Elections are a Team Sport

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With both political parties over the last few decades, there has developed a more ‘team sport’ mentality of voters within their respective parties supporting the candidate of their side regardless of how the economy is treating them and their families.

Alex Beene
A financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin
October 22, 2024

It has been decades since I went to a public sporting event. The rate of my watching professional ball games on T.V. is probably right at one every 10 years. I can feel the emotional pull, but I find the level of emotional involvement by the audiences frightening. This is what people are like when their mask drops just a little bit. Given just a little different circumstances and these same people would cheer on “their” gladiator team as they fought another team to the death. Or lined up all the capitalists next to a ditch to be shot.

That type of emotion served a useful purpose over the millennia. But like fire it is a troublesome servant and a fearful master*. Our political parties have leveraged it to great effect, and I think it has essentially taken over. Look at the political rallies with thousands of yelling people. Look at both sides totally convinced the other side is evil. Both sides may be more right than wrong in their description of the other.

I look at the political landscape and see overwhelming evidence supporting my need for an underground bunker in remote Idaho.


* George Washington didn’t really say anything like this. See:

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12 thoughts on “Elections are a Team Sport

  1. With the level of fraud, donor-dependence, and Epstein-esque kompromat, the people in power and their political puppets we vote on have little need to worry about what the citizenry think or feel about things. Elections are just the kabuki needed to keep the illusion of choice and input going in order that We The People will not get off our couches in order to tar-and-feather the lot of them.

    • Which makes me wonder what it would take to get The People off their couches.

      If Trump is elected there’s a possibility we might found out, but not in a good way. Which may be what needs to happen.

      Dig faster, Joe

      • Last weekend, I estimated I moved between 10 and 15 tons of dirt with a shovel. I couldn’t begin to tell you how many tons I moved with the backhoe and bucket loader.

        I’ll be moving more tomorrow, and if my muscles hold up, I will finish. There will be lots of landscaping to do next spring and summer, but the critical dirt moving will be complete this weekend.

    • The first part of the often repeated Stalin quote about vote counting was “It is enough that people know there was an election.”
      That way they can go on pretending.

  2. I have made the same comment about people who watch political debates. They are just there to cheer for the home team.

  3. Ya, and you got people like Carville and the clown crew saying the commies need to take up arms against Trump and followers.
    It’s been set up that no one excepts the results of the election.
    And with the 30-40 million new “machete caste” voters? All someone has to do is turn off the EBT system. Or the lights for a couple days.
    After which time pointed fingers of blame will be completely non gratis for a decade or more.
    Food, ammo, and hard friends will be the currency of survival.
    And yes, survival is a team sport. We may not like sports-ball games. But were about to play the oldest and toughest team sport there is.
    Shooting, moving, and communicating at a tribal level.
    We got the home team advantage, their better trained for this kind of game.
    And all this to hide an economic melt-down.
    I pray I’m full of crap. But things look like they’re about to get real sporty.

    • Please note that I did not say I wasn’t interested in politics. I said I don’t like what political parties/teams reveal and exploit about people.

      In some ways I am very interested in politics. Even if it is frightening, I find what it reveals about people fascinating.

  4. Describing politics and elections as a “team sport” may actually be a fairly accurate description….for leftists. They tend to follow the crowd rather than think for themselves.

    • Politics is a team sport. If you’re not for the team, you’re not a good party member. Individual thinking is for suckers, losers, and libertarians.

      Politics is war by other means. There are friendlies, allies, neutrals, and enemies.

  5. Pingback: Communism is no Longer an Economic Theory | The View From North Central Idaho

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