Who's the bad guys?
6/3/12 01:07![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
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talkpoliticsIn the old days when we were young (most of us anyways) we used to watch Maple Leaf Wrestling or Stampede Wrestling or whenever wrestling your hometown had. We all knew who the bad guys were and we knew who the good guys were. Bad guys were Russian Bear, The Sheik, Kamakazi, or anyone dressed with a swastika. And bad guys cheated. They would stab opponents with pencils, spit fireballs, etc. And Good guys never cheated.
Today, many incarnations of wrestling later, the story lines in wrestling has blurred. Who the good guy is and who the bad guy is... is very unclear. Good guys are not so clearly good and nobody is really a true bad guy to boo for. Which is a sad reflection of modern society and especially the politics of politics. And speaking of which...
Why is everyone so familiar with American politics. It's marketed globally by news media companies as something that matters to everyone, even non-Americans, as perhaps there is some truth to this, but never the less it's manipulation. For non-Americans it doesn't really matter who wins the Republican nomination, or the 2012 Presidential election. It certainly doesn't matter enough to get a daily play-by-play run down of Super Tuesdays.
The Republican Primaries race is kind of like modern wrestling in the sense that none of the Republican candidates are truly good guys either. Maybe it was always this way, but in my youth I seem to recall knowing exactly who to cheer or boo for. The lines have blurred.
And it's not just in the USA, but here in Canada too. And it's the same when I read about Russia's re-election of Putin or any other foreign election. I mean I suffer from mixed feelings for all of them.
Like sports, quite often we choose a candidate (or a team) and support them regardless of everything logical. Doesn't matter if they are the best team with the best players with the best odds of winning the championship. All rationality has gone out the window for loyalty. So what I've concluded is that loyalty counts for a lot. How many in this community have actually switched team loyalty... or do so frequently?
Politically, most people have team loyalties. Although some starry eyed young liberals might grow more conservative as they age, I imagine they must struggle if their political beliefs have evolved enough to no longer reflect their long chosen loyalties. And so we have all important swing voters who can be swayed by either ideology.
I'm thinking about a friend of mine who is originally from Detroit. Like most Detroit natives he cheers for the hometown teams. He likes the Red Wings, Pistons, Tigers and of course the Lions... even though most of those teams have had some pretty lean years. His commitment is totally and utterly complete. And he's even backing his support for former Michigan state Governor Mitt Romney too, at least emotionally (or sentimentally) FWIW.
Especially in the fly-over states that don't have a hometown big league team to cheer for naturally. In Iowa, Montana, etc. liked Boston Celtics, New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys from when they were 6yr.s old and still do today. But how are they going to vote?
One one hand you have the Tea Party against the Wall Street bail-outs. On the other hand we have the Occupy crowd against the Wall Street bail-outs as well. very few from any ideology wanted the gov't to pay-out and support the finance and industry big wigs. And somehow, even abroad, we were convinced that without Freddy, Fanny, Chevy and Dodge we would end up like Greece or even worse. So the financial and industry lobby groups got the bail-outs approved, not just in USA but globally.
You see in spite of our political team loyalties, we all share something. We knew the bail-outs were in their best interests, not ours directly or even indirectly. We had a chance to slow it down a notch and rethink the extent of capitalism which has grown extremely powerful in the hands of the very few.
But just like wrestling, we can't trust anyone any more. In fact it's awfully difficult to tell who's the good guys and who's the bad guys. The 1% are very rich and very powerful yet they keep the economy going and they keep us employed. Billionaires like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are each practically given the status of sainthood! And our neighbourhoods seem safer with a Hell Angel biker in the hood. It's all so confusing!
I guess it's always been that way. JFKennedy provoked the Cuban Missile crisis with repeated assassination attempts on Castro and started the VietNam War. Nixon opened trade with China and ended the VietNam War. I guess bad people do good things and vice versa.
I guess it's just that I wish things were a little less complicated and a lot more clear cut and dry. Drugs might help, but anti-depressants are known to cause suicidal tendencies and weed is still illegal. I wish I could just back my political candidates and ideology with unquestioning devotion.
