I used to say that when Ohio State lost a game, I could stop caring about the season, because typically only the undefeated were ever invited to the championship game, the national title. That’s not the case anymore with the recent four-team playoff years coming and going, and now, starting this season, the 12-team playoff. It’s not nearly as difficult to retain national title hopes after one loss, especially a loss to another highly ranked team, because you don’t have to be in the top 2 anymore, just the top 12, and then you can play your way into the championship from there.
All the same. That loss to Oregon hurt, and I’m filled with the old inclination to stop caring and protect myself from the disappointment of anything less than the best.
Ooo, realtime update: My pocket just buzzed. I matched with someone on Bumble. Let’s pause to check it out.
Okay, not the match I was hoping for, at least for the sake of this post, the one who adamantly told any Ohio State fans to swipe left, which of course, being an Ohio State fan, I always feel as though I am in the right, and therefore that’s the way I swiped instead. Imagine, a participation in a fandom of a certain sports team being a dealbreaker. My former father-in-law gave me some shit about being a Reds fan when we first met (he’s from Pittsburgh), but soon enough he was saying to me, “You know, that Joey Votto is all right.” Which, if I’d turned out to be a prick, Joey Votto would most certainly have not been all right, I can assure you.
It hasn’t always been easy, my Ohio State allegiance. My first crisis of faith was the Jim Tressel scandal, wherein players were given free tattoos in exchange for football memorabilia, jerseys and stuff, which was against the rules at the time. Benefits for the players were to remain strictly non-monetary, nothing that could be sold or resold. It was to uphold the integrity of amateur athletics as a concept. These kids play for the Love of the Game, and nothing else, at least, nothing that could be quantifiably valuable in the present, other than a potentially free education, depending on the scholarship awarded. How could my sweatervested hero, the man who led the team to a national title while I was actually enrolled there, how could he have been aware of such a tarnishing and not taken steps to correct it himself? To say, the buckeye stops here?
There have been other scandals, perhaps the worst of which being the sexual predator that worked as a sports doctor for the university for 18 years and died some years before any of his victims’ voices were publicly heard on the matter (although other people involved could still certainly be held accountable for their complicity, looking very disapprovingly at you, Jim Jordan). Plenty of other big-name universities had their own scandals along the way, though. Michigan’s recent cheating scandal that involved video taping the others teams’ sideline signals and decoding them before Michigan played them which led more or less directly to Michigan’s national championship which no one seems to care enough to do anything about—that was one. For example. None bigger of course than the Jerry Sandusky sexual abuse scandal that wrecked old Joey P’s legacy at Penn State.
What are you supposed to do, when your favorite team lets you down, does something you disapprove of personally, something perhaps even criminal? Beyond a shadow of a doubt, you know they’re guilty, there’s evidence on tape of the guy banging on the trash can so the hitter would know the catcher called a breaking pitch and even the league agrees they were being bad and administers suspensions and punishments, and suddenly the organization you’ve touted and admired your entire life is now making you ashamed of that mascot you got tattooed on your ankle. Mistakes were made, they may say. You have no idea the pressure we face to win, to win at all costs, it was never an intentional breaking of the rules because at the time there was no rule against it, or if there was, we didn’t know someone in the organization was breaking it, despite the advantages it clearly provided. We thank you, in fact, we have been corrected, it will not happen again. How do you decide to believe them? Obviously this is going to vary wildly on a case-by-case basis, but like, what criteria are you looking for?
Or are you even looking?
