I know intellectually that if you read any politician's speeches in any sort of depth, you will find contradictions. So cherry-picking a speech given on a particular day, on a specific subject, and further narrowing your excerpt to an isolated paragraph is . . . not on solid rhetorical ground.
BUT!
I'm trying to refute POTUS 47, Donald J. Trump, who has no rhetorical center at all and so, I guess it's fair game to fight fire with fire? I'd say his political opinions spin like a weather vane, but Trump's particular brand of hate-filled politics is depressingly consistent in the fact that it must:
a. benefit him above all
b. help him retain power, influence, and punish his enemies (see a.), and
c. attack the weak and those who aren't in his camp.
America needs to conduct this debate on immigration in a reasoned and respectful tone. Feelings run deep on this issue, and as we work it out, all of us need to keep some things in mind. We cannot build a unified country by inciting people to anger, or playing on anyone's fears, or exploiting the issue of immigration for political gain. We must always remember that real lives will be affected by our debates and decisions, and that every human being has dignity and value no matter what their citizenship papers say.
I've never been a fan of the 43rd president. But he is so much more of a reasonable human being and political opponent than Donald Trump is. I've never voted Republican in my life and I'm not about to start now. But the way that Trump has captured and reshaped the GOP in his own fun-house way is disgusting.
Passages that caught my eye while reading Erik Larson's The Demon of Unrest--a book describing the political and personal turmoil leading up to the attack on Fort Sumter in April 1861 (the precursor of the American Civil War.)
"There was a growing fear that maybe South Carolina's best days were behind her. Planters had once constituted the richest class in America, wrote Dennis Hart Mahan, a New York-born, Virginia-raised professor at West Point in a November 1860 letter to a friend. 'But when commerce, manufacturers, the mechanical arts disturbed this condition of things, and amassed wealth that could pretend to more lavish luxury than planting, then came in, I fear, this demon of unrest which has been the utmost sole disturber of the last for years past.' Mahan, whose son Alfred would grow up to become a prominent naval historian, argued that rather than join the rush to modernity, South Carolina--'this arrogant little state'--had grown even more insular."
"Lincoln's concern lay elsewhere. . . . 'Our adversaries have us more clearly at disadvantage, on the second Wednesday of February, when the votes should be officially counted.' Here he referred to the constitutionally mandated final count and certification of the electoral vote, to be conducted in the House on February 13, 1861, by Buchanan's vice president. Ordinarily this would be the most routine of events, a celebration of the constitution and of peaceful succession, but the tensions of the times raised all manner of concern, especially given the fact that the vice president, the man who would count and certify the electoral votes, was Southern Democrat John C. Breckenridge of Kentucky, who not only sympathized with the South but had been Lincoln's leading opponent in the presidential election. 'If the two Houses refuse to meet at all, or meet without a quorum of each, where shall we be?' Lincoln wrote."
"Even as he said this, however, concern in Washington mounted that the electoral count might be disrupted. That day crowds of irate Southerners had gathered in Washington and converged on the Capitol clamoring to get inside. General Scott, however, was well prepared. Soldiers manned the entrances and demanded to see passes before letting anyone in. Scott had positioned caches of arms through the building. A regiment of troops in plain clothes circulated among the crowd to stop any trouble before it started. The throng outside grew annoyed at being barred from entry and began firing off obscenities like grapeshot. If words would kill, one observer wrote, 'the amount of profanity launched forth against the guards would have completely annihilated them.'"
"Russell understood, however, that the true cause of the conflict, no matter how hard anyone tried to disguise it, was slavery. He called it a 'curse' and likened it to a cancer whose inner damage was masked by the victim's outward appearance of health. he marveled that the South seemed intent on staking its destiny on ground that the rest of the world had abandoned. 'Never,' he wrote, 'did a people enter a war so utterly destitute of any reason for waging it.'"
"Alexis de Tocqueville had observed this [expectation of mastery and command] aspect of the planter class two decades earlier in his Democracy in America and attributed it to slavery. 'The citizens of the Southern states becomes a sort of domestic dictator from infancy,' he wrote. 'The first notion he acquires in life is, that he was born to command, and the first habitat he contracts is that of ruling without resistance. His education tends, then, to give him the character of a haughty and hasty man,--irascible, violent, ardent in his desires, impatient of obstacles but easily discouraged if he cannot succeed upon his first attempt.'"
No doubt about it. I've got my work cut out for me this week.
How do I successfully counter-program against the college football championship game? Especially when I'm living smack dab in the middle of ground zero for one of the teams participating in said game?
The best way that I can think?
Let's talk about God.
What other person/concept/animus/motivational force/cultural sports trope can impact as many (more, I would suggest) people as a college football fanbase?
If you paid any attention to college football in the wake of last week's semi-final game, you have seen this clip. But you might not have seen it from this angle. At the end, you see a Buckeye player get down on his knees in the endzone and (I presume) briefly thank God while he watches the play unfold down the field in front of him.
Here is a properly embedded YouTube video of a segment of the High School football movie Friday Night Lights.
To state the obvious . . . this clip shows both teams in their respective locker rooms praying the Lord's Prayer as they prepare for the second half of their football game.
What are we to make of these things?
Anything at all?
