Sport and Entertainment

Now that Super Bowl LIV is over, it’s time to turn our attentions to politics, which is much like the Super Bowl, being that it is mostly for our entertainment.

Some may poo-poo that, but they’re part of that shrinking minority that still believes politics is legislation is progress and as such, serious business. Any cursory examination quickly finds that in error.

Sure, at one time there was the idea, the admonition, even the desire, to better ourselves and our world, but that was after a horrific world war that killed millions and ushered in an age of world annihilation. We’re past that now. The Commie menace has morphed into hacker bros and troublemakers content to make the rest of us crazy through our own greedy internet corporations. That we are easily manipulated is just part of what makes it so entertaining.

The sport aspect is apparent in our need to choose sides and stick with that side no matter how juvenile, puerile, appalling, dismissive, haughty, grandiose, well, you get the idea. Someone’s got to win and I want it to be my guys, or gals if you’re so inclined. No amount of trash talk is beyond the pale, and as our president has shown, no insult too out of bounds. Besides, it’s all in good fun. And you can’t say Trump is thought of with indifference, whatever side of his you’re on. He’s the epitome of the pro wrestling tropes. No milktoast he! He swaggers, he whines, he struts, he belittles, and he dares his opponents to take him down.

And it works.

That a great many Americans have thrown up their hands and given up on any semblance of good governance indicates that this is the new normal, that everything is a show, entertainment, sport, and we’re all a part of it whether we want to be or not. The people with the big dough, be they individuals or corporations, run the show and get what they want, and the rest of us are left with the reality show that replaced getting things done in the name of the people. We’re individuals now, hermetically sealed, siloed, and fed what the algorithms have divined that we want because they know everything about us whether we want that or not.

And who are we to deny Google or Facebook their many billions in profit off the backs of our lives? Pretty selfish wouldn’t you say?

Now it’s possible some of you may not find this particularly uplifting. My apologies. I promise not to make this a regular thing.

Unless I can monetize it.

Sorry.

©2020 David William Pearce