It’s football season and that means, regardless of whether ratings are up or down, that there are literally millions of people spending their Sunday afternoons glued to the TV or streaming device of their choice. Chances are you know at least one person, maybe it’s you, who gets so involved in the games that they wind up yelling at the screen, questioning whether the referee is blind, or screaming for their team “Get him!” in reference to whoever has the ball. Sometimes those screams become “kill him!” or “rip his head off!” There might not be as many of those cries as there used to be since it’s become more public that these hard hits lead to concussions that can have long-term effects on players’ health. But don’t feel guilty if you’re an intense fan, we all have those moments where we’re swept away by the thrill of something we’re passionate about. The truth is, we have some strong reasons why we identify with our favorite sports teams. For most, it’s a direct identification with their immediate surrounding area. Supporting your team is, in essence, defending the territory in which you live and the choice you made to come or stay there. For some, the favorite team comes from where they used to live. The move may have been necessary, but rooting for their former home team is one of the few ways to stay connected to a previous life. Then there are people who simply became fans of whoever was winning championships when they first started watching. Loyalty often has moments of disappointment, but rooting for your team come hell or high water can keep a person connected to their childhood. It’s no wonder with these intense underpinnings we have traditionally viewed the players not so much as human than as the flickering lights of a digital avatar in a video game. Now, however, in an age where we have almost too much information, it’s impossible to ignore players’ backstories: whether they beat their wife and/or kids, arrange vicious dog fights for money, or are possible co-conspirators to murder. You don’t want the League to suspend or completely end a top star’s season, especially if he’s on your Fantasy team and yet, there’s this whole morality thing. And let’s not forget the latest issue: whether players stand for the national anthem or kneel in protest of racial injustice.
Our sports have become so inundated with politics they’re not as fun anymore. Conversely, our politics are tainted with a sports-like enthusiasm that overshadows any sense of responsibility to the process. Trump is only the most recent example of this phenomenon, but he’s a critical one. There seem to be an endless supply of reasons why Trump snaked out his big “win”, among them is the fact that Trump brought in a lot of people who had never voted before. I experienced this myself when the only friend I had who drank the Trump Kool-Aid announced his intentions to vote for the first time ever. My experiences with this person in the past were that he was a conspiracy theorist, convinced that there was really no difference between the two political parties. It is this view of the world that perhaps helps explain the Trump phenomenon. Trump fans are people who are tired of the old system. In sports terms, they weren’t interested in rooting for the only two teams that were really available. They were dying to be fans, but they needed a home team to support. Trump succeeded in doing what seemed at one time impossible: he ran as an Independent with the official stamp of the Republican Party. Before the election, Trump could have been considered a Democrat. He slept around, but didn’t use condoms, surely as a married man he was in favor of abortion. There is video of him claiming that the economy always seems to do better under Democrats, which is a surprisingly accurate statement for him. He was once far more friendly with the Clintons, who were guests at his wedding to Melania in 2005. Then again, Trump didn’t just admit, but proudly stated that he has funded candidates from both Parties with the expectation of receiving something in return. When Trump led in the polls but still wasn’t the guaranteed nominee, Republicans had little nice to say about him. News stories leaked that the GOP was planning some sort of backroom deal to oust the Donald were he to actually win the nomination. True or not, these stories only emboldened his fans, who saw him as the ultimate anti-establishment candidate. And these were fans in the very definition of the word as short for fanatic. Trump was popular because he was anti-establishment. The Democrats treating him as a joke and Republicans trying to distance themselves from him helped give him the “homefield advantage” of not being aligned with either Party, even if he was officially GOP. That official connection was, for many followers, simply a rubber stamp of approval that made it possible for him to actually win. He was the leader of the unofficial Anti-establishment Party, gilded with a GOP seal that meant he was officially in the game, and the flood of newcomers forced Republicans to take Trump seriously. Ultimately, the GOP would be transformed into the image of Trump and his followers.
The tribalistic approach to politics didn’t start with Donald Trump though. We could look back to Nixon and Watergate, Reagan and the rumors that the Republican Party negotiated with Iran to hold the hostages long enough for Reagan to beat an ineffectual-looking Carter in 1980. We certainly could point to a pre-Trump GOP-led congress, fronted by Mitch McConnel who announced clearly that he wanted to make Barack Obama an unsuccessful President, and completely cock-blocked him from appointing a Supreme Court Justice upon the death of Antonin Scalia. This is loyalist politics at it’s finest, Trump just took out the pretense that it was anything else but team players. He very clearly asked for and expected loyalty from everyone in his administration, and that bled over to his voters (fans). You’re either with him, or you’re against him, and if you’re against him, you must be decisively crushed.
Look on social media and you’ll see just how much a game this is to right wing trolls. Check the comment section of any left-leaning article that criticizes Trump or the GOP. Check any friend’s social media that turns into a political battle because that one conservative friend doesn’t want to let it go that Trump hasn’t been proven a racist, or that the country’s not really heading towards fiscal ruin… yet. Anybody who uses terms like “libtard” or “owning the Dems” is playing a game that they’re happy to win on a technicality. Recently Trump stated there were criminals and terrorists in the caravan of refugees slowly lumbering to our southern border. When challenged that there was no proof of this, Trump answered “There’s no proof of anything, but there could very well be…”. In other words, “you can’t prove that there aren’t criminals or Middle Easterners in there, so technically, you can’t say that I’m wrong.” Ever play… let’s say cops and robbers with that one kid that refuses to admit you got the drop on them with your pretend gun? “No, you missed,” this person may say, showing a trajectory of the imaginary bullet that is close, but leaves your opponent unharmed. This is not only annoying but it’s pretty much the end of your game. There’s only two ways this can go now: either somebody takes on the role of the “bigger person” and now plays under internal or external protest, or neither side acquiesces and it just turns into a fight that kills the game. Internet Trolls seem to get a kick out of riling Liberals up, willing to repeat conspiracy theories that are ridiculous and unproven, or “statistics” that are purposely manipulated or just simply made up. The goal isn’t to be right on an objective scale, but to piss people off and laugh at how upset these sensitive Liberals are. Of course, they seem to forget or be completely ignorant of the fact that the game being played here has huge consequences. Climate change doesn’t stop just because politicians think they’re smarter than the scientists who do nothing but study this situation. Once, climate change was referred to as “Global Warming”, which is a correct description of the long term phenomenon of continually rising average temperatures and glaciers melting on the poles. But Senator James Inhofe once noticed it was cold outside and brought a snowball onto the Senate floor and proved all the scientists wrong, because how can the globe be getting slowly warmer if we still have snow? This may have contributed to changing the name to something a little more idiot-proof, but the problem never went away. Now we have climate change deniers who are willing to sacrifice our future because the theories scientists studied and warned us about are inconvenient for them. And now, one of those morons is the President.
In every issue, every critique Trump receives, his talking point, or Fox News’, or Breitbart’s, is that somehow the criticism is wrong. Republicans are willing to say that Trump doesn’t make the best choices, but they’re not about to get rid of him. After all, he’s the captain of the team! Similar to that fan watching football, the dangerous consequences are almost completely forgotten in the wild rush of winning at any cost. Captain Whinesalot is destroying the playing field that is earth as much as that annoying friend ruined Cops and Robbers. Maybe that’s why we had to invent paintball and lasertag, just to prevent schmucks from ruining games we all should know the rules to. The problem here is that we can’t invent a new earth to live on just because the nincompoops are in charge, at least not in time to keep us all from losing the game.
