The Donald and the NFL are even more intertwined than you may know. Yeah, there's the whole USFL thing. Remember when Trump bought the New Jersey Generals and then tried to orchestrate a merger with the NFL which wound up crashing the whole league thanks to his tremendous business acumen? Yeah, that was bigly when he said of his then-spring league "If God wanted football in the spring he wouldn't have created baseball." The man has simply tremendous instincts to go along with the best words. Even more germane, Trump himself so much as admitted that he wouldn't have even run for president had his 2014 bid to purchase the Buffalo Bills been successful. The winning $1.4 billion bid came from Terry Pegula beating Trump's even billion dollar bid; what a difference $400 million makes, as he reflected prior to the election, "I'm glad, because if I bought the Buffalo Bills, I probably would not be doing what I'm doing now [running for president], which is much more important ... I would have done a good job with the team, but I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing now."
Ah, what might have been, something about 52% of America (and most of the world) along with 30 other NFL teams are pondering right now after a gruelling season which ended in disappointment. How did we get here? Well, when it comes to a Trump presidency, that's easy, as when asked on election day, 75% of voters polled said "America needs a strong leader to take the country back from the rich and powerful" and 72% agreed "the American economy is rigged to advantage the rich and powerful". So, they decided to drain the swamp by electing to put a billionaire in charge to nominate other billionaires into positions from which they'll be sure to change the rules of the game that made them billionaires. Um, right. Instead, the public will get more of the same shock doctrine treatment of the past 35 years, the bait and switch. Mapping the road to the Superb Owl is equally Byzantine, and, therefore, merits a quick look back at the dumpster fire xenophobic surrealness that made the NFL season feel every bit as post truth as the political one.
The Dumpster Fire or California Dreamin'
The season kicked off with a team in Los Angeles for the first time in 22 years but their week one 28-0 loss to the Niners was a portend of things to come. The Rams only managed to scrape together four wins all year (including a TD-less first victory) and San Francisco wouldn't win another until week 16, beating the, um, Rams again. Adding to the dumpster fireness of it all, in hindsight the Niners might even want to give that victory back as it cost them the number one draft pick when the Cleveland Browns picked up their first and only victory that same week. We pity the Browns, but no one really expected RGIII to rally this team. Also falling into this category were the Bears, Jaguars, Jets and Chargers finishing with a pair of 3-13 and 5-11 seasons respectively. Yes, the Bears biting really bad Cutler-less, the promising Jags being dragged down by Bortles' regression, and the Jets crashing after their pilot Fitzpatrick forgot how to find Marshall were all spectacular flame outs, but most of the smouldering stench from football wafting over America is coming from California.Of course that quarterback who took a knee in the opening paragraph was San Francisco 49ers QB Colin Kaepernick, doing so as a sign of protest during the national anthem. Early season ratings woes had many pointing to his protest as the reason as some polls showed a third of fans were tuning out due to him. Just as an outsider looking in on America couldn't fathom the significance of such an act, those who took offence to such a seemingly innocuous act can't come to grips with the irrationality of their anger let alone understand his reasons for marking his indignation with the state of police on black violence in America. Most of the former crowd have never been exposed to the jingoism that comes part and parcel with being a true American, from daily pledges of allegiance to forced displays of supporting the troops to Trump's peon to North Korea, 'Day of Patriotic Devotion', while the majority of the latter have never been exposed to ideas that don't fall into the American Exceptionalism Pandora's Box of propaganda. It's easy to work people into a frenzy over someone choosing to make a silent statement of protest during a moment when most are supposedly celebrating the fact they live in a country that promotes the freedom to express oneself so long as they are incessantly bombarded with the message that those who conform succeed while those who dissent don't.
Meanwhile, as mentioned, Los Angeles, after being bereft of an NFL team for 22 years, now finds itself with not one but two teams. A year ago, NFL owners were seduced by Rams owner Stan Kroenke into allowing him to abandon St. Louis (leaving the city with the bill) with dreamy visions of building an LA football Shangri-La to host everything from Rams games to Super Bowls, and, as we learned 12 months later, San Die...er Los Angeles Chargers games. Yes, somehow by moving from San Diego to Los Angeles where they'll be about the 10th favorite sports team, the value of the club jumped a billion dollars, so, why not? Having grown bored with simply killing its players, the NFL seems to have decided to follow the nation's lead and turn the gun on itself. Much as electing Trump president will likely kick America's downfall into hyperdrive after a short lived bump, the NFL's franchise relocations are as sure to hasten its demise. One may feel pity for the country, as they really were left with no better choice, in fact, I could be convinced Clinton would have been worse just as I can buy some of the arguments for moving the Rams, but damn, did the NFL, or more specifically, team president and CEO Dean Spanos, have to move the Chargers to LA, too? While I'm sad for the city of San Diego and their fans, I'm proud that they stood up and said no to introducing a new hotel tax in order to pay for a new stadium.
