My Team
Hello people. I’ve been mulling this post for awhile. It’s a bit political again I’m afraid. But then again it feels like everything’s a bit political these days.
So, there’s something that’s been bugging me for a while now. People seem to be treating their chosen political affiliation the same way they would their favorite sports team. This makes no sense to me at all. It’s like asking who your favorite football team is: offense or defense? Oh hey defense is my team and it doesn’t matter that we’re losing the game because we’re totally winning on time of possession! Or our defensive buddies over there are keeping our offense from scoring! Woo! Defense rules! Suck on that offense!
That’s kind of ridiculous. Isn’t it? Hopefully we can agree on that. Maybe?
I mean it’s simplistic but if we keep the sports analogy going, then the Democrats and Republicans would just be different strategies on what wins games. Plenty of people that can disagree whether offense, defense, special teams, or whatever, wins games. And at the end of the day all those people can come together to celebrate a victory or console one another when their team suffers a loss. And everyone’s “team” should be The United States of America and not an ideology.
Can you even begin to imagine if attitudes shifted this way? Regardless which half of the team makes a great play the other half is there to celebrate. You don’t normally hear guys after winning a game say, “well the offense once again saved our bacon. I don’t even know why we have a defense”. Even when it clearly the kicker’s fault for missing an easy field goal (laces out, Dan!), the post game talk is almost always about the team effort, not any individual, faction, or how the crowd didn’t cheer loud enough.
When I think about it, it doesn’t feel like this would be a huge shift in sentiment. Sure let’s keep the sports mentality going, but let’s treat the politicians like we do our favorite team’s coaching staff. Your team may have won a half dozen championships but turn around and lose a half dozen games and see how quick the fans are to demand the coaches head on a spike. Even if you agree 100% with a coach’s philosophy, if your team isn’t winning it doesn’t matter. For that matter it may be one player. Maybe the goalie has lost his mojo, whatever. The point is that criticizing your sports is almost expected. Everyone knows that criticism doesn’t mean you don’t love your team. I can imagine a lot of Vols fans shaking their heads sadly in agreement.
So how about that? Can we give that a try or at least keep that in mind? I’m not on team Democrat or team Republican or even the dastardly team Media (mustache twirling intensifies). I think that’s true for most people. All we really care about is our home team: USA.
There was a post awhile back that listed a bunch of items that “you” got fooled on. It bothered me then but I couldn’t find it again. Anyway, it should have said “we”.
Despite re-reading the things I write like a dozen times, there’s always mistakes. At a certain point I just have to decide that they’re meant to be I guess!
I think the difficulty we have as a country is how we define ‘winning’.
Is it:
*Our personal bank account?
*Our health?
*The safety in our community?
*Military might?
*Personal freedoms?
*The well-being of the poorer among us?
We don’t discuss these in terms that some are on the list and others are not. It’s the relative priorities of each of these. And even still, it’s difficult to agree on policies that achieve the end results that we can all agree on.
Regardless, I really like these last two posts you made and the ability to think and discuss without rancor.
Thank you friend.
I had thought to touch on the definition of “winning” but the analogy falls apart a bit when you do that since each person has their own ideas on exactly what that is. However I think we can all agree in broad strokes. And whatever that definition is, I think most thoughtful people would agree that we shouldn’t be keeping score based on which side gets more of their policies implemented or how many policies they can obstruct from the other side.
A house divided against itself cannot stand and all that.
And you’re welcome, I’m glad you’ve liked them. It’s a difficult topic to tiptoe about. I don’t want to alienate anyone by picking sides. I know that political disagreements have always had a tendency to lead to flared tempers but it seems to have reached a new level these days. Just trying to do my tiny part in hopes we can raise the discourse a little bit.