The Reaction: Bread And Circuses

By Carl

So, I'm led to understand that last night, one group of talentless millionaires defeated another group of even less-talented millionaires, thus earning hundreds of millions of dollars for a cartel of socialist-billionaires. Even deeper irony is that the entire nation stopped for four hours (or more) to watch this spectacle, which included "entertainment" by yet another passel of millionaires on a broadcast that featured hundreds of millions of dollars spent not on improving the country, but on trying to segregate your pocket, green from white.

And the deepest irony? The talentless millionaires all perform under the aegis of the least-powerful sports union and performed in a state that hates them for their union. This is something along the lines of a black gospel choir putting on a performance in Mobile, Alabama at a Klan headquarters in the 1950s.

I might have been able to stir up some respect for the game if even one player had made mention of this irony even once during the week, and then vowed to do something about it.

But it's a joke. And so are Americans for watching a spectacle involving people who have no concept of what a real job entails (having been prepped and pampered all their young lives) playing for a meaningless trophy in a "sport" that requires no talent and is centrally controlled by a bunch of old white men who "coach" players into executing a game plan that they themselves implement and woe betide the player who doesn't follow the playbook!

Every player is replaceable, no matter how successful they are, and our nation is littered with the broken bodies of those who put it all out there on the field and now can't even button a shirt to attend a dinner thrown by the billionaire-socialist who exploited their labor.

Sounds like how most Americans make a living, yet here they are, celebrating a victory by the more successful work unit. From another company. One they could never work for.

Lest you think I'm a "hater," I've played more football at nearly every level of competition than you've had hot meals, and even today can toss a 60 yard bomb and hit a beer can. So it's not about being anti-sport.

It's about being anti-...well, whatever sport has devolved to in America.

See, we hand these leagues and the owners trillions in tax breaks and benefits, we prevent other people from infringing on their franchises, creating monopolies at all levels, all so we can spend a few hours...hours!...in rapt contemplation of the beer can in our hand.

You know who else used to spend lavish amounts of money on games designed to pacify his populace? At least they had the decency to call a slave a slave and not glorify him.

We've turned sport from a competition into a spectacle, from a contest between two groups of people into a battle between two corporations vying for the last advertising dollar out there.

Remember the old saying, "It's not whether you win or lose, it's how you play the game"? That fiction, like the fiction that anyone in American can grow up to be president, or if you just work hard and save some money you can have a comfortable life, is a fairy tale that we are seeing stripped away even as you read this.

So for a few hours last night, hundreds of millions of people got the feel an emotion of some sort-- excitement, anger, sadness, joy-- and paid trillions in sum for the privilege.

Ain't that America?

(crossposted to Simply Left Behind)