Incognito was just too obvious

Okay, so I'm falling in love with the ironic potential of a guy with the name Incognito, cut me some slack.  As it turns out, my gut feelings about this not being such a clear cut case of one bad guy riding one of his teammate into a nervous breakdown are proving to be rather accurate.  In my last blog post, I said that Richie Incognito was a scapegoat, which means he is being used as a symbol of the sins of many.  In Hebrew it is called azazel, a goat that carried all of the sins of the people into the wilderness (Leviticus 16: 20-22).
It's a very old practice to try and keep the community functioning in times when their depravity seems to have gotten the best of them.  Now we are hearing that the coaches may have instructed Incognito to "toughen up" Jonathan Martin, which sounds like a very martial, football kind of thing to do.  It's the Code Red that I mentioned from A Few Good Men, it's the blanket party from Full Metal Jacket, it's savage, man stuff, and it can break people.  In the latter movie, did it surprise anyone that "Private Pyle" ended up snapping on the drill sergeant?
As it turns out, Incognito isn't thought of as a bully or a racist by his other teammates, in fact, they seem to like him.  They like him enough to say so, when he is being cast out into the wilderness by an authority structure that is in full Public Relations Panic Mode.  Black players, are saying that they are not offended by Incognito using the N-word, and I don't mean in the sort of forbearing the stupidity of a drunk guy way that the other Eagles did for Riley Cooper, I mean that they genuinely think he was "allowed" to use it, like he was in the Wu-Tang Clan.  Incognito apparently has enough non-racist street cred, to be able to use that word among his black teammates and not get the beat down that most of us think would be coming to him.  Most of us white folk have probably not heard of being an honorary black guy, but apparently that's a thing that happens.  And that, if it means what I think it means, changes the dynamic of Incognito's interaction with Martin.  Without the racial element, the bullying is much more run of the mill, even if it is still vulgar and crude and barbaric.
The world these guys live in, is by nature vulgar, crude and barbaric.  They get paid to be huge and push people around.
But the other thing that is sort of emerging from the haze of this mess is a nuance that most soldiers, athletes or frat boys would probably have seen a mile away: Incognito may actually have been trying to help Martin.  Maybe Martin is one of those unmotivated, "soft" guys who just didn't seem to be willing to work and play as hard as the team wanted and needed.
The purpose of boot camp and hazing and such rituals is to break down the individual and replace them with a team player.  The suffering and degradation of recruits is meant to destroy the ego that looks out for number one and replace it with a loyalty to the group that will overcome the fear of death.  That's a tall order and you can see how some people just might not be able to handle it.
That being said, football is not war, all metaphor and hyperbole aside, nobody's life is hanging in the balance when the Dolphins play, and so perhaps we should not apply the same ethical standards to training for a game that we do to training for war, but we do.  Listen to the words and the descriptions, there is a lot of blood lust in the game of American Football, which is probably why we love it so.