Say you grew up in Cincinnati and watched the Big Red Machine play and your own personal life was ruined by a father who gambled and mother who… also gambled, and then Pete Rose gets caught betting on baseball, on his own games, no less, the worst of the gambling crimes because you yourself help determine the outcome of the game. He says he only ever bet on himself to win, which was the distinction he made in his own mind to keep his integrity intact, but no one else is buying that excuse and he gets banned from the game for life. You’re a pastry chef now, you haven’t lived in Cincinnati for a decade, your day-to-day life has nothing to do with baseball but you still follow the majors with a passion, especially your hometown Cincinnati Reds, but you’ve no skin in the game otherwise. You could swear this team off, in fact you live in Houston now and could easily switch allegiances because the Astros are terrible and will always be terrible and there’s no risk of them ever doing something as competent as being a disgrace to the game, right? You have no good reason to continue sticking with this team that has broken your heart. You can’t trust them because they abused that trust. They don’t deserve to have you as their fan. Right?
Of course, this is ridiculous, of course you stick with your Reds, even if you hate them a little bit for a little while you’ll still support them because you always have, because your addict parents raised you to always know when to hold em and when to fold em and because they weren’t especially good gamblers that advice was more like always hold em, son, you won’t know you lose until you’ve lost, so you’ve got to stay in the game, you’ve got to back your horse until it crosses the finish line, even if you can clearly see he’s got no chance of winning, that was your decision, that’s the loyalty you owe to your past self, which is the absolute faith about a younger you being right about everything forever, even snap judgments based on funny horse names. What are you, un-American? Do you or do you not consider yourself a patriot, son? We take our prejudices and biases to the grave. But not before passing them along to our children, that part’s important, don’t forget it.
And to an extent I can appreciate this. In fact there is something downright noble about it, never abandoning your convictions, or at least this one conviction regarding which team you root for. If we all jumped ship when it was convenient, we’d all have been converted to Patriots fans for the better part of the last 20 years, and that is just—jeez, I didn’t realize it before but that is actually my nightmare, everyone naming their firstborn sons either Tom or Brady, the most popular search on Google becomes “how to be banal,” or maybe “if i like strawberries is that still ok.” The Boston accent replaces British as the signifier of the hoity-toity, the mustard commercial gets remixed to be like “Pahdon me, you gat any Grey Poop-on, or what? My boy’s wicked hungry over here.”
And some people actually do change teams. I’ve known people who told me they just couldn’t get over, for instance, the Sandusky thing, and they’ll never be able to root for Penn State again. And that’s cool too, to each their own, my point is not to say you should or should not give a sports team a second chance, it’s—hey guys? Are you listening? Because here comes the point. This is the important part:
Politics is not sports.
Once more, for those jokers in the back not paying attention:
POLITICS. IS. NOT. SPORTS.
You absolutely cannot make up your mind ahead of time based solely on the allegiance to a party, much less to a single candidate. I have unexpectedly discovered a newfound respect for any number of card-carrying Republicans (except Dick Cheney) who have come out to say they have carefully considered their loyalties and their values, especially regarding what they believe is important for this country and its future, and they are prepared to put country over party. Over team.
Men, especially, I’m talking to the men mostly here, although women who are coming at Kamala with a full-on meme assault is a discussion for another day. I see your Trump allegiance as a proclamation of your masculinity, and masculinity, in your view, is what makes America what it is. We do what we want. We have that freedom. We drive lift-kit-enhanced trucks that get ten miles to a gallon because fuck the man. We curse and say all the awful words with two g’s and we shoot our guns and Trump says good on you, keep all that up, have fun, just vote for me and the fun can continue. Because that’s all masculinity is, really, is choosing fun where fun can be chosen. Kamala is not fun. Kamala wants us to eat our vegetables. I’m currently on a meat-only diet and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done, I feel strong and healthy and I’m fucking my wife like a jackhammer every night and Kamala wants to just dump her cold vegetable water all over me and ruin everything, for made up reasons like “heart disease” or “meat is killing the planet.”
If this is the case, you may not even understand what I’m talking about here. Teams, allegiance, you say, that’s got nothing to do with it, I’m just a badass doing what a badass gotta do. But I see again and again in the interviews with people at the actual Trump rallies proclaiming that there is nothing that could ever change their mind about the man, that they are with him no matter what, forever and ever—go team badass—and what I’m seeing there is happening with both men and women actually, the both of them more dedicated to the idea of masculinity I mentioned above than they are even to the man himself.
