I’ve played team sports for the better part of a decade. Mostly basketball, soccer and some ultimate frisbee. I was good, but never the star in team sports.
But I was a star on the track. I went to state for the 400m dash and the triple jump. I have loads of track ribbons and medals, but I have nothing to show for team sports.
Is this because I am a bad team player? I don’t like to think so, but it very well could be the case that I’m simply bad on a team. I like working alone. In fact I love working alone. I usually, almost always, despise the way other people do things.
The notion that the better team will end up on top, in national politics as in sports, holds equal water.
I think the Democrats are a better team.
Not only do I think they are a better team, in fact I think they are leaps and bounds ahead of the Republicans in this regard. (Keep in mind that I am dispensing with moral judgements in making this case. I will try to lay out some observations first and comment on their moral implication later.)
#1 The Democrats are unified. The Republicans are not. The Democrats, despite Wikileaks revelations that their primaries were not fair to Bernie Sanders, have rallied around their nominee. The Republican nominee, on the other hand, despite winning in a field of 17 contenders fair and square, is still battling his own party.
#2 The Democrats protect their own. In 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon quit the presidency. He got into a helicopter and just flew away. He did this because his surrogates were caught spying on the Democrats and he would have certainly been impeached. Democratic President Bill Clinton was actually impeached for perjury and obstruction of justice in relation to lying under oath regarding his extramarital affairs in Office. Clinton denied everything, was acquitted, and remains one of the most popular presidents in US history.
Has the character of the United States, in regard, specifically, to the principle of shame, changed since the 1970s? I would argue it certainly has, and it has changed in a very bad way.
#3 The Democrats always play a full-court press. This is the most crucial distinction between the Republicans and the Democrats. The Democrats are not merely a political party, they are a total cultural machine. Hollywood is obviously and overwhelmingly liberal, this can be verified by investigating which party all the major Hollywood players donate to, come election time, but more easily by a cursory analysis of the media they produce. (Check out Ben Shapiro’s book on this, Primetime Propaganda.) Republicans, with few to no exceptions, have no interest in exporting their ideas via cinema or television–perhaps the two most effective means of translating ideas and influencing culture. Conservatives write and sell a lot of books, but they refuse to catch up with the times, television and cinema are far more effective means of communicating ideas. Educational institutions are overwhelmingly leftist, from Kindergarten to Grad School. Some estimates say for every conservative professor, there are 10 liberal professors. My own experience at the University of Colorado, Boulder, verifies the ten-to-one ratio specifically in Arts & Sciences. Lastly, news media is overwhelmingly center-left to hard-left except for outliers like Breitbart and Fox News and a few other online producers (Drudge, Blaze, etc).
There are too many track stars on the Republican side, too many individuals and not enough team players. Although the rules and circumstances have changed over time, politics remains a team sport and the Republicans, ironically, are filled with Colin Kaepernicks.
I think what is happening in American politics can be reduced to a basketball game. You have two teams, team Red and team Blue, and team Blue is constantly breaking the rules. 6 Blue men on the court at once, rampant traveling violations, Blue players breaking the salary caps, numerous three-second violations and 2 pointers counted as 3s. Team Blue even gives away tickets for free, filling up the stands with Soccer fans and encouraging them to support team Blue even though they have no legitimate stake in the game. Some members of the audience boo and shout and the referees hold a whistle to their mouths, but never seem to blow.
I think there is a different standard of accountability, personal, moral, financial, that team Red and Team Blue abide by. Since team Blue dominates media and culture, it can get away with infractions that team Red suffers relentlessly for. (I’m constantly told that a great many years ago, this trend was the reverse of what it is now.) There may be a standalone game that Red team wins, sure, but never the series. Under present circumstances, team Red will never take home the trophy.
What is so maddening about this is that team Red, dear Republicans, RINOs and sellouts, do not care. Party heads are not so different. Team Red and team Blue seem to share common ownership.
If team Red refuses to play the game that team Blue has been winning for years, they will never win again, nor would they ever deserve to. The strings have been cut and the corpse of the GOP is rotting in full view. What will emerge from the debris after November 8?
After this election, I think a hostile takeover of team Red will occur, is in fact currently underway. Prediction: Team Red will cease to be team Red and will become team Red, White and Blue–The Nationals, equipped with their own media outlets, music and entertainment. The Republican base, in its support of free agent Trump, is currently splitting from its leadership. Washed-up players like Paul Ryan and John McCain are reviled and rightly so, since they no longer consider the interests of the people who elect them. Conservatism, whatever that even means in current year, has lost. It has lost for 30 years and its proponents, at least the honest ones, recognize this and want change and most of all, are prepared to adapt. First round draft picks like Cernovich and true stalwarts like Ann Coulter are encouraging this shift by changing the game themselves, by shouting right in the referees’ faces and talking directly to their fans.
And you know what? Their fans are loving it!
callmesteiner 