While the need for a new stadium was the given reason for a move, it's a bit fishy given that there was clearly a lucrative option to build a Spanos-owned stadium in San Diego while this arrangement means the team will play in a renovated soccer stadium holding at most 30,000 for a couple of years before moving in to rent the Kroenke-controlled Rams stadium. Add in the Rams abysmally attended games last year and the almost given fact that the Chargers will garner even less enthusiasm as they aren't even wanted and the $650 million franchise relocation fee yet somehow still increase in value by a billion, you'd be right to ask, WTF? Stop me if this magic sounds familiar. Attendance revenue doesn't depend on selling tickets anymore, instead, the team sells licenses to buy the rights to buy tickets to sit in the seats. When the Niners moved to Santa Clara, the one-time cost for rights per seat varied between $2,000 and $80,000 earning the team $530 million. No, these aren't season tickets, it's the cost for the right to buy season tickets and it's a lifetime contract. The Chargers, drawing on a larger market will likely charge more, much more. Oh, and then there's the luxury boxes, again, the Niners made $400 million. Any wonder why Spanos doesn't care if they lose all their fans? Much as the Dow Jones reaching 20,000 thanks to the tiny slice of Americans who hold all of the wealth of the nation needing somewhere to put it, Tinseltown has enough well heeled suckers who will keep the Chargers coffers brimming. As with American capitalism, the problem is easy to diagnose: without a thriving middle class, nothing supports a 20,000 Dow; without a dedicated fan base, a $3 billion franchise has foundations built on sand. Outsource enough fans and just as if you outsource enough jobs, you eventually won't have enough customers to support your valuations.
A bright spot in this is that team's will no longer be able to play the 'we'll move the franchise to Los Angeles if you don't pay up' extortion card in negotiations with cities for better stadium deals. The NFL, with the artificial scarcity created by it's legal monopoly status, is a kind of microcosm of US 'capitalism' where rules are made to benefit the few at the expense of the many; in this case, using the leverage obtained by pitting cities and states against each other to force them to hand over ever more public money to subsidize billionaires. Making matters worse, the promised economic returns rarely materialize as new stadiums don't generate significant growth. Pharmaceutical companies fleece the sick with impunity thanks to patent laws preventing generic drugs from entering the market which enables the price of a pill to jump from $18 to $750 on a whim. The entire financial industry benefits from a nearly $100 billion annual implicit 'too big to fail' subsidy, not to mention the trillions skimmed from the public in bailouts back in '08. Tech firms get the same artificial protection as Big Pharma thanks to copyrights and are the most devious when it comes to taking advantage of deliberately created or neglected loopholes in order to avoid taxes. Oil companies take the cake, however, globally benefiting from upward of $5.3 trillion yearly in hand outs when externalities are taken into consideration.
Given this, it should come as no surprise that Trump's first executive order was to kill people. Obamacare, or the ACA, was by no means perfect and was simply a Heritage Foundation created corporate giveaway to the insurance industry, but at the very least it gave tens of millions access to health care. With no plan in place to replace it, about 50 million Americans will find themselves unable to visit a doctor which should speed up the suddenly increasing mortality rate and start pushing down life expectancy. The glory of profit driven health care is that a country with about 5% of the world's population spends between 40 and 50% of global spending on health with outcomes that fall well short of other developed nations. Depending on who's measuring, the US is also responsible for about 40% of global military spending. The bang for the buck of spending about as much as the next ten countries is hard to see when their military doesn't seem to so much win wars as create future enemies to justify further spending. The military industrial complex that Eisenhower warned of has even spawned its own mutant offspring in the prison industrial complex which seems to serve the same self-perpetuating purpose. Housing 25% of the world's prisoners has become big business that each American resident pays about $260 per year for, up from $77 in 1980 despite the fact that violent crime has dropped about 45% during the past two decades. I wonder where all this money is going? What was I saying, oh yeah, team's moving. Speaking of criminals, did I mention that the Oakland Raiders will probably be moving to Las Vegas thanks to $750 million in public money being put up. Yes, seems a perfect lead into...
