Silflay Hraka

Giving up on professional sports.

One of the more enlightened executives explained to me that baseball teams couldn’t be bothered with catering to the “baseball purists” among the fan base, because their numbers were too small. Rather, he said, teams had to market to “entertainment fans,” people who could care less about baseball but just want to sit in the sun listening to loud music, watching the giant Diamnondvision scoreboard, drinking beer and eating overpriced food of dubious origin and quality. Of course, this fellow also swore high and low that the Rockies would never stoop to the tackiest manifestations of ballpark “entertainment,” like scoreboard dot races. Lo and behold, dot races appeared on the scene the very next year.

I’m one of those fans, despite my one season attempt to more deeply appreciate the game. Why, I read both Streak and The Iowa Baseball Confederacy. Didn’t matter.

Thing is, as one of those fans, I don’t really need Major League Baseball. I’m perfectly content watching the Triple-A Bulls. Hell, I was happy with the Single-A Bulls.

It makes me wonder–if the majority of fans are like myself, why should the owners spend big bucks on the name players? Field a bunch of kids with potential for a few years, then cut them loose. Don’t pay anybody over a mil–or whatever league minimum is–a season. As long as you turn a profit, so what if they lose?

A must-have Ipod case, via the mnslog. It would be perfect for the Oxymoronic Scotsman if it were only a Marlboro Red box. Perhaps I can pick one up for him somewhere.

Halfway up the stairs tonight I am presented with the half-naked form of my son at the top of the climb. He’s clad only in an elderly, sagging diaper, and has a bright orange toothbrush clasped in one grubby hand.

“Ha chiba da!” he yells upon sighting me, throwing both arms up in the air in approved Japanese aviator salute fashion, “Ha chiba da!”

I’ve no idea why, but I respond in kind. “Ha chiba da!” throwing up my arms and feeling, just for an instant, as if I’m taking part in a surrealistic remake of Tora! Tora! Tora!

He shrieks and runs off, diaper metronoming between his legs like the world’s biggest crotch wattle. “Ha chiba da!” he tells his befuddled sister, as he passes her in the hall.

I wonder what it means.

Given my genes, it’s probably something along the lines of “I am the God of Hellfire!”

They are shocked, shocked to find bible studies taking place in this rural establishment.

When Heather and Logan Ward’s son entered public kindergarten last fall, they were shocked to learn that pupils were taken from class to a nearby church for weekly Bible lessons.

Now the Wards and other parents are asking the school board to eliminate or modify the program, which shuttles students in first through third grades to churches during class time for voluntary half-hour Christian lessons and activities.

They’ll almost certainly succeed, which is both good and bad. Good, because shipping off students to a church for Bible study when they should be engaged in academic pursuits is stupid, regardless of whether or not it is an unconstitutional example of government sponsored religion. When it comes right down to it, I want public schools students to spend their time on Math and History, not on Paul’s Letter to the Galatians.

Bad, because it doesn’t address the religious blindness that allows such a situation to arise in the first place. Staunton’s conservative Christians won’t see this as an inspiring re-emphasis of the needed division between church and state. They’ll see this as secular humanists forcing their godless Yankee values upon an unwilling populace–kind of like how the Democrats view the Bush administration in Iraq, aside from the “godless” bit.

If you really want to teach recalcitrant rural Christians about the value of a wall between church and state, you don’t sue to remove their religious studies from the school system. You sue to add yours. You’ll be amazed how quickly otherwise obstreperous followers of Jesus will rediscover the value of a secular education when faced with the possibility that Billy Ray and Jenny Sue are associating with children who spend half an hour a day studying voodoo, or Unitarianism.

I know, I know. How do you tell the difference? Unitarians have less chicken blood and more expensive liquor, is my understanding. In any case, voodoo is the bigger threat. Ask any red-blooded Virginian boy which he’d rather be doing, studying the travails of Ezekiel, or slitting the throats of small animals?

Christians today are right when they say that The United States was founded by Christians, but they forget that those Christians were intimately familiar with the oppressive hand of state religion. Where do you think the Baptists of today would stand on the question of church and state if their taxes were still being used to pay the salaries of Anglican ministers?

Or for that matter, other Baptist ministers? Not all Baptists possess the same beliefs, you know.

Those who call for the U.S. to return to its roots as a “Christian” nation always assume that their particular flavor of Christianity is the one that will reign supreme once that blessed day occurs, but there’s no guarantee that will be so. Even if they do manage to impose their chosen theology, the practice of it will immediately become a hollow sham as people begin to partake in it out of duty, fear or a desire for conformity, rather than out of belief. In the long run, every state religion is doomed.

Just ask the Anglicans.

Some predictions;

Within four years, the so-called democratic republic of the United States will be unrecognizable. Without question, we can expect the destruction of Roe v. Wade, the packing of the Supreme Court with Christian fascist maniacs, the invasion of Iran, Syria, North Korea, and Colombia, to name a few. Even more horrifying is the likelihood that one of the cavalier, oil-sucking exploits will end up in a nuclear exchange.

The folks who could not grasp the futility of voting for a corporate candidate or a third-party candidate who cannot possibly win have not allowed themselves to comprehend that the Machiavelli-worshipping neoconservatives of the Bush Crime Family will never, I said, will never, turn over this government willingly?not in 2004, not in 2008, not ever.

You can read more about our jolly new state of fascism here.

What I wonder is this. Let’s say for argument’s sake that they’re right, that they aren’t paranoid loons, and that the U.S. is ruled by a new fascism. Exactly how do they think this state of affairs will end? If we decide to go fascist, then Europe and Asia will let us do so without a second thought, even though fascist countries are historically aggressive, unpredictable and dangerous neighbors. They won’t have any choice, because they don’t have the ability to do anything about it. If the 800-pound gorilla you’re sharing a cell with decides to start wearing brown shirts and whistling the Horst Wessel song, you damn well let him.

If they’re right, and the US is already a fascist nation, there is no entity on the planet powerful enough to reverse that state of affairs. We’re screwed. More importantly, they’re screwed, because the last thing you want to do in a fascist nation is to take a public stand against the government. That’s just begging to be sent to the re-education camps.

One would think those who believe we live under a new fascism would be dedicating themselves to the armed struggle against it, rather than indulging in actions that seem guaranteed to draw the attention of the oppressive oligarchy they are railing against.

That they don’t suggests that those who hold opinions like of Professor Baker’s are fundamentally unserious people to begin with, or are indulging themselves in emotional rhetoric at the expense of critical thought. One does not defeat fascism though the publishing of passionate essays. Nor will it blink when confronted with non-violent protest. Civil disobedience only works when it is employed within a democratic society. A truly fascist regime will chew up and spit out those who seek to follow the path of King and Gandhi without a second thought.

Update: A key feature of the claim for a new fascism, found in many of the links above, is the idea that the World Trade Center towers weren’t brought down as a result of planes crashing into then, since jet fuel doesn’t burn hotly enough to melt steel. Rather, it was explosives–planted beforehand–that brought down the towers. Popular Mechanics addresses, and dismisses, those claims here. (lvi)

One should not expect anyone who claims that we’re living under a fascist regime to pay attention to the Popular Mechanics article at all. Rather, after some strained mental contortions on their part, the article will instead offer “more proof” of their claims.