Present-Day Politics as Seen Through the Prism of the NFL Conference Championship Games

A few quick hits this morning. First, from yesterday's Water Cooler by Lambert Strether:

From the Department of How Stupid Do They Think We Are? As Matt Stoller has shown, the growth of income inequality under Obama is greater than that under Bush. And only now, when there’s not a snowball’s chance in hell of their “proposals” passing — very unlike 2008-2009, when the Democrats had the House, the Senate, the greatest orator of our time in the White House, a mandate for “hope and change,” and their boot on the thoroughly discredited Republican neck — the Democrats are 
closing the barn door after the horse is gonecoming all over populist, while simultaneously trying to fast track TPP with Republican help. Help me.

Well said. Second, from Dave Zirin's blog post yesterday, "Deflated Balls for Some, Miniature American Flags for Others!":

Contrast the faith people project onto sports with the utter absence of credulity we give politics. Why were people talking more about deflated balls than President Obama’s State of the Union address? I imagine it’s because unless you are someone who sees Beltway politics as a form of entertainment, or a DC insider consuming and analyzing every last optic, you would have to be Shirley Temple to feel like anything said by the president, no matter how artfully articulated, connects with your life. We were told the economy is booming, yet household income for the middle and working classes is still far below pre-2008 crisis levels because of stagnant wages. We were told that a tax on the 1 percent and free childcare was on the agenda, yet a hostile Congress makes those promises about as realistic as hoverboards for all. We were told that the US involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan are over, yet the facts—and boots—on the ground tell a different story. We were told that it was time to come together and see both sides on questions of police violence, yet protesters were being targeted in Ferguson while the president was speaking.

Meanwhile, we saw the Patriots kick the snot out of the Colts and we saw the Seahawks have as wild a fourth-quarter comeback as I’ve ever seen to beat the Green Bay Packers. We want to believe that this—if nothing else—represents a tangible truth. Frightening as it is to consider, sports might be our last collective tether to a recognizable reality. If people feel like Bill Belichick has taken that away, it will affect his legacy and this sport, more than a thousand instances of Roger Goodell looking like he has the moral compass of a feral raccoon. It’s sad. It’s pathetic. But it’s also understandable. We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls. 

Absolutely.

Since the return to work from the holiday weekend talk has centered on the improbable, historic NFC Championship comeback of the home-team Seahawks. Coworkers come up and tell me their experiences. I listen. One guy I work with told me the story about how he and his wife were watching the game and finally the wife had had enough; she couldn't take it anymore; Green Bay's domination seemed unbreakable; so she left to run errands. When she was out and about she heard shouts and wails of ecstasy coming from homes. Finally, she picked a random door, knocked and asked what was happening. A couple drinking Champagne told her to get inside quick. The Seahawks had just won in overtime.

The guy who heads the union where I work was back East for a conference with members of the local's executive board. They were in Atlanta waiting for a flight back to Seattle, watching the game at an airport bar when the Seahawks began their 4th quarter comeback. He said that they turned into a bunch of "little girls," crying, shrieking, jumping up and down.

A lot of different stories. One guy, a lineman, was working a call-out for a storm that was going on while the NFC Championship was being played. He ended up working a couple days straight, but he returned home for three hours to watch the game with his son, an authentic Seahawks helmet on the coffee table in front of the television.

Zirin is right, "Frightening as it is to consider, sports might be our last collective tether to a recognizable reality." It is frightening because all that collective passion that ties us together in community is part of a privately-held corporate behemoth (except for the Green Bay Packers), which, if I'm not mistaken, fits the definition of fascism.

But as another National Football League season draws to a close and Super Bowl XLIX beckons, I don't feel diminished by my part -- the many hours in front of the television being force fed wireless plans, Toyotas and Taco Bell -- because it is our primary reference, one that spans race and class and gender, in present-day society. The elemental effort of a Marshawn Lynch carrying half-a-dozen tacklers down the middle of the field or a Richard Sherman playing with one arm tucked against his ribs wiggling his fingers to try to get the sensation back while he continues to make tackles -- that seems real to me and to millions of others, a humanity that cannot be denied and buried beneath the enormous weight of a bloated, tottering, corrupt capitalist system.

As Zirin says, "We can only work with the world we’re given, and it’s a place where the trust in institutions of power is more deflated that any damn balls." U.S special forces are running black ops in over 100 countries, and the Obama administration is considering expansion of another sectarian Middle East war, which will lead to another failed state and more military expenditures. Eventually these chickens will come home to roost.

The political class is increasingly disconnected -- free floating -- from the people, the governed. The people have football, which is still honest. So your average person at least has a commitment to honesty, which is more than can be said about the political class. One can hope that when the masses decide to glance up from the television and cast their gaze upon the political class they will reject its dishonesty and bellicosity. But what is it going to take? And when is it going to happen?

I think we're going to find out in the next few years.