The Surreal Reich
Sure, if you listened to the political pundits last year you would've been convinced the world had turned upside down, but really, there's nothing as bizarre as sports and the NFL is no exception. This year marked the first time since 2003 that both teams that made the previous Super Bowl missed the playoffs as both the Panthers and Broncos took a tumble. Cam Newton couldn't recapture last season's lightning in a bottle and the Broncos defense couldn't carry a rookie QB despite having Aqib Talib one-upping Plaxico Burress; not only did he shoot himself in the leg after winning the Super Bowl, but he managed to get voted into the next Pro-Bowl. Remember when the Minnesota Vikings were the last undefeated team? Yeah, in October it looked like their gamble to splash out on QB Sam Bradford to replace Teddy Bridgewater (he of the non-contact knee disintegration) was a stroke of genius. They went into their bye as the last undefeated team after disposing of the Texans 31-13 October 10th, meaning they were 5-0 when they next played on October 24th. Yeah, they missed the playoffs while the Texans made it to the party despite starting one of the worst quarterbacks in the league, a $72 million fiasco. Making it worse, they somehow won a playoff game thus ensuring two absolutely horrible post-season games to watch.
Speaking of post-season futility, the Bengals opted to skip the whole one-and-done thing by only scraping together six wins, while the Lions did make the dance only to lose to the Seahawks in the Wildcard round to add another year to their quarter century drought and setting a new record by losing their ninth straight playoff game. Bizarrely, the Bucs actually flirted with playoff contention, and, in fact, were theoretically in the hunt almost until the final whistle of the season. However, they would have needed to beat the Panthers, the Lions to beat the Packers and the Redskins to tie the Giants in week 17, apparently 60,000-to-1 odds. Why not in a year that featured ties in back to back weekends, including fittingly in one of the games played in London this year, one of four played outside of the US? Meanwhile, the window closed another year on the Saints to win with Brees and Luck failed to step back up to expectations and fell short of winning the worst division in football. And the Eagles, well, after going all in on a rookie QB, they started well but predictably faded as the year wore on.
Yeah, the football season was off the wall in more ways than just the sudden inability of kickers to hit extra points (12 on one Sunday alone), but the rest of the world proved even wackier. Nothing more so than the hooting and hollering from the so-called left on either side of the Atlantic as instead of recognizing their role in laying the groundwork for Brexit and Trump, they are instead behaving like children throwing their toys out of their crib. It was the neoliberal economic disaster their policies ensured that produced the poor and uneducated they blame for voting the wrong way. Eight years of supporting a man who's done nothing but stabilize and then advance the neoliberal world order followed up by flailing about for excuses why Clinton lost, from the electoral college to a Putin plot, will get about as much done as Obama's promise to close Guantanamo. Fascism is first and foremost a response to the structural crises of modern capitalism, regardless of whether it's the 1930s or the one that began with the financial meltdown in 2008. The consequences of transferring $14 trillion in public money to criminal enterprises on Wall Street, a landscape of endemic poverty, militarized police and prison industrial complex were Obama's Weimar Republic seedbed that sprouted Trumpkin. The Clinton camp and the Remainers failure was their refusal to challenge what Trump and the Brexiters promised to: the status quo governed by transnational capital and their technocratic minions.
The NFL eschews the term equality and instead uses the word parity to describe their goal of creating a league in which any team can find themselves playing in the Superb Owl in order to avoid being branded with the socialist label. Yet it is a level playing field that drives the success of the league, America's lack of which, in economic terms, best explains Trump's triumph. Think of what inequality and resultant poverty does to a society in terms of what CTE, or chronic traumatic encephalopathy, does to an NFL player. The severe repetitive blows to the head produce concussions which damage the brain and lead to the progressive, degenerative disease which drives many to suicide. Looking at counties which flipped from Obama to Trump we find a strong correlation with what researchers call deaths of despair, suicides, opioids and liver disease. These are people who were left behind, economically pummelled by free trade and deindustrialization, leaving them worse off than their parents and despairing for their children. The annual death toll from overdosing quadrupled between 1999 and 2015, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recently reported that more than 33,000 people died of an overdose in 2015, but it's likelier closer to 50,000. The same year, more than 35,000 people died from gun violence, including 22,000 suicides.
Granted, it does seem a bit surreal to hand the nuclear football off to a man with such thin skin, orange at that, but sorry, it's not surprising given the alternative voters were offered. Yes, granting a con man known for bilking the public of billions and declaring bankruptcy the combination to a trillion dollar economy does seem a tad preposterous, but should we be nonplussed? Would you be surprised that one of the first people Trump killed as president was coincidentally the eight-year-old daughter of the first American Obama killed? Or that the Nobel Peace Prize winner had also later killed his American born son and dropped over 26,000 bombs in seven different countries in his final year in office? Remember war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance is strength.