Ah-well. I guess that's why all of us anti-authoritarians eventually get diagnosed as mentally ill. Because when we can't trust good guys to be decent, bad guys to be omni-evil, and authorities to be authoritative... we're crazy.
Today, many incarnations of wrestling later, the story lines in wrestling has blurred. Who the good guy is and who the bad guy is... is very unclear. Good guys are not so clearly good and nobody is really a true bad guy to boo for. Which is a sad reflection of modern society and especially the politics of politics. And speaking of which...
Why is everyone so familiar with American politics. It's marketed globally by news media companies as something that matters to everyone, even non-Americans, as perhaps there is some truth to this, but never the less it's manipulation. For non-Americans it doesn't really matter who wins the Republican nomination, or the 2012 Presidential election. It certainly doesn't matter enough to get a daily play-by-play run down of Super Tuesdays.
The Republican Primaries race is kind of like modern wrestling in the sense that none of the Republican candidates are truly good guys either. Maybe it was always this way, but in my youth I seem to recall knowing exactly who to cheer or boo for. The lines have blurred.
And it's not just in the USA, but here in Canada too. And it's the same when I read about Russia's re-election of Putin or any other foreign election. I mean I suffer from mixed feelings for all of them.
Like sports, quite often we choose a candidate (or a team) and support them regardless of everything logical. Doesn't matter if they are the best team with the best players with the best odds of winning the championship. All rationality has gone out the window for loyalty. So what I've concluded is that loyalty counts for a lot. How many in this community have actually switched team loyalty... or do so frequently?
Politically, most people have team loyalties. Although some starry eyed young liberals might grow more conservative as they age, I imagine they must struggle if their political beliefs have evolved enough to no longer reflect their long chosen loyalties. And so we have all important swing voters who can be swayed by either ideology.
I'm thinking about a friend of mine who is originally from Detroit. Like most Detroit natives he cheers for the hometown teams. He likes the Red Wings, Pistons, Tigers and of course the Lions... even though most of those teams have had some pretty lean years. His commitment is totally and utterly complete. And he's even backing his support for former Michigan state Governor Mitt Romney too, at least emotionally (or sentimentally) FWIW.
Especially in the fly-over states that don't have a hometown big league team to cheer for naturally. In Iowa, Montana, etc. liked Boston Celtics, New York Yankees and Dallas Cowboys from when they were 6yr.s old and still do today. But how are they going to vote?
One one hand you have the Tea Party against the Wall Street bail-outs. On the other hand we have the Occupy crowd against the Wall Street bail-outs as well. very few from any ideology wanted the gov't to pay-out and support the finance and industry big wigs. And somehow, even abroad, we were convinced that without Freddy, Fanny, Chevy and Dodge we would end up like Greece or even worse. So the financial and industry lobby groups got the bail-outs approved, not just in USA but globally.
You see in spite of our political team loyalties, we all share something. We knew the bail-outs were in their best interests, not ours directly or even indirectly. We had a chance to slow it down a notch and rethink the extent of capitalism which has grown extremely powerful in the hands of the very few.
But just like wrestling, we can't trust anyone any more. In fact it's awfully difficult to tell who's the good guys and who's the bad guys. The 1% are very rich and very powerful yet they keep the economy going and they keep us employed. Billionaires like Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are each practically given the status of sainthood! And our neighbourhoods seem safer with a Hell Angel biker in the hood. It's all so confusing!
I guess it's always been that way. JFKennedy provoked the Cuban Missile crisis with repeated assassination attempts on Castro and started the VietNam War. Nixon opened trade with China and ended the VietNam War. I guess bad people do good things and vice versa.
I guess it's just that I wish things were a little less complicated and a lot more clear cut and dry. Drugs might help, but anti-depressants are known to cause suicidal tendencies and weed is still illegal. I wish I could just back my political candidates and ideology with unquestioning devotion.
Ah-well. I guess that's why all of us anti-authoritarians eventually get diagnosed as mentally ill. Because when we can't trust good guys to be decent, bad guys to be omni-evil, and authorities to be authoritative... we're crazy.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 08:17 (UTC)Perhaps that's when it all started.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 16:51 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 19:49 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 7/3/12 00:22 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 08:28 (UTC)You know, this reminds me of a quote from one of the older DailyQuote collections. One of the most important ones IMO:
"This is what happens when you pick a political team and then support it. You're forced to defend it. It's a shitty position to be in, because it's like choosing not to call the cops on your abusive spouse. It never ends well. They will always hurt you. Never support a politician or political party. Never. It makes you a useful idiot."
