The widows will weep
Baseball! At the heart of American culture lies an incomprehensible game that, allegedly, but for our “joyless myopia”, is the “key to life”. It’s a shame that the whole of American culture isn’t as inscrutable as Baseball.
The fundamental problem is that America is as dishonest with itself over its true faith as it is about its Dream, its politics and its guns. As much as America may wish it were a Christian country, in reality, it is anything but. America should stick to what it knows and make Baseball the official religion. That way they would truly be able to say that, when they hurl projectiles at one another, God told them to do it.
One could then see a shooter as, metaphorically, a pitcher. In running from a shooter one will either be ‘safe’ or ‘out’. I don’t know enough about Baseball to carry this metaphor much further. My point is not to be facetious or callous, so much as it is merely to convey the impression America makes on the world today.
However much Baseball may be played in other countries, it is a quintessentially American sport. It is a religion only in America. them0vieblog.com maybe right when it says that Baseball is akin to Cricket and that “it is very hard to explain the appeal of the sport to outsiders” but there is a noticeable difference. Whereas the Cricket World Cup is played between teams from around the world, the World Series is entirely American.
Right here, we have, in a nutshell, America’s ability to delude itself. Little wonder, then, that it’s motivating force is a dream rather than reality. I don’t know if America ever actually lived in the real world, it just seems unlikely. Any country that has, as one of its defining moments, the Salem Witch Trials should not, in the name of rationality, be taken seriously. The current POTUS only serves to show that the rest of the world has given far too much credence to the might of the States rather than its actual weight in the world of ideas and culture.
The overriding idea America has about itself is that it is the most powerful nation in the world. Which, of course, it is. England has Shakespeare, America has – well – Coca Cola (which is a good), Walt Disney (not so good) and Donald Trump (the personification of Armageddon). We all know what they say about he who lives by the sword.
Yet one has to wonder how a supposedly totalitarian State was able to prove itself so adept at the machinations of Democracy. If Russia was able to hack the election of 2016, one is left asking how they did it? The technology was the easy part. What is fascinating is what the Russians must know about the American Psyche that they were so able to plant ideas and influence the vote of so many Americans.
The idea behind ‘The Unnatural’ is that the truly great achievers – at Baseball or any other sport or art – are outsiders: “They’re all aliens, Mulder, until they step between the white chalk lines – until they step on the outfield grass.”
To America, there is no more of an outsider than Russia. America learnt nothing from the Cold War except hubris. For its madness, it must, like Ajax, fall on its own sword. And the widows will weep - Donald Trump will see to that!
The fundamental problem is that America is as dishonest with itself over its true faith as it is about its Dream, its politics and its guns. As much as America may wish it were a Christian country, in reality, it is anything but. America should stick to what it knows and make Baseball the official religion. That way they would truly be able to say that, when they hurl projectiles at one another, God told them to do it.
One could then see a shooter as, metaphorically, a pitcher. In running from a shooter one will either be ‘safe’ or ‘out’. I don’t know enough about Baseball to carry this metaphor much further. My point is not to be facetious or callous, so much as it is merely to convey the impression America makes on the world today.
However much Baseball may be played in other countries, it is a quintessentially American sport. It is a religion only in America. them0vieblog.com maybe right when it says that Baseball is akin to Cricket and that “it is very hard to explain the appeal of the sport to outsiders” but there is a noticeable difference. Whereas the Cricket World Cup is played between teams from around the world, the World Series is entirely American.
Right here, we have, in a nutshell, America’s ability to delude itself. Little wonder, then, that it’s motivating force is a dream rather than reality. I don’t know if America ever actually lived in the real world, it just seems unlikely. Any country that has, as one of its defining moments, the Salem Witch Trials should not, in the name of rationality, be taken seriously. The current POTUS only serves to show that the rest of the world has given far too much credence to the might of the States rather than its actual weight in the world of ideas and culture.
The overriding idea America has about itself is that it is the most powerful nation in the world. Which, of course, it is. England has Shakespeare, America has – well – Coca Cola (which is a good), Walt Disney (not so good) and Donald Trump (the personification of Armageddon). We all know what they say about he who lives by the sword.
Yet one has to wonder how a supposedly totalitarian State was able to prove itself so adept at the machinations of Democracy. If Russia was able to hack the election of 2016, one is left asking how they did it? The technology was the easy part. What is fascinating is what the Russians must know about the American Psyche that they were so able to plant ideas and influence the vote of so many Americans.
The idea behind ‘The Unnatural’ is that the truly great achievers – at Baseball or any other sport or art – are outsiders: “They’re all aliens, Mulder, until they step between the white chalk lines – until they step on the outfield grass.”
To America, there is no more of an outsider than Russia. America learnt nothing from the Cold War except hubris. For its madness, it must, like Ajax, fall on its own sword. And the widows will weep - Donald Trump will see to that!
Comments
Post a Comment