Xenophobia, Racism and (the not-so-new) Americanism
No offence to the Ravens, Cardinals, Titans, Dolphins or Giants, but I've gotta shoehorn them in somewhere here. The former pair underperformed while the latter two outperformed expectations by sliding into the playoffs and the Titans gave the most hope for doing the same next year. The Ravens jumped out to a 3-0 start but sputtered down the stretch which is to be expected when your biggest offensive weapon is your kicker. A disappointing 7-8-1 season left Cardinals fans feeling let down considering they had to feel coming into the year that the Super Bowl was within reach. Getting caught drunk driving turned out to be the best way for a Cardinal to have a chance to win it all as WR Michael Floyd found out; another great lesson in morality taught by the NFL. Once Arian Foster finally called it quits, the Dolphins rode RB Jay Ajayi's four 200-yard games into a one and done post-season appearance and the Giants were forced to surf the waves of prima donna WR Odell Beckham Jr's periodic outbursts against man or inanimate kicking nets and were also dismissed in the Wildcard round. It's hard to figure how the Titans didn't knock off the Texans to win the AFC South until you remember they lost to the Jaguars on Christmas Eve; next year Mariota and co. should be ready to take the next step.
Year in and year out we've got the Washington Redskins to remind us of how xenophobia was used to help build America; asserting that Native Americans were different from European colonizers justified genocide. QB Kirk Cousins earned himself a big contract but his game ending 2nd half interceptions in week 17 against a Giants team with nothing to play for also ended Washington's season. It's in Buffalo, yes home of the very Bills whose purchase by Donald Trump may have averted his presidential bid, where we find the xenophobic thread to tie in to the story. On paper, another 7-9 Bills season is unremarkable (they're averaging 6.5 wins a season in the 21st century), but one could argue this year's version may have done better had the team not been torn apart by, yep, you guessed it, Trump.Seems head coach/blowhard Rex Ryan, who took the Jets to the playoffs his first two seasons as head coach only to miss his next six post-seasons, was a vocal Trump supporter. So, in addition to having openly racist Richie Incognito in the locker room, you've got a coach actively inciting racists, "And so many times, you’ll see people—a lot of people—want to say the same thing. But there’s a big difference: They don’t have the courage to say it. They all think it, but they don’t have the courage to say it. And Donald Trump certainly has the courage to say it." No wonder an anonymous Bills player was quoted saying, "I see Trump as someone who is hostile to people of color, and the fact that Rex supports him made me look at him completely differently, and not in a positive way."
Unsurprisingly, a straw poll of 43 NFL players before the election had 21 white players all saying they planned on voting for Trump, while 20 of the 22 black players planned on voting for Clinton. Trumps idea of reaching out the black community was a meeting with NFL legends Ray Lewis and Jim Brown on the same day he sat down to chat with future presidential hopeful Kanye West. Lewis proclaimed "black or white is irrelevant" while Brown enthused, "[W]hat he (Trump) went through ... he got my admiration". Yeah, perhaps if Ray Lewis hadn't been an NFL star he would have found out how most blacks are treated by the American penal system for his part in murder. Meanwhile, no one better than Jim Brown to speak on behalf of black women in America, at least those who enjoy being beaten.
At the heart of nationalism, Americanism in the USA, is the belief that one country is somehow superior to others. It therefore follows that its citizens have exclusive qualities not found in the inferior others, an unsurprisingly easy sell for politicians. Fear is the most powerful weapon of the propagandist and so while sowing divisions in the locker room may not work, convincing people that the other is intent on taking your job or even your life motivates individuals to invest more in groups to which they belong and, conversely, to act more aggressively towards those with different cultural worldviews and national or ethnic identities. Whether it is test subjects who opt to more severely punish those who disparage their political views after being asked to think about death, Iranian students primed by writing about what it feels like to physically die being more supportive of martyrdom attacks than control groups, or Americans primed in the same way showing more support for extreme military attacks, Terror Management Theory best explains the vicious circle of violence the world now finds itself in. Yes, it even explains elections as it has predictably demonstrated that reminders of our mortality leads us to vote for more hawkishly conservative candidates.
