Micah Tillman

It had to be written up in article form.

on 20 Nov 2008 at 5:00 pm1Jeff Stallard

Someone, a while back, used baseball as an analogy to explain politics, and it really stuck with me. It isn’t a contest to see who best adheres to the principles of the sport; it’s simply a contest to see who can beat the other team. The rules and principles are just tools you use to help your team and hurt the other. However, in the big picture, it doesn’t really matter who wins the game. The biggest concern is that the game continues to be played, and for that to happen, you need to convince people to keep buying tickets. To do that, you need to make them believe that their lives are intimately connected with their team, so they hate the other side so much that they believe it’s their duty to go to games and cheer on your side. You don’t really care who they are, just that the more they hate that other team, the easier it will convince them to give your team money. In the end, both teams win, and the “fans” end up with nothing to show for it except bragging rights.

Or something like that; I may be missing some of the details.
on 20 Nov 2008 at 7:06 pm2Micah Tillman

That sounds very Orwellian! Wow. But it also sounds true.

David Brooks: Conservative Heretic