Home Team Politics

I don't know if Home Team Politics as a term has been coined before. I googled it and came up with a few things, but nothing defining. I define Home Team Politics as a type of behavior toward a chosen political party that is akin to the way somebody thinks of their favorite sports teams. Rooting for the party for the party's sake, without thinking, without question. All they want is to win. Also, this ties in to the way the media treats politics like a sporting event.

My favorite baseball team is the Baltimore Orioles. I am a huge fan, and I try to watch all of their games. Whenever there is a close play, maybe a check-swing, a strike that was iffy, questionable fan interference, or a sliding baserunner with an umpire out of position, something like that, I'm pretty much always going to take the side of my team. Almost always, I will probably believe that they were robbed on every close play that went the other way, and I will probably think of sending a thank you card to the umpire if the play goes their way. I don't really care if they make the right call. I want my team to win. It usually averages out with bad calls for and against the team, so I just root for all of them to be for my team, right? I just want them to win. I'm a homer.

It's perfectly fine to be a homer, it might be annoying to some people, but I'm not hurting anybody. It's just a game, it's entertainment, it's supposed to be fun, and I'm not having fun if I'm not winning. But you can't take that attitude into the real world. You can't take that attitude into your political opinions. You can't overlook all the negative aspects of a politican you support or legislation you support, and at the same time express outrage at the negative aspects of an opposing view. It's not fair, it's not honest, and it's in nobody's best interest.

I talked about Mark Sanford being a hypocrite, but I can only imagine how many critics of his are digging through their archives to see what they had previously written about political adulterers, just to make sure they were on the same page with themselves. And then there were the people who didn't even care. I mean, someone said 10 years ago that Bill Clinton didn't get a fair shake, but somehow that same person said Mark Sanford is should resign? Or the other way around, depending on who was talking. Both of them were equally stupid and equally wrong. I already outlined all the reasons Mark was stupid, and Bill was stupid because he knew how easy it was to get that girl to open her mouth!
If Twitter had existed then, it would have looked something like this: MonLew: Jst blw prz - OMG it got on my dress.

And both of them were wrong because you don't cheat on your wife, you don't lie to your constituents, and you don't do stupid crap like this while you are holding a major office! Show some f'ing restraint!

You can't justify either of them*. You can't justify anything that is wrong. On the same note, you shouldn't go looking for things that will vilify somebody. Republicans "show solidarity" by opposing anything the Democrats try to do, and vice versa. Is that right? Aren't they reducing their work to a game? Why don't they look at everything in front of them, and decide what is best for their constituents? That is their job. Their job isn't to push forward an agenda, or to pretend to be outraged, or to fall in with other representatives. They don't represent a party, they represent the people. All of the people in their district, in fact, not just the ones that voted for them. More and more it seems like the only way to get representation is to buy a campaign.

You can find pros and cons to every issue, every piece of legislation, every person in the world, but if you take a side before the facts are presented, if you take a side just because your home team is on that side, you are doing a disservice to them, yourself, and your country. If you allow yourself to be mindlessly led like cattle, without asking questions, without demanding that your elected officials answer to you, without trying to take the perspective of the other side to check yourself, you are undermining democracy and no amount of nationalistic rhetoric will change that fact.

I have a hard time believing that you can draw a red and blue line down the middle of the nation and put half on one side and half on the other, and everybody on each side will agree with everybody else on their side - about everything. Even crazier, I think when you get down to it, most people have differing opinions on many issues, and it's a great thing to have a varied society where so many points of view are present, but when you really get down to it, almost everybody, red and blue, wants pretty much the same thing. They want life. They want liberty. They want to be happy. At the end of the day, Republicans and Democrats don't disagree on much that is important. They argue about taxes, it's a few percentage points one way or the other. They argue about government relief, we're already up to our necks in government programs. The arguments are for show, and they don't care if you are alive, they don't care if you are happy, and every time you support them without putting your brain to work, you lose what's left of your liberty.

I also wanted to mention the way the media covers politics, especially elections. If you switch the channels between CNN and ESPN during an election, you might have trouble telling which is which. They will both show a lot of scores, multiple tickers, schedules, results from different games/races, and that's just visual. The commentators and analysts start to sound alike, too. They break down the competitors in a similar way. It truly is just a game to the media. They have trivialized the governing of our country, they have turned it into a sporting event, and that's possibly why people treat their selected party the same way they do their favorite sports team.

*While you can't justify adultery, you can certainly downplay it, considering how common it has become.