Trump's salesman instinct in spotting his mark's weakness combined with his savvy for manipulating the media swept him into the Whitehouse and is now distracting his detractors while he and his supporters implement their agenda: Make America Great Again which simply translates to stop and turn back the clock, but instead of a mythical 'better' time, the destination is one out of time where most of the social, scientific and environmental gains of the last 30 years are erased or simply ignored. Enter an Exxon executive who will directly profit from lifting sanctions on Russia becoming Secretary of State to join other cabinet climate change deniers such as the energy and interior secretaries to push a pro-fossil fuel agenda to slow the green energy led transformation which, otherwise unimpeded, would soon turn black gold into worthless tar.
It would normally be phantasmagorical to have a Secretary of Education who doesn't believe in public education, and, in fact, profits from an already staggeringly large student loan industry of $1.3 trillion through her ownership of debt collection agencies. How about six Trump appointments from Goldman Sachs, the very vampire squid he railed against Clinton being too close to during the election, including a former Goldman partner as Treasury Secretary and the former president and “number two” at Goldman the top economic adviser and National Economic Council Chair. Guess it's no different than promising to give the power back to the people and then nominating a Supreme Court justice who favors increasing corporate power and taking away the power to control one's own body. An Attorney General who may or may not have protected KKK members accused of lynching in Alabama, but definitely did say he thought the Klan was "okay, until he learned that they smoked marijuana."
A Secretary of Agriculture whose history, friends and beliefs show that he'll do everything in his power to promote the destructive practices of industrial agriculture and simply pray that the inevitable droughts and other disasters his policies cause will abate. Guess it's no more bizarre than feeding beef cattle Skittles. A Labor Secretary who hates workers, having created working conditions in which 2/3 of his female workers reported sexual harassment and paying them so little many are forced to go onto public assistance which cost tax payers $247 million a year; a drop in the bucket of the $153 billion a year low wage employers receive in such subsidies. A net neutrality foe to head the FCC. We could go on forever but would be amiss if we left out the head of the Environmental Protection Agency who himself launched 14 lawsuits against the agency and has fought tooth and nail against protecting drinking water at a time when Flint, Michigan has been without potable water for almost two years and at least 33 other municipalities have it just as bad.
Even National Park employees are enemies of the state so it wasn't surprising to see Trump's first week in office conclude by fulfilling a campaign promise by signing an executive order to temporarily ban immigration from seven Muslim countries. Trump was clearly trolling by timing it to coincided with Holocaust Remembrance Day, or perhaps he was just highlighting his lack of human empathy. It's hard not to see the similarities of refusing to accept refugees today with the refusal to accept them in 1939; mainly Jews being herded into Hitler's gas chambers then, mostly Muslims destined to die today as a result of US interventions (ie. invasions, regime support or bombing). As this move is meant to keep America safe, it's uncanny that the seven banned nations don't include the four countries the 9/11 terrorists came from: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Lebanon, and the United Arab Emirates; nor does it include Russia, the country of origin of the Boston Marathon terrorists. Maybe that's because instead of increasing safety, it will do the exact opposite and plays right into the hands of extremists. Serendipitously, no countries in which Trump has business dealings was included which must mean that Muslims are only dangerous if they don't sell us oil or help Trump build towers.
Post-Truth, Post-Season, Post-Mortem
Sure a couple other teams got in to the playoffs, but really, only eight had a realistic shot at winning it all: the Seahawks, Raiders, Chiefs, Cowboys, Packers, Steelers, Falcons and Patriots. Gotta say though, the post-season to this point has been, shall we say, deplorable? Seriously, only two of the games have been decided by less than 13 points, and one of those featured a team winning without even scoring a touchdown leaving the Super Bowl with a lot to make up for. The Seahawks limped through much of the year on Russell Wilson's bad ankle but navigated their way to the NFC West crown and a wildcard win over the Lions, but not having Earl Thomas proved too much as they were overwhelmed by the Falcons. Similarly, the Raiders couldn't overcome the loss of hitherto MVP candidate Derek Carr in a week 17 loss after a hugely promising 12-4 season as they fell to the offensively impotent Texans in the opening round. Thanks in part to Carr's broken leg, their methodical efficiency and a speed freak named Tyreek, the Chiefs were able to claim the AFC West crown but couldn't score more than the Steelers kicker in the Divisional matchup. And the Cowboys, what can I say? They were the better team against the Packers in the same round and should have years of success ahead riding Dak's arm, Zeke's legs and their offensive line, but saw their hopes evaporate thanks to a bit of Rodgers magic in a 34-31 barnburner.