This is, as far as I can tell, the best explanation for ignoring his lies. That’s the thing I’ve been trying to figure out, for years now, actually. He lies constantly. Aggressively and relentlessly. Most people know this. I would argue even most of his supporters know we cannot trust a word that he says. (Yes, there is a disturbingly large subset of folks who do believe anything he says, but that infallibly gullible population alone would not be enough to get him elected.) The people who will, or god willing will not, get him elected are the folks who see through him as clearly as I do—and are going to vote for him anyway. You have some mechanism of writing off his wrongs that I cannot put my finger on, but I have come up with a few theories. One is that you know full well the man is dishonest to his core but you think more good will come from his being in power again than not, based solely on the influence on your values and core issues that his simply being in office will carry. If he carries the popularity contest, so it goes that your opinion of how abortion is murder can be voiced all the louder. Even if he screws a few things up along the way, the net gain is bound to be a positive.
Another theory is that you think his dishonesty is incompetence based, that he’s not at all malicious and in fact loves this country genuinely and even if he can’t fix healthcare with his concepts of a plan, it’s not for want of integrity. Although, how you are locating genuine integrity in this farce of a human being is another discussion.
My current presiding theory is, basically, he represents your team, and you won’t be disloyal to your team. Even if he did trade memorabilia to get tattoos, or sexually assault 28 women, or bet on baseball, or try to overthrow democracy. It’s one of those unbreakable playground oaths that allow for a quick judgment of character, like snitches get stitches. You stay loyal to your team. Period. Once upon a time, you proposed to your team, your team said yes, maybe the marriage isn’t always pure bliss but for better or for worse, right? You picked masculinity back when masculinity seemed to be the most influential, all-consuming aspect of social life, for women and men both. Football Friday nights, prom-posals, who’s going to fight whom and why and then later who won that fight, whose car is the fastest, who can drink the most, who can prove themselves superior at any provable skill, beer pong, ping pong, Donkey Kong, etc etc, you effectively got YOLO tattooed on your forehead and as with any tattoo you have to continue to support the ideas and motivation that beget that tattoo for the rest of your life. Otherwise, you may as well just chop that leg clean off. Otherwise go back to your country, am I right? What kind of American are you.
You guys—democracy cannot function like this. Every election demands that you hold those who would be in power accountable, that you do not grant a pass for unpardonable offenses. There are no teams. You can vote against him and continue to call yourself a Republican if you want, if that really is important to you, because that doesn’t actually matter. In politics, the labels don’t matter. It’s just shorthand for fundraising. Democracy is all about the fairweather candidate. The best candidate right now. The most qualified. The least unhinged. It has to be, or it’s not actually a vote at all, it’s a breeding contest and a roll call, dependent only on which side can produce the most offspring.
Most especially for this election, democracy cannot function like this, because if we elect this man—can’t even believe I’m in the timeline where I have to say this—again, he has no intention of giving up his power a second time. He tried not to give it up the first time, and the only mistake he believes he made during his last term was to not prepare enough ahead of time to seize power permanently. He allowed an election. He does not want to make that mistake again. He sees Putin as both his idol and his competitor, someone who has no business being more powerful than he is, but also someone whose strategies are too good not to steal. I am not exaggerating, here. I am not overstating the situation. He wants democracy to end. And your playground loyalty is playing right into his hands.
