Why the NFL is rigged: thoughts on Trump

So we’ve all heard the allegations: the NFL is fixed.  Refs make shitty calls at decisive moments tilting the balance in favor of whichever team Roger Goodell has selected to win.  Why else do the play reviews get routed back to New York and NFL headquarters?  Along with college football nearly $100 million are bet on NFL games – you think outcomes are left to chance?

What?  You haven’t heard of this?  Well I’ll admit it is not an open and shut case – no Bill Hicks’ “case-fucking-closed” on the idea that the winner of each NFL game is predetermined.  I’ll admit that.  Yet, my mind can’t help but jump to such conclusions.  This is based on a few things, like Brian Tuohy’s work and things I’ve seen: those fucked-up calls/no-calls that even the announcers feel the refs and reviewers get wrong.  But my idea that the NFL is rigged is also based on an overall impression; something arrived at by the gestalt of weird calls, built-in vagueness of the rulebook and the disheartening slavish devotion of the fans.  It just feels like something is not right and I find watching games difficult (though I still watch sometimes – it is entertaining, goddamit).

Let me now translate this to the negative views many people have of Trump.  As my views of the NFL may seem irrational so too – to me and others – do the reactions people have to Trump.

Let me be straightforward with two things.  One, I pay a lot of attention to foreign policy and foreign relations.  And secondly, I have a penchant for world-changing, dare I say, cataclysmic events.  So my hands-off Trump policy, which was decided on mostly subconsciously, has keyed on things Trump has said about foreign policy to a great extent.  And he gets passing marks, in this regard.  My approval springs from the hope that the pain and suffering being inflicted by the US on other parts of the world right now may perhaps be brought to an end.  You still with me?  Let’s let other countries defend themselves and Jesus Christ let me turn a blind eye to the fact that the reason we are over wherever is not simply to intervene in a squabble amongst other nations but because we have financial and strategic interests in those countries.

So maybe you can see, for the above two reasons, why I’m not super freaked out by Trump.  On those issues.  (Hillary destroyed Libya and bragged about it – case fucking closed and that is why it would have been unconscionable for me to even consider voting for her.)  You probably can’t, though, and that is what is fascinating to me: for some folks Trump is the devil incarnate. 

What is this dog whistle?  That is the crux.  For some folks there is something that is just not right with Donny Tinyhands.  On paper I get it but I do not have the visceral reaction so many seem to have.  Perhaps to belittle all involved, this is analogous to my NFL feelings, that something is just not right.  I know he said some shitty things in the run up to the election – I think this is what a lot of people are reacting to.  And those controversial statements didn’t bother me at all.  Our reactions are crafted in our hearts and not in our minds.  To be honest I get that “something is just not right” feeling about our whole country at times.

Why Donald Trump is already a more liberal President than Obama

Congratulations America, we did it!  Same thing could be said after any Presidents’ election.  Left, right, center, fascist, libertarian, liberal, we are all in it together.  “It is what it is” as they say, a phrase I’ve been hearing more and more people say these recent years.

And I’m not condoning anyone.  I’m not excoriating anyone that was in contention for election or that did get elected.  If there is a problem it lies in what we, as a population do.  Or the problems lies in what don’t do.

Who was the last liberal president?  Well, many would perhaps say Obama.  On the right this perceived liberalness is a source of ire.  On the left Obama’s liberalism is a source of pride.  But let me report the observation of a few political observers that Richard Nixon was our last liberal president. Yes, Richard Milhous Nixon, Prez No. 37.  Our last liberal president.

First we have good old Noam describing Nixon as the last liberal president.  Talking about the current minimum wage debates Chomsky stated, “It’s a shame that it’s taken so long to even be a discussion.  As for support, we may recall the last major program for helping families at the level of survival was under Richard Nixon. In many respects Nixon was the last liberal president”.  Nixon signed an amendment to the Fair Labor Standards Act which raised wages more than 40%.

Then we have Chris Hedges.  “Who was the last liberal president we had?  It was Richard Nixon.  Not because he was a liberal, but because he was frightened of movements.”  Hedges recounts a scene from Kissinger’s memoir where Nixon had parked buses end to end to block protesters’ access to the White House.  “They’re going to break through the barricades and get us,” Kissinger recalls Dick saying to him.  And for Hedges, that is right we want to have the powerful.  Does it feel that way today?

And now Donny Tiny Hands is in office.  I can’t truthfully say yet that he will be a liberal president in this contrarian sense but the movements have started.  We will see what we get.  The last eight years had Occupy and that was a big deal.  But for the most part people kind of chilled out with Barack in the White House.  And there was reason to be critical.  I’ll let Hedges conclude:

We will begin to build forces that will pressure power to respond.  And I think that’s what we’ve forgotten.  We have to begin to make the power elite terrified of us.  And occupy did that by the way.  They were terrified of Occupy . . . and they had to destroy it.  And let’s remember who destroyed it: Barack Obama destroyed it in a coordinated federal campaign.  Because the people most frightened of Occupy were the Democrats which is why they tried to co-op the language.