The conference championship games were both snoozefests. The Packers had just enough to beat the 'boys but couldn't run the table all the way through Atlanta. Last year it was 'Relax', this year it was 'I feel we can run the table', and sure enough after making this claim following a 42-24 thrashing at the hands of the 'skins, Aaron Rodgers silenced the whispers of his detractors and went on a tear. No running game? Throw a wide receiver into the backfield. No defense? Just score more points than your opponent. Losing control of a divisional playoff game that was in hand but is now slipping away? Draw up a play in the huddle and do this. They had nothing left against the Falcons and were torn apart, 44-21. At least the Steelers kept it mildly interesting in the first half before fading in the 3rd quarter and falling to the Patriots 36-17. Any team with Le'Veon Bell, Antonio Brown and Ben Rapelisberger will challenge, but I've got a feeling a piece might be missing next year, be it Big Ben retiring or Brown turning his talents to Facebook live fulltime.The coulda, woulda, shoulda inside of me whispers if only Derek Carr hadn't broken his leg and the Cowboys fallen so far behind the Pack in the first half we might have had a pair of compelling games. Thing is, just because I want it to be true doesn't make it reality, and so I can turn my attention to the Super Bowl. Or not. Wasn't that holding on the last offensive play of the game for the Packers to set up the game winning field goal to beat the Cowboys? When else has a 22 yard gain been wiped out due to unsportsmanlike conduct being called for violating a little known substitution rule. The late game pass interference that might have been holding which nullified an interception seems a bit off, too. Come to think of it, the last time these teams met in the playoffs, it sure looked like Dez caught it to everyone but Packers fans and the zebras who overturned the call. Really? You're telling me there's enough evidence to overturn the completion call? Sure, the refs made a few questionable calls and no-calls in the Cowboys-Packers game, and the Pack seem to be the beneficiary of them more often than not, but it would be crazy and a distraction to blame a close loss on external factors that can't be proven, wouldn't it? Welcome to the world of Clinton supporters, from simple voter to media spin doctors, who've spent much of the last two months trying to convince us that those evil Ruskies not only infiltrated America's media landscape and polluted it with fake news but also hacked the election to swing it in Trumps favor.
The prevailing narrative is that we now live in a post-truth world where everyone has conflicting evidence to contradict alternative-facts, truths are twisted into clickbait canards and the very fabric of reality seems torn asunder. Seems Trumps election has spurred a resurgence in interest in Orwell's 1984, rocketing it to the top of best-seller lists. However, they'd be better off reading Brave New World as this isn't a post-truth world, it's nothing but what it's always been, a world of lies. Sure, we've got a real estate tycoon cum reality show star for a US President, but should that really be surprising? He took advantage of America's weakness to find success in all three roles: a credulous naivete in the promise of the American Dream. Frustratingly, we'll believe anything, but once we become invested in that belief we become fiercely loyal to it, thereby making it near-impossible to dislodge and easy to confirm, extend and further entrench. Trump repeating the fallacy that torture works is true for those previously sold the idea by Hollywood in Zero Dark Thirty. What was most likely a Democratic party email leak is easily conflated with fake news which we're told was produced by Russians who are easily transformed into Putin's online army that hacked the election results for 50% of Clinton voters who are blind to the proof the emails provided that the Democratic party not only conspired to smear Bernie Sanders but also worked to promote Trump as the Republican nominee in something called the Pied Piper strategy.
Politics is propaganda, which is simply public relations in the US and elsewhere to sell a principle-free liberal or conservative brand, much as sugar-free Coke or Pepsi to provide a simulacrum of choice. Many drink one brand or the other because it is a quick, relatively inexpensive beverage option in their otherwise harried struggle to make ends meet; simply repeating a lie makes it the truth to this group, an effect known as illusory truth. Others, because they have never been exposed to the idea that there are better options, aided and abetted by our media filter bubbles. Others still because they have been eternally bombarded with messaging on how bad the other brand is, here, think of the deluge of ad hominem attacks we are exposed to. Most dangerously, there are those who drink one or the other and not only think there is a difference, but stridently defend their choice and actively work to prevent other options from arising on the market, and here we find the big lie that America can be made great again by doubling down on the failures of the past. Economics trickles down every bit as much as Trump enjoys Russian golden showers but you'll believe the former if your conscience needs soothing for the violence your lifestyle inflicts on the poor and the latter if it helps your brain deal with the cognitive dissonance brought on by a Trump presidency you were assured could never happen.