He’s taken some pains to separate himself from Project 2025, one of his lies he can say with a straight face quite easily because to him Project 2025 doesn’t go far enough. It does not name him, specifically, as the beneficiary of all these fascistic alterations to how our government works. It does not say specifically, boldly, that Trump is our dear leader and the one to whom all this presidential deference is to be directed. He lies as easily as he breathes, but he’s tired of pretending that democracy should be an American ideal. The most draining part of his daily life is not the lying, it’s the pretending, it’s the presenting the facsimile of a person who values this country and gives half a shit about its people. It’s the dancing for the camera, the conjuring up of a value system he does not possess, yes he does crave the camera but to his core he wants to grab the lens with both hands and scream that yes I fucked a porn star and yes I I grab women by the pussy because when I do it they like it, and yes I refuse to pay overtime and I welch on my debts and I break all my contracts because that’s just smart business, if you pay other people money then you don’t have the money anymore, simple as that. Yes, fuck you, I have a gold toilet. Fuck you, yes, I want to fuck my daughter, kings used to go in for incest all the time and what am I if not that. Zeus pumped a baby into anyone that struck his fancy and what am I if not that. I am the chosen one, the gilded god, the absolute, and you will worship me.
And you had better vote for me, although admittedly, if you do vote for me, I’ll actually respect you less. You’re necessary for that, just that one thing, but in doing so you identify yourself as a mark, a rube, and you are no longer worth considering. You have been conquered, and I expect to hear no more from you. Come November 6, when the voting is done, I will at last give up the charade, I will show my true colors. If I win, the retribution for my enemies will begin immediately, I won’t even wait to take office, I’ll start ruining them, ruining their lives, their families, their friends and their friends’ families. If somehow I don’t win I’ll spend the next few months denying the results, refusing to concede while behind the scenes and occasionally on camera I try to convince those loyal to me, rubes they may be, to do what they can to put me into power anyway. Electors, justices, federal judges, lawyers, juries, generals, sheriffs, anyone who can be flattered, bribed, persecuted, cajoled, tricked, corrupted, and eventually swayed. And then I’ll bring retribution to my enemies.
Fuck you, I shit into gold.
What I’m saying is the man has a tiny dick, and if he doesn’t he’s at least got the worst case of Tiny Dick Syndrome that America has ever seen. He’s delusional enough to believe himself royalty without the hassle of the obtaining the presidency again—truth be told he hated it the first time around, turned out it was an actual job, what with all the responsibility and people expecting things from him literally all the time—but as a purely practical matter running again was his best bet to avoid going to prison. If you don’t believe me about that, that’s fine, and if you don’t believe anything I laid out in the previous few paragraphs either, that’s fine, too, maybe I’m wrong about all that and god willing I hope that I am. But I am not being hyperbolic. That’s where I really think he’s coming from, what I really think will happen. I’m being sincere in expressing these fears. I am genuinely afraid of what he’ll do to this country if he is elected again, and even somewhat afraid of what he’ll do if he isn’t.
What’s undeniable is that the man lies. If you don’t believe that, there’s no way you’ve read this far, the best way to hang on to disinformation is to avoid encountering anything that would replace it, so once again I am talking only to those who can see his lies as plainly as I can and are planning to vote for him anyway.
He is not on your team. There are no teams, and he wouldn’t care about you if there were. Billionaires are not your friends, most especially this billionaire. You believe yourself to be on his good side now, but that could change. He is used to getting his way about everything. Everything. One jacked-up F150 offends him in any way, maybe wakes him up revving its engine in front of the White House or something, and he could decide to ban lift kits, or diesel engines, or just trucks in general. He’s getting more capricious and random as he ages, and there is no way you can guarantee he won’t come for you and your lifestyle next. Executive orders falling from the skies to ban light beer, to mandate church on Sundays, to ban birth control, to add his face to the American flag. He suddenly decides he’s tired of getting shot at and bans guns, like, all of them. Wouldn’t have to be a big issue, either, he could come for you personally, just because you posted something online that ends up in his feed and makes him cross, suddenly you’re in the opposite camp, one of the enemies, and life gets a lot less fun for you when he points the mob in your direction.
What he’s selling that’s masquerading as juicy masculine freedom is quite literally the opposite. It’s existing with permission. And that permission could be revoked.
Please, I am begging you, do not vote for this loser. It’s for your own good, and mine, and literally everyone else’s. There’s only one person another Trump presidency would benefit, and believe me, that person is not you.