God and religion are regularly invoked for many American sporting contests every week. He/She/It will definitely be called upon before, during, and after the Championship game this Monday.
I'm not here to tell you if you are right or wrong to do this.
Personally, I don't think that God spends much time at all considering the outcome of sporting contests.
But since I DO happen to believe God is omniscient and all-powerful, He/She/It most certainly can get involved.
(Yet . . . if that were true, then why did the Atlanta Braves lose so many World Series in the 1990s?)
Religion and football have a strong connection with both of the teams playing in this year's College Football Championship. One--more obvious than the other, perhaps? But let's begin with my hometown team--of which I am an incomplete alumnus. (But I know that my participation in their games matters not to the outcome.)
ANYWAY . . . the Ohio State University is one of the most well-funded and most successful and most talented (which attribute matters most?) football teams in forever. But beyond the on-field exploits, THE knows how to galvanize and incentivize the fan base. And they will use what they have at hand.
And what do they have at hand?
Lots of Midwestern values
Lots of committed people with camera phones, and
A handy-dandy multistory religious icon in for form of the Solid Rock Church's "Touchdown Jesus."
Please tell me that you've heard of Touchdown Jesus. A massive effigy of a resurrecting Jesus coming out of the earth that towered over the highways north of Cincinnati, Ohio. (It's gone now--spectacularly destroyed by a lightning strike. It's eventual replacement didn't nearly have the in your God-fearing face as the original.)
But wait . . . who are the Buckeye's playing in this game?
checks notes
Oh!
Notre Dame, you say?
The most Catholic and religious school in the history of college football?
Yikes! How are the Buckeyes gonna defeat that? But let's not jump to immediate conclusions. What attributes does Notre Dame have?
Lots of Midwestern values
Lots of committed people with camera phones, and
A handy-dandy multistory religious icon in the form of the original?"Touchdown Jesus."
Um . . . hmm. Well . . . shoot.
Who wins?
Football loving Christians?
Who loses?
Satan and people who don't care about sports?
In football terms it might be a coin toss needed to decide the winner. But I happen to think that the O-H-I-O camera pose is a better visual than ND's TD Jesus mural. You can't get the people as clearly involved in the Notre Dame version.
You can pray to whomever you want on Monday. And maybe He/She/It will take pity on your prayer. But I'm here also. And I'm praying my own prayer. That you will listen to me just this one more time for this season and maybe NOT watch the game.
Read a book. Take a walk. Chop some wood for your fireplace. Give a David Lynch movie a try. Or just go into a small room and sit quietly for a few hours.
Call it meditation.
Call it prayer.
Call it whatever you want.
Because no matter what you choose to do, you can't affect the outcome of the game itself.
Thanks for hanging in there with me for another season of FC-P. Get a new hobby until it all comes back around again next year.
(for context . . . this is a pre-game photo from me within Ohio Stadium as the Ohio State Buckeyes hosted the University of Tennessee on December 21, 2024)
. . . It is, therefore . . . perhaps . . . antithetical to the spirit of the Football Counter-Programming project. But, perhaps the American saying "Only Nixon could go to China" is appropriate here. Only by entering the belly of the beast can I authoritatively counsel you on how to effectively counter-program and fight against the college football monolith.
And how hard it is to do so when the College Football Playoffs surround us!
When the weather in many places is cold (as it was so VERY cold on the night I was in attendance) and so your alternative options are limited to the indoors.
And the siren call of the TV light is strong.
And the hype of the playoffs is loud. (As loud as Buckeye fans witnessing the first half beat-down administered on the UT Volunteers.)
How hard is it to resist when your local team is advancing in dramatic and dominant ways? When the endorphins flow and your pleasure centers are flooded drive after drive with another score?
But don't give up! Because if you can find a way to resist one week at a time, the grind of games reduces the number of teams day after day. And your own personal connection (if any!) to the competing teams becomes less relevant as eliminations occur.
Maybe this has already happened for you?
Welcome brothers and sisters from Idaho, from Oregon, from Arizona! From elsewhere! Join the counter-programmed masses who have no rooting interest! Remember that whether you rooted or not had no demonstratable effect on the team's performance. (This can be proven by examining data on the Ohio State's team's performance from the Michigan game to the Tennessee game to the Oregon game. No fan involvement could generate or explain what happened there.)
For those still within the football rooting vortex . . . what should you do? How can you resist?
I suggest that you lean into the recent holidays and the chronology of now. If you got new books as Christmas/Hanukkah/Kwaanza gifts then embrace reading! There are fewer more effective things to fight sports than reading fiction, non-fiction, whatever. Always a good use of time. But if reading is not your thing, then make a 2025 New Year's Resolution to fill that football time with something else. Something new that occupies your hands, your mind, or your entire soul.
Exercise!
Craft!
Write!
Fight!
Do what you must to define yourself against the creep of football!
And remember . . . you will receive no prizes. No cash. Nothing of tangible value if your alma mater wins the College Football Playoff. Don't let it define you!
***
(thank you to my long-time friend Aaron, who kindly invited me to join him at the UT Playoff game; I find that smiling for the camera generated heat during the frigid temperatures of late December in Ohio; it should in no way suggest that I had a wonderful and unique experience with a great guy.)