It took under a year for the meaning of the term fake news to go from deliberately false stories circulated on social media for advertising revenue to deliberate misinformation from either Putin or Soros depending on your brand choice to anything that falls out of line with the liberal establishment or Alt-Right groupthink to "anything I don't agree with". Ironically, the freedom we've been afforded to construct our own realities thanks to the Internet has put us even more under control of the propagandists. Convinced that Al Gore's flying around in a jet makes climate change a hoax? You'll love Trump's restarting the KXL and Dakota Access pipelines. Believe Israel’s wall is a 'security fence' and its colonies are 'settlements' which are 'disputed' rather than illegal? You'll be certain Trump's wall is a security necessity. Certain that Planned Parenthood uses tax dollars to provide abortion services? You'll support the reinstatement of the global gag rule. Unless you're a true psychopath, cognitive dissonance makes it impossible to acknowledge the violence that all these positions entail, from the acceleration of extinction of life on this planet to methodically wiping out a culture, and condemning thousands or even millions of women to death.
The problem works on three interplaying, reinforcing levels in our brains, our media, and our economic system. Any information we are exposed to is believed at least momentarily in order to understand it and only then do we choose to accept or reject it. Accepting is easy, rejecting takes energy and given our natural biases we are susceptible to manipulation and once we've bought in, as mentioned, the backfire effect makes us believe certain facts even more fervently when presented with facts which contradict it. Modern technology has opened the floodgates of information and the constant deluge ensures that a lot of crap will stick, a result of what is known as cognitive load. The media, with its supposed objective approach to controversial issues, exacerbates the problem by routinely presenting falsehoods with seemingly balanced debate; think anthropogenic climate change, with a scientist on one side representing 97% of the field and another facing him expressing the views of 3%. When a newspaper issues a retraction, or runs headlines such as "Trump Claims, With No Evidence, That 'Millions of People Voted Illegally,'", they perversely reinforce the very claim they mean to debunk.
Add to that the built in subservience to power, courting the corporate kind to secure advertising revenue and the political to secure access, and we end up with WMDs in Iraq and Roundup in our cereal. Trump's penchant for making outrageous statements isn't a sign of lunacy but a ploy to grab headlines that he knows will be propagated by a media model ruled by online advertising where truth is whatever produces the most eyeballs. Steve "Trump's Goebbels" Bannon's claim that "the media is the opposition" and should "keep its mouth shut", is as duplicitous as the media's meltdown over Trump's looseness with the truth when their symbiotic relationship is considered. They helped him win the election and he delivered record audiences and readers: Fox +68%, CNN +128%, MSNBC +98% over last year during primetime and the NY Times saw a ten fold increase in new subscription shortly after the election versus the same period in 2015. So while we stand agape at Team Trump's tantrum over crowd sizes, illegal voters and 'alternative facts', we momentarily forget that actions speak louder than words and wind up with a Holocaust denier, a racist and a homophobe on the National Security Council.
You'd be hard pressed to find a team that elicits stronger conflicting beliefs than the New England Patriots. Bill Belichick is either a genius or a Sith Lord thanks in large part to 2007's Spygate scandal, Tom Brady is GOAT or a cheater thanks to Deflategate. Supporters shut out the hate and criticism by compartmentalizing it as jealousy of their success, after all, they've played in 11 of the last 16 AFC championships, including the last six, winning six of the eleven, and now have the chance to win their fifth Super Bowl over that time. As a hater, confirmation bias kicks in for any negative story regardless of whether the animosity stems from fantasy football frustration suffered playing Patriot running back roulette, the fact they don't represent a city but a six-state area or something legitimate like the Brady inspired 'Tuck Rule'. Nevertheless, even a few haters could be rooting to see Roger Goodell hand the Lombardi Trophy to Brady, Belichek and owner Robert Kraft the year Goodell suspended Brady the first four games of the season for his role in Deflategate.
