Racism, Nationalism, Sports... It's Just a Game!

Recently Mr. Sepp Blatter, head or FIFA, stated that racist incidents during games should just be shrugged off by the players. They should just 'shake hands', he said, and all will be well. Because it's just a game after all. Here is a report with the part of the interview which started this controversy. People as high up as the British PM David Cameron have condemned Mr. Blatter for his statement and many have called for his resignation. Now I fully agree that FIFA is a strange corporation-type structure which seems corrupt in many ways. But there is certainly some truth in Mr. Blatter's words. Namely, SPORTS ARE JUST A GAME. I myself am a passionate sports fan, but I would not presume to ever say that sports are of any importance in the world. Sports are fun to play, fun to watch, and it can be fun to support a team or player. But what I see in the so-called 'world or sports' is just madness. Why are there racist incidents in the first place? Because someone is crazy enough about sports to abuse someone else racially over being a supporter or player of another team! This is a fanaticism bordering on that we see all the time with nationalism and patriotism - two concepts I have widely condemned on this blog.
Sports fanatics have a lot in common with nationalistic patriots and religious zealots. I tend to think people who hold a sports team as an actual value in their lives are somewhat deranged. I certainly support a team and am a loyal supporter, but I do not have any negative feelings toward supporters of other teams. I do not have any violent urges to abuse others over their own sports preferences. True, when my team loses I feel a bit bummed, and when it wins I feel happy, but none of my feelings are ever 'over the top'. But it is not so with the average raging sports fan. All this gets even more conflated when we talk about National Sports Teams. There irrational national pride mixes with sports fanaticism and creates a truly frightening combination.
In America this sports fanaticism is introduced more or less by forcable indoctrination through the school system. Each individual is pretty much destined to support the team of their local high school and then college. Nobody really seems to realize how totally out of proportion our response to simple sports has become. Colleges and universities invest millions in sports despite this having no educational value whatsoever. This is done, I assume, to breed loyalty among the student population. Young people, especially nowadays, are very susceptible to outside influence because they seem to be a bunch of nihilists (this is an empirical statement I am making after quite a few years of observation in a number of countries where I have lived). Nihilists with no principles always need some higher ideal to hang on to and give their life meaning. And those ideals are proposed by people who are all too eager to control and exploit the unknowing: States, Patriots, Relgious sects, or Secular sects (which I consider mainstream sports to be).

George Orwell wrote that "Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence: in other words it is war minus the shooting." I think we need to think about this. Sports are just a game people! And let's leave it at that.

Newspeak New Year

The Year of Our Lord MMX was a very special year. Since I have inherited the Tolkienist habit of naming years, I decided to call this year the "Year of Newspeak". This is because of the absolutely staggering amount of strange language I have seen appearing in the last 12 months. Granted, the trend of creating Newspeak has existed for many years now. I will also grant that I am hypersensitive to this as any fan of the late George Carlin would be. I do, however, see that people in today's world mostly take Newspeak at its face value. People are totally unsuspicious of the ruling class. Back in the day nobles used to oppose kings, and merchants oppose the nobles. In communist regimes the public never believed a word that came out of the mouths of their oppressors. But here and now, in the Western world, this tendency of suspicion is gone. The politicians are, of course, very happy at this! Indeed they promote it! The latest campaign slogan for the Polish President (this is the post Soviet/EU apparatchik who actually got elected, Mr. Komorowski) was "Zgoda Buduje" i.e. "Unity Builds". Builds what, might I ask? A machine of corruption, exploitation, and crony capitalism? I don't want that kind of building going on anywhere...
In honor of this great trend I now present some real 2010 classics:
- Quantitative Easing - Printing Money. This phenomenon originated in the US Federal Reserve. Whenever the Fed wants to print money to buy up excess mortgage debt or US government bonds, or to "create liquidity" they engage in "quantitative easing". In order to do this Mr. Bernanke orders billions of dollars (which did not exist before in any way, shape, or form, and are not backed by any tangible assets) to be printed or electronically transferred to the banks in question.
- Liquidity - People being able to buy stuff. Usually this means the ability of people to shift goods and services by purchasing them; it is a term which defines potential asset shifts without excess transaction costs. Nowadays it is the ability of people to fork out money which they don't have and buy a lot of things they don't need in order to "drive the economy".
- Investing - People spending money. Nowadays deflation prevents so-called "investing" because it causes people to save. This is exactly flipping the economic theory upside down. People who spend cause interest rates to go up and thus make investments harder to finance. People who save make the interest rates go down thus allowing investing to take place. A classic 180 degree Newspeak switch!
And then there is the all-time classic which I have talked about extensively on this blog:
- Freedom - Having the right to do exactly what the government says you should do. This one is pretty self-explanatory. Crazy TSA airport searches, wiretaps in homes, tracking devices on cars, assassinations of own citizens by governments. All done in the name of new freedom.

Maybe 2010 should really be called the real 1984? Remember those words in that great novel, where Orwell writes "Then the face of Big Brother faded away again and instead the three slogans of the Party stood out in bold capitals:
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH"
He was onto something, wasn't he?