Rigged!

My late father-in-law, may God rest his soul, was a life-long, die-hard fan of the Green Bay Packers football team. 

He can be forgiven for that. 

But there was one particularly aggravating aspect to his fandom, for him there were only two possible outcomes to a Packer game, they could either win, or else the game was rigged, stolen from them by the refs. Could the Packers legitimately lose a game? Unthinkable.

This isn't an unusual trait of many passionate sports fans, a word which of course is short for fanatics. Fortunately, those folks are in the minority because if they weren't, if enough people seriously believed that the games were not played on the up and up, the world of legitimate spectator sports would lose all credibility and become a mere offshoot of professional wrestling.

What? Professional wrestling not legitimate? I'm shocked, shocked!!!

That's precisely why ever since the mother of all sports scandals, the 1919 Black Sox fiasco, Major League Baseball has been so strict in regard to its dealings with players and coaches who have been caught betting on the game. Just last week, Tucupito Marcano, who was until last Monday a middle infielder for the San Diego Padres, was banned from baseball for betting on games that involved his team at the time, the Pittsburgh Pirates. While MLB denies that the outcome of any games was affected by Marcano's wagering, the mere hint of impropriety was enough to get Marcano booted out of the game for life. 

Legitimate spectator sports work because of three fundamental principles:

• Everybody plays by the same set of rules. 
• Everyone involved with a team, from players to coaches to support staff, is committed to putting the best team they possibly can on the field.
• The acceptance that there can only be one winner at any given time.

These three principles form the basis of a covenant between fans and the sport. The first two are a matter of faith, fans trust the leagues to ensure fair play, and they trust the teams to do their best to win. The third and most important of the three, is the expectation that winners will be gracious in victory, and that losers be sportsmanlike in accepting defeat, and will be around to play another day.

Unfortunately, like everything that involves human nature, these principles are aspirational. In other words, shit happens. 

• Bad calls, especially a series of them, can make fans seriously question if everyone does in fact, play by the same set of rules. 
• Seeing a player "dogging it" during a play can make it appear like he or she is not putting every ounce of effort into their performance, or worse, has an ulterior motive.
• Bad sportsmanship, truly the root of all evil in sports, deflates or even has the potential of destroying the very spirit of athletic competition.

Therefore, in order to preserve the covenant between the sport and its fans, the governing bodies of legitimate sports do their utmost to address these issues. 

Some would say they don't do enough while others would say they do too much.

I guess you just can't win.

But they must be doing something right because legitimate spectator sports continue to be a remarkably successful endeavor in this country and in much of the rest of the world.

And in my humble opinion, that's a very good thing because there are few things in this world that bring people together like sports, once you cut through all the business and political BS that is. Think of the World Cup, the Olympic Games, or on a more parochial level, the Superbowl, just for starters.

During these events, people set aside their religion, political ideologies, and most of the things that separate us, sometimes even allegiance to a team, to celebrate the sport.

Because in the big picture, it's the game that really matters, and while almost every fan favors a particular team or athlete, in a perfect world at least, every sports fan is at heart, a fan of the game, be it baseball, Australian Rules Football, Wife Carrying, yes, such a thing exists, or whatever.

As hackneyed, trivial and downright off-the-wall as what I'm about to say may seem, legitimate spectator sports are in a sense, a model for democracy. There, I said it.

 

Let me explain:

A democratic republic like legitimate spectator sports, depends upon a few basic principles in order for it to function, ideally:

• Everybody plays by the same set of rules.
• Chosen by free and fair elections, legislative and executive representatives govern reflecting the will of the majority, while protecting the rights of the minority clearly spelled out by a constitution.
• While there can be only one winner of any election, new elections without fail, are held on a regular basis.

Again, like sports these principles form the basis of a covenant, this time between citizens and their government. The first two again are a matter of faith, here citizens trust the electoral system and if necessary, the courts to ensure free and fair elections, and they trust their elected officials who, without ulterior motive, govern to the best of their ability. The third is the expectation that winners of elections will be gracious in victory, and that losers magnanimous in accepting defeat, will form the loyal opposition, and have the opportunity run for office another day, if they so choose.

