Wow! Been busy and did not check this thread regularly. Seems like I hit a nerve.
People care about the fate of the Republic after all.
Then you all realize - last night we dodged a bullet - had SF won (and I have nothing against them winning game 7 tonight) viewership would have crashed still farther. As it is, KC's win was too much of an early inning blowout.
Our only hope now is that game 7 is one of the greatest in World Series history.
The only way to save the world from economic collapse, world war 3 and global warming is to return America from a capitalist, finance-driven, globalizing empire beck to a republic concerned with building a city on a hill (not a "shining" city - that's Hollywood or Las Vegas, just a city), a better society for all.
The American republic can't be restored without one of its historic pillars - that baseball be the national pasttime again. NOT frenetic-video-gamelike-played indoors in air condition in tight knit teams like corporate office work March Madness, NOT military-industrial complex football and definitely NOT soccer (no adjective needed).
Restoring the national pasttime can only happen if another generation-changing Game 6 1975.like event occurs tonight. Had SF won last night it would have been off the table. KC's win gives us a shot, but only a shot. It matters not who wins tonight, only that the country remember its love of baseball and so of country, rather than being addicted to Middle East oil, and the geopolitics of pipelines and who runs obscure nations overseas.
And if that happens it will remember, that America is not the free market system, or globalization, or corporations as people, or a bunch of banks (that's Switzerland), but a country as Bruce Willis said in "Live Fee or Die Hard".
And they will remember: that we played baseball. that we had farms and farmers (not agribusiness that made seeds that don't reproduce), that we worked, in mines and mills, in factories and schools and everywhere and working, usually with our hands and our heads, we made the country rich, in places like Pittsburgh and Homestead and Detroit (40% of whose population is now denied water - only under capitalism could a city on the largest source of fresh water in the world go without drinking water and risk cholera). And we will say "Thank you Detroit - your work and workers and factories made us rich, and powerful and won us wars and saved freedom and civilization and we will not let you go down, for we are not a system but a country and we are all in this together and we will rebuild you and you will make, along with those other "rustbelt places" the trains that will link us coast to coast and enable us to traverse our great land in a few hours ans to see the Grand Canyon, the Mississippi "father of waters", the arch over St. Louis, and the Rocky Mountains where the fruited plains gives way at last along the way. And you will build our streetcars, so we can travel again in our great cities and towns without polluting the atmosphere and neighbors will see each other again and not just be "friends" on Faceboook and our republic will again be a living and breathing reality and made up of people and not corporate "persons" and people will say "nice to see you, see you tonight at the ballgame".
And they will see each other at the ball game. And they will work again, with hand and head to make solar panels and harness the sun and when they sing "God shed his grace on thee" it will remind them that God's grace of sunshine powers the lights that light the alabaster cities that are undimmed by human tears. And they will make and put up as in an Amish barn-raising the windmill farms that will cover the same Great Plains (the "Persian Gulf of wind") and will power the continent for all time to come.
And they will eat food made by farmers whose names they know and who knows perhaps milk deliverers (alas the milkman qua man will not survive equality - perhaps we can call them milkmen and milkmaids?) will bring fresh milk and butter each morning in glass (recyclcable) bottles to every home as they did when I was a child and we watched and played baseball and presidents did not break unions but helped build them, and we fought wars not because we could but because we had to.
And we will teach our children not to be famous, or to be rich but to be good and to work hard and to fight for their rights and to live up to their responsibilities. And we will teach them that it was with honor that hundreds of thousands of men went down into the earth to mine coal before we knew to use the sun and the wind and that this sacrifice is to be honored, that men and women fought to build unions so we would not be nearly enslaved by employers and that many fought that no one would be a slave. And then we will teach them about Jackie Robinson. And they will not have contempt for those who work with hands and instead will have contempt for those who think themselves "masters of the universe" because they shift numbers around and break things into derivatives and securities and will ask "but what do those people DO all day?" while sitting with their friends and co-workers at the balll game eating a hot dog and drinking a beer or a coke.
And we will watch the great World Series games together with our kids ("Look at Willie Mays make that catch !" "Fisk did it ! It's finally over !") and say I hope that this is what tonight's game will be like and it will be.
And we will read Whitman and watch and play baseball - our daughters alongside our sons - and they will all know they come from somewhere and do not just live in something called "the marketplace".
Or tonight's game could just be a bloated boring blowout and many will yearn for Football Sunday, March Madness or turn to see how Manchester United is doing, and the Republic, and the world will go the way of the Pequod.
10/29/2014 8:30 AM (edited)