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This is an idea--not one I am sure is right, but one that I found interesting and therefore worth repeating and debating. It's an idea that the United States has a three-legged, mutually supporting set of cultural behaviours which define our sport, our politics, and our comparative extreme militarism in comparison to modern Europe, and which collectively define American exceptionalism. First, a video about the raw physicality and exceptionalism of American Football:
So, let's consider this congruence that we might call the Gridiron-Sustained Election-Militarism triad, that a lot of really deep and fundamental elements of American society are interrelated into a three-legged stool of Gridiron football, sustained election campaigns, and military valour glorification, and that they all appeal to the same areas of the psyche, and serve to reinforce acceptance of each other.
Take Gridiron football: It's unique in several features. Namely, unlike in any other sport in the world, who are critical and I mean critical players? (this is something many foreigners neglect in considering its odd charm to Americans.) -- The coaches. If you think about it -- unlike in almost every other sport, the coaches actively call the plays, almost every single one of them, in detail. It's like they're playing chess with living figurines--like Star Wars holochess in fact. And we very much recognise this: Coaches are treated like generals.
They march the field, they have standardized wear as a kind of uniform, they have a barking, harsh style fitting the image of a Patton style US General. They're well paid and treated as celebrity players in their own right. The quarterback is like a junior officer who interprets and executes orders from the general staff to the rest of his squad. The military comparison is so perfect that gridiron football duplicates it literally down to having communication radios, even codes, even cryptography on code signals and cryptanalysis--and entire staffs devoted to these activities, including the massive film crews which conduct detailed pre-action analysis of other teams.
In short, a Gridiron football team is literally an army in miniature. Indeed football was actively lionized and glorified as the perfect preparation for the US Army officer in the early 20th century, when Douglas MacArthur received substantial funding to build West Point's football team into a serious college football powerhouse. Gridiron is our "playing fields of Eton" where we train and emulate war and valour. But it's more than even that.
Indeed, more importantly, take a look at our election campaigns. They're campaigns in the fullest sense of the word. Not political campaigns. They're military campaigns. They're also football campaigns. Think about the words we use in America to describe them: "Comeback", "strategic states", "tipping points", "ground game". Other countries don't have elections like this at all. We literally conceive of the campaign as being as important as the vote. In most other democracies, the campaign is a statement of beliefs for a short period of time, then you have a result. Culturally, socially, Americans treat an election -- with "leaders" before going to the polls, even though in a certain sense that's nonsensical -- as a campaign in which it's possible to be winning or losing before going to the polls.
So what is that like? It's like sport, and war, both where you can lead, and lose, and mount a comeback, all before the clock is called to the final victor. People and personages are treated like playing cards. Staffs use massive amounts of intel to mobilize campaign workers for sustained operational seasons. Their deployment is focused around the country in a particular fashion intended to seize ground which provide victory. It's like football and it's like war.
So, let's look at some of the consequences of that--for example, why don't Americans really care about the electoral college? In one sense, you could say that it's because of football, and because of militarism--because the electoral college and the year-long campaigning season makes the political campaign into a massive game of football in which the presidential candidates are the legendary coaches striding the sidelines like Patton. To win that campaign is to gain legitimacy, not to win the popular vote. The popular vote is just the clock running out on the actual contest.
And of course, the corollary, to go back to war, is that having both of these concepts--our national sport as the campaign, and our politics as the campaign--so ingrained in US culture makes us far more accepting of militarism--because militarism is a reflection of both how we conduct our politics and of our most popular national sport. It's a concept that is at least supported when you consider that coaches, like Mike Ditka, are considered perennial potential political candidates. So we see that actually the three talents are seen as converging in American culture. In an American election you might be losing in January, but organise a counterattack in March that pulls you ahead, to bog down around the conventions--and then you unleash a blitz in October and forge ahead to the final victory. It's played out like war -- and like gridiron football.
Another telling note to think about is that marching bands play for -- armies, in the 19th century, and ceremonially today. For political events -- but for overtly partisan political events, which is rare in other countries -- and finally, of course, for football. Indeed, in some cases songs which carried men up Missionary Ridge in the Civil War directly became both campaign songs and university fight songs. I think, in short, there's at least a neat concept to think about here: That the intimate relationship between how our elections are conducted, the nature and rules of the sport of gridiron football, how our military virtue and relatively high willingness to affiliate with and support military action, and how our unusual elections are so enduring and so without popular protest link into the sense that they're right and normal for America because they're like war and football, and war is acceptable because it's like a political campaign and football, and football is acceptable because it's like politics and war.