Talk about aspirational.

One would think it a no-brainer that most people would want to live in a country ruled by the will of the people, rather than the will of an all-powerful king or a dictator. In the United States, we've been living so long in our own democratic republic, nearly 250 years, that we have taken it for granted, assuming that nothing could ever come around to destroy it. But not so fast. 

I think it's fair to say that the most important part of a democracy is that despite differences of opinion, a critical mass of its citizens, and by that I mean a super majority, ultimately put their country ahead of their ideology and political party. 

Doing so means supporting the government, the electoral system and the safeguards built into it, as well as the judicial system, even when their actions don't exactly jibe with what one would like. At times it may take quite a leap of faith to do so, but that trust is essential in keeping any democracy alive.

Which brings to mind the 2000 presidential election, the closest in American history. Al Gore won the popular vote by over 500,000 votes but where it really counts, the Electoral College came down to one state, Florida and its 25 electoral votes. That year the winner of Florida would become the next president. But that state was painfully close as well, separated by only hundreds of votes, and battles over technical errors at the polls, (anyone out there remember the hanging chads?) had to be resolved in the courts. In a controversial 5-4 decision reflecting party lines, the Supreme Court overruled a Florida State Supreme Court mandated recount which turned out to the deciding factor in the election. Gore technically had other opportunities to challenge the result but for the sake of the country, elected not to. As Vice President he even had to face the unenviable task, as Mike Pence did in 2021, of certifying the Electoral College Vote in favor of his opponent. Gore even had to declare his Democratic allies out of order when they refused to accept the slate of Florida electors for George W. Bush.

If any presidential candidate in history had a reason to gripe about the electoral system, it was Al Gore in 2000. For the record, in that election I voted for Ralph Nader teaching me a lifelong lesson on the futility of voting for third-party candidates. 

As I said above, shit happens. True, Al Gore was screwed that year, but managed to move on in a respectful and honorable way which went a long way to help preserve our democracy.

But when members of government fail to live up to their part of the bargain, that is to say governing with ulterior motives such as abusing their position in the quest of disproportionate power or financial gain, or the failure to accept the result of elections just to name three examples, all bets are off.  

Which brings us to you-know-who.

The 2020 election was nowhere near as close as 2000, in fact it wasn't close at all. Yet the loser of that election, the incumbent president at the time, insisted without evidence, "just lots of theories" in the words of his lawyer Rudy Giuliani before a judge, that the election was "stolen" from him. Today nearly four years after the event, that exPOTUS has yet to concede the election to President Biden.

The election denial came as no surprise to anyone paying attention as the same candidate claimed before his successful 2016 election that only two possible outcomes for that election would be possible: victory for him, or a rigged, stolen election. Sound familiar? Although he won the Electoral College and the presidency that year, he still griped about losing the popular vote by about 3 million votes to Hillary Clinton, claiming that was made possible only through fraud. 

His supporters however with a world class case of selective memory, ignored that obvious pattern and chose to believe his lie about a rigged election, casting grave doubts about our election system.

Well he's at it again, this time whining about a "weaponized Biden Justice Department" doing everything in their power to persecute him. 

Once again, he and his sycophants have a boatload of theories but zero evidence to back up that very serious charge.  

It's been a little over a week at this writing since a Manhattan jury found him guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records in order to cover up another crime, election interference. Granted, it's not the most glamorous or egregious crime imaginable, remember the Feds got Al Capone, (whom the likely Republican nominee for president this year likes to compare himself to), for tax evasion. 

The crimes for which he was convicted in New York for example, were not as bad as say, absconding with hundreds of boxes of highly sensitive and top-secret government documents from the White House, showing them off to patrons of his country club, then refusing to return them when the government asked for them back. They're not nearly as bad as trying to blackmail the Georgia Secretary of State into "finding" just the right number of votes to put him over the top in that state in 2020, or extorting the president of Ukraine by demanding he dig up dirt on his political opponent, the current POTUS, an act which resulted in his first impeachment. And they're practically nothing compared to his actions surrounding the events of January 6, 2021, in the effort to illegally overturn an election which he lost, an act for which he was impeached a second time.