(foreverbeach (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1104911.html?thread=88435215#t88435215))
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 09:22 (UTC)How did you dig it up!
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Date: 6/3/12 11:59 (UTC)For some reason or other I grew out of watching wrestling early. All that effort, my dears: it can't be good for folk to watch.
As for the politics thang, well…I find if you apply the odd scintilla of Hegel to the recipe, soon you find that a synthetic position has risen, much like a souffle, and often with as much substance as a souffle too. (But sometimes old Karl gets it right in applying Hegel to history.) Me, I try to judge each case on its merits, according to my own personal
prejudicesbeliefs. Which means that although I consider myself conservative, seeking to conserve what I feel to be best about our collective cultural heritage, most folk in the US would regard me as economically Marxist, socially Aristocratically snobbish (but with an understanding of duty and the common good, which the parvenues and arrivistes feel some need to deny) and in terms of personal morality vis-a-vis sexual mores, fit to be pilloried by the Westboro Baptist Church. Allthat and I'm not especially democratic, either, being given to be administered by the competent and moral, rather than by those who whore themselves out to the voters with lowest-common-denominator politics pandering to the prejudices of the semi-educated.
You have to find working accommodations with and in politics.
For example, I respect Jeff (despite what I consider to be his intransigence and willful blind spots) more than I do some folk supposedly of similar political and economic views to my own: and not just because he's fighting an heroically Quixotic intellectual battle which requires, to my mind, a denial of Occam's basic thrust: it's just that, in general, he has manners. I would regard his opinions, and those of many right-wing Americans, as both mad and dangerous: but so is putting a horse at a fence at a gallop, or going shooting with Dick Cheney. Part of the "freedom thing" is that freedom is always precariously balanced, and actual freedoms and theoretical freedoms are often two entirely different specie. Folk who craft arguments where theoretical freedom trumps actual hard-won freedom strike me as living in a state of denial: but they should have the freedom so to do. And then the rest of us then have to make up the balance by pointing out their mistakes, if they'll let us.
In election year it will always be "Us and Them" much more so than in other years. And when that happens it becomes obvious who the bad guys are. The US election resembles Iran's in a way: but in the US's case you have a rational right-wing President up for re-election, and you have crazier much-more-right-wing folk from the opposition trying to become President.
May sanity prevail.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 12:23 (UTC)The heel turn was always a classic. Nowadays wrestling seems to not really have the same flair. Andy Kaufman, I think, seemed to truly "get it".
I guess you could say that wrestling introduced us to the "troll" before the internet was there.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 20:38 (UTC)This might make getting re-elected harder though.
(no subject)
Date: 7/3/12 00:12 (UTC)Did Nixon try to be hated? Or George Bush Jr? I think it was entirely unintended.
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Date: 6/3/12 15:26 (UTC)http://www.madinamerica.com/2012/02/why-anti-authoritarians-are-diagnosed-as-mentally-ill/
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 13:35 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 15:31 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 14:22 (UTC)Technically, the city of Ankh-Morpork is a Tyranny, which is not always the same thing as a Monarchy, and in fact even the post of Tyrant has been somewhat redefined by the incumbent, Lord Vetinari, as the only form of democracy that works. Everyone is entitled to vote, unless disqualified by reason of age or not being Lord Vetinari.
And yet it does work. This has annoyed a number of people who feel, somehow, that it should not, and who want a Monarch instead, thus replacing a man who has achieved his position by cunning, a deep understanding of the realities of the human psyche, breathtaking diplomacy, a certain prowess with the stiletto dagger, and, all agree, a mind like a finely balanced circular saw, with a man who has got there by... being born. *
However, the Crown has hung on anyway, as crowns do – on the Post Office and the Royal Bank and the Mint and, not least, in the sprawling, brawling, squalling consciousness of the City itself. Lots of things live in that darkness. There are all kinds of darkness, and all kinds of things can be found in them, imprisoned, banished, lost or hidden. Sometimes they escape. Sometimes they simply fall out. Sometimes they just can’t take it any more.
