A friend wrote, "We should be going forward and we're going backwards. This is not a team sport for me, I don't care who the president is at any given time, I don't have a political cult leader that I worship, I just want things to be better in the world."
Yes, politics is not a team sport. But it seems like team sports have played an outsize role in our formation as a society, to the point of even affecting how we understand and practice politics, business, and the media. Team sports form and feed the tendency toward tribalism, as "Us" vs. "Them" is an inherent feature of any game. MAGA shrewdly capitalizes on that underlying impulse.
Fans use chants not only to support their teams, but to bolster their identity. Republicans do the same thing with their own team chants: "LOCK HER UP! LOCK HER UP!" and "USA! USA! USA." When a baseball team wins the World Series, or a football team wins the Superbowl, or a soccer team wins the World Cup, there are parties and parades. Republicans do the same thing, with Trump rallies and the recent DC military parade. Nationalism is just team pride on a sweeping scale.
Yes, team sports like baseball, football, basketball and soccer have been known to cultivate virtues like teamwork, discipline, sportsmanship, and perseverance, but in the end, what gets most celebrated is WINNING, and that goal has reinforced the tribalism that bedevils Americans today. And when winning guarantees profit, UCLA Bruins Coach Red Sanders' dictum becomes law: "Winning isn’t everything; it's the only thing,"
The First Felon and his Republican minions have capitalized on this For example:
DONALD TRUMP, CPAC, 2/24.17: "We inherited a national debt that has doubled in eight years. Think of it - $20 trillion. It's doubled. And we inherited a foreign policy marked by one disaster after another. We don't win anymore. When was the last time we won? Did we win a war? Do we win anything? Do we win anything? We're going to win. We're going to win big, folks. We're going to start winning again, believe me."
SIXTH REPUBLICAN DEBATE, 1/15/2016.
If I'm president, we will win on everything we do.
DR. OZ INTERVIEW, 9/15/16
The people that know me -- I win. I know how to win. You can't win unless you have a great temperament. I know people that can't win. I know people that are very talented at sports, and they never win."
The exclusive focus on winning incites poor sportsmanship, which is increasing on every level, from high schools to the pros. Consider the brawls listed here, over just a few weeks time in 2024: https://uni-watch.com/2024/03/11/sports-culture-is-getting-seriously-ugly-these-days/ There are political parallels. Hardly anyone flinched when Coach Bill Fowler positively praised the Philadelphia Eagles for "total manhandling" the Chiefs in the Superbowl; 47 has told his advisors to "obliterate" Iran if he is assassinated, and recently bragged that his orders to bomb Iran's nuclear sites "obliterated" them. If this is what is happening in sports, it's not surprising to see it happening in politics. January 6 and ICE are the political equivalents of the ugliness that is overtaking sports culture. A people who are ready to cheer their team on the diamond, court or gridiron, no matter what will be a people who are ready to cheer their Dear Leader in DC and Mar-a-Lago, no matter what.
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