Without Brady, the Pats managed to go 3-1, even winning a game in ridiculous fashion with their 3rd string QB starting. Another piece missing much of the season, and will be for the Super Bowl, was all-world TE Rob Gronkowski, making their 14-2 season and romp through the playoffs all the more remarkable. Brady passed Peyton Manning for all time wins, LaGarette Blount went over 1,000 yards for the first time in his career and a seeming hodgepodge of pass catchers seemed to take turns coming up with big games. The 34-16 final score over the Texans in the divisional round is actually a little deceiving as the Houston defense was able to keep their team in the game for a while, but the 36-17 route of the Steelers was even more dominating that the score indicates. The offense will be there, but the key to beating the Falcons will be slowing the offense, and this might be the Patriots team to do it as they finished #1 in the league in defensive scoring by almost three points a game. Given that they finished eighth in yards given up, they seem to be the perfect bend but don't break defense to stop Atlanta.Nobody's stopped the Falcons since the Chiefs eked out a 29-28 win December 4th in week 13. I kept waiting for them to fold this season but instead they just got stronger on both sides of the ball. It's the offense that gets and deserves all the attention but the defense, sporting four rookies and four 2nd year players led by Vic Beasley and his NFL leading 15 1/2 sacks, has come around, seemingly peaking against the red hot Packers in the Conference championship after smothering the Seahawks in the divisional round. Credit 2nd year Falcons coach, former Seahawk defensive coordinator Dan Quinn, for quilting this unit together over the year. However, it's the offense that is this team's calling card beginning with presumptive league MVP, QB Matt Ryan, and his favorite target, and possible best (definitely top 3) wide receiver in the league, Julio Jones. The one-two punch of RBs Devonta Freeman and Tevin Coleman gives the offense balance while WRs Mohamed Sanu, a key offseason acquisiton from the Bengals, and Taylor Gabriel, a sparkplug picked up off the trash heap from the Browns, give Matty Ice even more weapons. Oh, and it didn't hurt that their five offensive linemen were the only group in the league to start every game this year.
Yeah, the Vegas line opened with the Patriots favored by a field goal. Even though 65% of the money has gone on them, the line's held steady, almost like the bookies know something we don't. Despite the over/under being a Super Bowl record 58.5, 62% of better are taking over. Not sure if it'll be a shootout, but I'm hoping it makes up for this playoff season and the harbingers are there. The Super Bowl wraps up 2016 sports, a year that gave us a 5000-1 EPL champion in Leicester, the Cubs winning the World Series after more than a century in extra innings in game 7, the Cavs, a team from Cleveland of all places, winning game 7 after down 3-1 while at Golden State to take the NBA crown, Villanova hitting a game winning buzzer beater in the NCAA Final Four, Clemson scoring the last second touchdown to win the college football National Championship to beat Alabama and even an exciting Grey Cup as the underdog Ottawa Redblacks pulled off an OT win. All signs point to a good game with epic potential as the #1 scoring offense faces the #1 scoring defense for the sixth time in NFL history.
It's almost a given the two QBs will perform but I think it'll come down to the ground game, or, more specifically, the running backs, running and receiving. On paper, it looks like a LaGarrette Blount game for the Patriots as the Falcons defense is fast but slightly undersized so if he can get going he'll be tough to bring down. At the same time, the Falcons gave up the most receptions, yards and receiving TDs to RBs in the league which should make Dion Lewis the key piece in Belichick's game plan. However, knowing Belitricks, he'll put the focus on James White or something. Both Falcons running backs will need to play big roles toting the rock and catching out of the backfield as the Patriots will focus on taking out teams' best players, in this case, Julio Jones, who will get his, but won't be allowed to dominate. Atlanta's three lowest rushing performances of the season (52 yards against Tampa Bay, 52 yards against Seattle and 48 yards against Philadelphia) accounted for three of their five losses. If the Falcons score early, which they've done scoring opening drive touchdowns in their last eight games, they'll be able to stay balanced enough to win the game.
Underappreciated Patriots' defensive coordinator Matt Patricia has remodeled his group after losing linebacker Jerod Mayo to retirement at age 29, defensive end Chandler Jones to a trade before the season started and then another linebacker Jamie Collins to another trade mid-season. Yes, despite losing their captain linebacker and their two best pass-rusher, the latter two of Belichick's choosing due to their upcoming free-agency, in about eight months, the unit finished #1 in points given up; yes, Patricia is an actual rocket scientist. Two years ago Dan Quinn's Seahawks defense couldn't stop the Patriots and now he's gotta do it without the Legion of Boom. While the Falcons defense compiled a lowly 27th ranked DVOA over the whole season they've gotten better since losing arguably their best player, Desmond Trufant; they allowed 28.7 point per game their first nine with him and just 20.8 their past nine having stymied Cam Newton, Drew Brees, Russell Wilson and Aaron Rodgers their past four games. If the big stage doesn't get to all the young first and second year players, they'll give the offense every chance to win even if the Patriots will be sporting the white kits. Let's just hope Belichick wears his red hoodie again with the sleeves cut off:
Oh, and two more reason I'll be pulling for the Falcons: Brady's bromance with Donald Trump and this, the only known picture to exist with Bill Belichick smiling:
Yeah, that about settles it. Falcons against the spread and even straight up. Maybe 34-31.
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