This coming week, a huge percentage the United States population will be obsessed with these two subjects. If you have been hiding in a cave from the news of the world (perhaps the sanest possible behavior these days), let me fill you in: this week’s American fixations stem from the coming Super Bowl of American football next Sunday and the on-going impeachment of the President. For those of you who live in other cultures, allow me an audacious attempt at analyzing these peculiar forms of insanity.
The parallels between these two forms of mud wrestling are many. Both are played to win, of course, but both also involve nefarious strategies. Tempting the opponent to make fatal mistakes, for instance. Or famously (infamously?) to injure a key player of the opposition so that he has to drop out of the game. Both involve a strategist in a leadership role. Both have enormous payoffs in money and fame.
The most successful politicians and football players end up multi-multi millionaires. Even the minor players are pretty much guaranteed easy, well-paying jobs, if only as glad-handers, after they leave the field. And both depend HEAVILY on television to attract adherents.
’Twas not ever thus in sport or elections in the USA. Time was when people cared about the outcomes of elections and football games, and their expectations were that the people who played the game would play to win. But not for blood. In these endeavors, players used to be admired for their sportsmanship or patriotism.
On the football field, the strategy used to be to block or intercept the ball, not to sack the quarterback in such a way as to deal him a disabling blow. Fans did not demand and then cheer the sight of the opposing star player lying on the field writhing in pain or being carried off on a stretcher.
In politics, oh there was some—mostly minor league—cheating by political bosses on local levels. But by and large, the worst thing political candidates did was make promises they knew they couldn’t keep. Then along came Karl Rove, who showed his party how they could tear off subsets of voters by turning them into one-factor decision makers. Ramp up the anger of Catholics against the availability of abortions. Convince the gun owners that the second amendment to the Constitution entitled them to own weapons for mass killings and to shoot cop-killer bullets with them. And that anyone who said different was taking away their inalienable rights. Also, tell the hyper wealthy that taxes are not, in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes, “what we pay for a civilized society.” Tell them taxes are the most despicable form of robbery.
Once an election was over, it used to be that those in office would attempt to do what was good for the country, not to declare—for instance—that their “job for the next four year is the make Obama a one-term President.”
The weapons used to win both in football and in politics used to be skill, capability, and using the rules to one’s advantage. Now they are money and television.
In politics, rabid party adherents provide the cash directly. The angrier the parties can make their followers, the more money they can collect. More money means more TV advertising time, and the conventional wisdom is that TV ads win elections. The elected officials will end up rich. The citizens will get… I was going to say bupkes, but they do have the chance to live in a country where football is now the most popular sport.
You might think all of this is useless blather, but—
The rending of American society has turned us into a nation that puts children in cages.
And Super Bowl Sunday gives my country its highest daily incidence of violence against women.
Breaks my heart.