But a crime is a crime, and one of the most essential parts of democracy is that no one is above the law, not even the president. 

One can only imagine the outrage and moral indignation among Republicans (which would have been justified), had those crimes been committed by a Democrat. Remember the kerfuffle over Hillary's emails?  Remember the constant chant of "lock her up"?

As their dear orange leader rightfully claimed during the 2016 election, he could murder someone in cold blood and not lose any supporters. 

I like to think that by any definition of the term, it is inconceivable that any reasonable person would make a claim like that, especially at an official event during a presidential campaign, even in jest.  

As I don't consider the exPOTUS to be either a reasonable or a rational person, I can't really blame him for every moronic thing he says and does, and there are a lot of them. 

Quite honestly, I don't blame his base either. After all, his life and his countless indiscretions are an open book. If his base wants as their president a whiney, adjudicated rapist baby man narcissist who compares himself and his problems to those of Jesus, talks about retribution incessantly and little else, has a man crush on criminals and brutal dictators, denigrates current American service members and veterans, and led a failed insurrection in an attempt to overthrow the democratically elected government of the United States, they found their man in Trump. That's their opinion and while this is still a free country, they're entitled to it.

But I DO blame the people who know better, first of all, Republican politicians and members of the right wing, Trump enabling media who have made it abundantly clear countless times in the past that they would gleefully dance on the exPOTUS's political grave were it not for their mortal fear of the folks mentioned in the last paragraph. 

Because of that, knowing full well that a good number of Americans haven't a clue what the difference is between a fact and an opinion, or between evidence and theories, they continue to perpetuate the old lie of a stolen 2020 election and the new lie about a weaponized Justice System, casting doubt on two of the most important safeguards of our democratic republic. 

And if the exPOTUS should win the 2024 presidential election, a distinct possibility, I WILL blame the voters who do know better, but plan to either sit this one out or vote for a third candidate because Joe Biden isn't a worthy enough candidate to earn their vote. Maybe they feel he's too old, they don't like his policy on the war in Gaza, or or that their lives haven't improved sufficiently because he hasn't done enough to curtail inflation.

What these folks fail to take into account is that yes Biden is old and has lost a step or two over the years, as have I. But his opponent is also old and appears to have taken way too many direct shots to the head. Check out this speech from this past Sunday.

If they don't approve of Biden's support of Israel in the war in the Middle East, imagine what a reboot of Trump would bring, the man who instituted a Muslim ban and controversially moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem? 

And they don't understand economic realities enough to realize that a president has little direct control over inflation. The truth is that Biden inherited a precarious economy, a result of the pandemic. I distinctly remember many economists predicting a very high likelihood of a recession or worse in the coming months after the 2020 election. Yet where are the voices singing the praises of the Biden administration for averting a real economic disaster?

My biggest fear is that the true culprits of a possible second term for the exPOTUS will be those voters who know what a disaster he is, yet who in failing to vote for Biden, will be effectively casting a vote for Trump. Yes, the Democrats are going to have to work hard for their votes, which is a good thing, but the voters themselves have some serious soul searching to do.

Bringing this post full circle, in his pre-political career, the exPOTUS was very much involved in two sports industries. His foray into the legitimate sport of American football didn't work out so well as he single-handedly destroyed a professional football league. You can read about that here.

He was much more successful in the world of professional wrestling where he in fact is a member of World Wrestling Entertainment's Hall of Fame. 

He must be very proud of that honor.

Now I'm not quite sure what political system professional wrestling is a metaphor for.

But it sure ain't democracy.

Even if a Trump reboot could possibly flatten out the rising cost of living, (which it can't), for my money, preserving our democracy is sure worth the extra buck for a gallon of gas.