? And if the government, bound by due process of law, isn't doing that...should it?
8. I don't have a perfect answer. Innocent bystanders are gonna get hurt anyway, and that's on Hunt, not on the Chiefs. But it still seems wrong to have to depend on sports teams to decide when a man should be accountable for beating a woman. Then, why have a government at all?
