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Please Stop Winning!
Nancy Nangeroni
The Red Sox have been winning like never before, and we're losing like never before. Could there be a connection? Can we consider politics and baseball in relation to one another, without ruining the fun, raining on Boston's parade?
Growing up in the Boston area, you almost can't escape Red Sox fever. Sooner or later, it gets a lot of us, drags us into a summer of clock-watching as we count the hours until the next fix when we can hang on each pitch and, more often than not these days, experience the thrill of fulfillment in multiple moments of triumph. Like junkies hooked on homers, we measure our own mood by the fate of our heroes. We love the team's sluggers, and hold out hope for the pitching staff, every day a fresh new adventure. And this year, like last year, they're winners.
Then there's the Patriots, now widely regarded as football's latest dynasty, winners of their first super bowl in 2001, and two out of three since.
The problem is, I can't take it anymore. Why? Because we're all losing, and the more the Red Sox and Patriots win our attention, the more we lose. How are we losing? Let me list a few ways.
We've got a Republican party that demonstrably twice bought the election, giving them control of the purse strings of power in Washington. Democratic opposition was relatively mute on the subject, giving us some indication of just how widely such tactics have gained favor. These pursuers of power and wealth are too often driven by the simple mechanism of a belief and pursuit of that which will never reward that pursuit with true satisfaction or fulfillment. The power and money they seek - even when motivated by a desire to do "good" - is a substitute for true fulfillment. Like the junkie's need for heroin, their illusion of well-being is fed by a returning, insatiable need that keeps them wanting more.
Thanks to the wealthy and powerful, we've got another Vietnam in Iraq, only this time, we're using radioactive ammunition and preparing strategies for pre-emptive nuclear strikes. If only that were all. We're seeing the overturn of a great many humanitarian and environmental legal advances in the name of profit and so-called "security". Wilderness is evaporating faster than we can identify those responsible. Too many of us are out of work, and too many who are working can't make ends meet. Too many work a job that demands a lion's share of their heart and soul. Too many work jobs that erode their health in ever more subtle ways. We find ourselves compelled to buy too much stuff which doesn't really make our lives better, but gives us too much opportunity for distraction from the bitter truths that we've learned too well to avoid thinking about. Too many suffer too much cancer and depression, and too much of it is caused by the poisons all around us, permeating our bodies and minds. We have less time to ourselves than ever before, but are more afraid than ever of having time on our hands.
Buying votes is antithetical to true democracy, in which every person has just one vote. If we allow the buying of votes, then we allow the wealthy to collect votes and control our fate. If the wealthy could learn to play nice, that might work out reasonably for everyone. But, unfortunately, they seem to want to play by the most macho street rules. No growing into greater maturity, wisdom, gentility and generosity here. No, it's more like: Money good, sharing bad. The more you give, the more will be demanded, so just ignore their pathetic stories as best you can, maybe pay some lip service. After all, family comes first! The wealthy like to believe that poor folks don't know how to get along. Picturing poor folks fighting with one another reinforces the wealthy's inbred belief in their own superiority. But they're making a lot of mistakes, causing a lot of needless hurt, and it's time for some serious reckoning. By who? Us. We, the people. You and I. We run this country. If we dare to, that is. Do we dare?
As a child of the much-vaunted 60's, I witnessed a cultural revolution. Its subsequent reversal, though, grew after 9/11 into a full rout, against which we are only now finally mounting resources and momentum towards the next inevitable reversal. I see great struggles looming ahead, with the highest possible stakes on the line. Life on earth has become more endangered than ever, our very existence more precarious than ever. This very computer with which I write these words will not last more than a few years before I'll be forced to replace it with (if currrent trends continue) something even more fantastically fragile. The most obvious, and potentially lethal, lesson from 9/11, of the fragility of our high-technology society, seems to have completely escaped everyone. As our technology grows ever more ephemeral, so too does our future, and this global economy resembles ever more inescapably a house of cards. In my worst nightmare, this trend continues until it comes to public awareness too late to reverse. If we continue to allow the people who drive our economic machine to put profit before planet, our fate will be sealed. When the people in power would rather die than relinquish their hold, we are all doomed, as was Nazi Germany. When individual families hold the means and power to assure their continued dominance, democracy becomes nothing more than a sham system to pacify the masses. Those in financial control of our planetary systems of governance lead us all towards a bleak future, where apocalypse looms large and we, the people, are called upon to live in ever greater discomfort as we choose what seems the lesser of two evils, willful delusion over day of reckoning.
Against this backdrop of growing thunderheads of consequence, the Boston Red Sox, playing in one of the intellectual seats of the nation, suddenly become all but unbeatable. Is this an intentional distraction of some of the most critical minds of our nation? Or is this just another irony, that doomsday should be preceded by an event of nearly equal improbability? When the team called the Patriots, in the wake of 9/11 and rising jingoistic fervor, became unbeatable, is it mere coincidence?
Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love that the Sox won the Series. It is the fulfillment of a lifelong dream, one born during that Cinderella Season of '76, when I was 12 and Yaz, Lonborg, Santiago and Petrocelli made my heart race. Likewise, seeing the Pats as indominable champions warms my memories of the days of Babe Parelli and Gino Capelletti. But I'd give it all back in a second, if we could just return to the days before corporations enjoyed more rights than citizens, before technology made cancer and lung disease leading killers, or even before money first facilitated the accumulation of wealth by the greedy. The people who lived on this land before us, we called savages; and yet it is we who savaged the land and its people. We built upon it beautiful jeweled cities filled with gold and silver, populated by the automatons of our daily struggle living cruel lives of programmed isolation, conflict and distraction. We stumble through the private hells of our daily habits in service to a system built of the best intentions of some, corrupted by the worst machinations of others.
Yes, I'd take the Curse of the Bambino over our current corporate-structured propaganda-driven greedy capitalist sociopolitical situation any day. Of course, that isn't a choice. So I watch Manny and David and Tek and Tony G under the wise guidance of Tito and try not to think about the money that's being spent to keep my mind off of organizing against business as usual.