So, let's consider this congruence that we might call the Gridiron-Sustained Election-Militarism triad, that a lot of really deep and fundamental elements of American society are interrelated into a three-legged stool of Gridiron football, sustained election campaigns, and military valour glorification, and that they all appeal to the same areas of the psyche, and serve to reinforce acceptance of each other.
Take Gridiron football: It's unique in several features. Namely, unlike in any other sport in the world, who are critical and I mean critical players? (this is something many foreigners neglect in considering its odd charm to Americans.) -- The coaches. If you think about it -- unlike in almost every other sport, the coaches actively call the plays, almost every single one of them, in detail. It's like they're playing chess with living figurines--like Star Wars holochess in fact. And we very much recognise this: Coaches are treated like generals.
They march the field, they have standardized wear as a kind of uniform, they have a barking, harsh style fitting the image of a Patton style US General. They're well paid and treated as celebrity players in their own right. The quarterback is like a junior officer who interprets and executes orders from the general staff to the rest of his squad. The military comparison is so perfect that gridiron football duplicates it literally down to having communication radios, even codes, even cryptography on code signals and cryptanalysis--and entire staffs devoted to these activities, including the massive film crews which conduct detailed pre-action analysis of other teams.
In short, a Gridiron football team is literally an army in miniature. Indeed football was actively lionized and glorified as the perfect preparation for the US Army officer in the early 20th century, when Douglas MacArthur received substantial funding to build West Point's football team into a serious college football powerhouse. Gridiron is our "playing fields of Eton" where we train and emulate war and valour. But it's more than even that.
Indeed, more importantly, take a look at our election campaigns. They're campaigns in the fullest sense of the word. Not political campaigns. They're military campaigns. They're also football campaigns. Think about the words we use in America to describe them: "Comeback", "strategic states", "tipping points", "ground game". Other countries don't have elections like this at all. We literally conceive of the campaign as being as important as the vote. In most other democracies, the campaign is a statement of beliefs for a short period of time, then you have a result. Culturally, socially, Americans treat an election -- with "leaders" before going to the polls, even though in a certain sense that's nonsensical -- as a campaign in which it's possible to be winning or losing before going to the polls.
So what is that like? It's like sport, and war, both where you can lead, and lose, and mount a comeback, all before the clock is called to the final victor. People and personages are treated like playing cards. Staffs use massive amounts of intel to mobilize campaign workers for sustained operational seasons. Their deployment is focused around the country in a particular fashion intended to seize ground which provide victory. It's like football and it's like war.
So, let's look at some of the consequences of that--for example, why don't Americans really care about the electoral college? In one sense, you could say that it's because of football, and because of militarism--because the electoral college and the year-long campaigning season makes the political campaign into a massive game of football in which the presidential candidates are the legendary coaches striding the sidelines like Patton. To win that campaign is to gain legitimacy, not to win the popular vote. The popular vote is just the clock running out on the actual contest.
And of course, the corollary, to go back to war, is that having both of these concepts--our national sport as the campaign, and our politics as the campaign--so ingrained in US culture makes us far more accepting of militarism--because militarism is a reflection of both how we conduct our politics and of our most popular national sport. It's a concept that is at least supported when you consider that coaches, like Mike Ditka, are considered perennial potential political candidates. So we see that actually the three talents are seen as converging in American culture. In an American election you might be losing in January, but organise a counterattack in March that pulls you ahead, to bog down around the conventions--and then you unleash a blitz in October and forge ahead to the final victory. It's played out like war -- and like gridiron football.
Another telling note to think about is that marching bands play for -- armies, in the 19th century, and ceremonially today. For political events -- but for overtly partisan political events, which is rare in other countries -- and finally, of course, for football. Indeed, in some cases songs which carried men up Missionary Ridge in the Civil War directly became both campaign songs and university fight songs. I think, in short, there's at least a neat concept to think about here: That the intimate relationship between how our elections are conducted, the nature and rules of the sport of gridiron football, how our military virtue and relatively high willingness to affiliate with and support military action, and how our unusual elections are so enduring and so without popular protest link into the sense that they're right and normal for America because they're like war and football, and war is acceptable because it's like a political campaign and football, and football is acceptable because it's like politics and war.