* A third proposition, that the City be governed by a choice of respectable members of the community who would promise not to give themselves airs or betray the public trust at every turn, was instantly the subject of music-hall jokes all over the city.
(From Unseen Academicals (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unseen_Academicals))
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 14:34 (UTC)EtonThe Assassins School, and is definitely a 'nob'.(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 14:39 (UTC)In fact when I think about it, nothing is related to Nobby Nobbs. Or it better not be.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 14:52 (UTC)http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2003/dec/08/india.lords
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 15:03 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 15:14 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 15:41 (UTC)What would you call a person refusing to succumb to identity politics? Should we call such people anti-ideolgues? I would say that anti-authoritarian is actually more precise.
(no subject)
Date: 7/3/12 00:06 (UTC)Political loyalty does not exclude awareness. And political independence is not exclusive to these enlightened peeps.
I mean one can be a fan of a party or candidate, all the while knowing full well the entire spectacle of political process is fixed. Look at Russias recent election for example. Nobody had a chance against Putin!
Again with the sports analogy. If you look at a league from a pure and strictly business point of view we see the odds greatly in favour of the biggest budget. LA Lakers had a dynasty franchise for all these decades because their budget could afford to stack the team with stars. And this is clearly evident in NHL, where the Toronto Maple Leafs have sold out entire seasons decades in advance, have tv rights sold, and a sold fan base buying merchandise so there's more profit in not trying to have a cup contender, because as a business it doesn't matter. But even aware of this reality, it's still fun to be loyal to a team.
Politics it the same. As a business, government needs to have voters trust them to some degree. After Bush Jr it was obvious Americans (and the world) had lost a lot of faith in the system and everything else in American politics. To re-engage the voters it was pretty awesome to have two viable women an astronaut and a black man in the race. I'm not spewing conspiracy, but it sure seemed manipulated. It was awesome marketing regardless.
This year I'm looking at this Republican race with my jaw on the floor. The slate of candidates couldn't possibly be the best they have to offer. They seem determined to loose in November. So even as I'm aware of this reality, it's still fun to watch the drama unfold.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 14:37 (UTC)In an honest answer the degree to which something is good and something is evil always boils down to the most effective use of force. And force is most effectively employed as the "We will if you don't do X" instead of the "And now we are actually doing it" version. Those who are very effective are good, those who aren't are evil, while there are the occasional odd exceptions where the more ineffective crowd rewrites the histories to make themselves the good and the victors the evil.
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 14:42 (UTC)Thus bureaucratically there was more similar than there was different in the USA and USSR of the Cold War: both were militarized bureaucratic military-industrial complexes that were content to view the world in an apocalyptic fashion that handicapped their ability to do more regular geopolitics. The individuals that rose to lead the USA and USSR, however, could be and were very different people, reflecting the USA's beginning an evolution to truly be a society where government of the people, by the people, and for the people would not perish from the Earth, a triumph of Lincoln's ideal. The Soviet Union, by contrast, gradually slid into self-parody and ultimately a collapse because the kind of people that rose to command the CPSU were not the kind of people who frankly had business being dog-catcher of Bumfuck, Kamchatka.
I'll meet you anywhere/anytime!
Date: 6/3/12 15:26 (UTC)In wrestling, you do not have 'good guys'. You do not have 'bad guys'.
You have 'faces' and 'heels'.
You are exactly correct; politics has its parallels.
Obama is a 'face' but he is not a good guy.
Pelosi is a 'heel' because...well..look at her face!
That some of the conservatives secretly associate favorably with the 'heel' characters is quite telling. As Bogey says above, it takes hard work to make people hate you.
I would hate to imagine that political drama is scripted like wrasseling drama.
This goes with my future post you have not seen yet (as I travel backward in LJ time on my friends list)
(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 16:06 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 16:36 (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 6/3/12 16:43 (UTC)Have you considered organizing a Canadian version of the Tea Party? You could use the slogan "No Globalization without Representation!" Consider serving maple syrup sweets with your Asian brew.
BTW, in college, I was reprimanded for calling it "exhibition wrestling." I was informed that the correct expression is "professional wrestling."