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RE: To My Anarchist Friends: Why do You Hate Sports?
I grew up in a football town. It had its perks and was a fun thing to grow up in. When I became an adult I lost interest. I could still go to a bar from time to time and watch a game and enjoy myself. But being sucked into sports world has no appeal to me. If people could remember the "stats" of the voting records of politicians with half the effectiveness and passion of their favorite player or team, we would live in a different country. But people get lost in the mindless fluff that is sports land and none of it matters. Beyond the entertainment value of watching that play, or shot, or whatever, its all absolutely worthless.
I used to be a stat guy, mostly just for the sake of taking an analytical approach to the players. I still do it occasionally, especially with college football players and teams. Yeah - it's all pretty meaningless, but sometimes I'll have some free time and I just feel like doing it. But I do the same thing with government budgets and crime statistics as well. That was one of the reasons that I wrote this - to say that criticizing sports and other entertainment because most people are oblivious about government misses the truth of the matter by a long-shot.
It isn't sports that is "distracting" these individuals - it's the fact they just don't care about politicians and the state. Politics doesn't interest them, so they don't engage. Even if they think they're getting screwed over by the state, they don't care to get involved or don't believe that it would make a difference - and they're pretty much correct about that. Sports and other entertainment simply serves as just that: entertainment. Do they get passionate about it? Sure. Would they be passionate about politics and government if there was no football or basketball? Not likely. For some reason, lots of anarchists believe that sports are somehow ruining political/philosophical discourse. I just don't see any proof of that. All I see is people who would rather be entertained by athletes than spend their leisure time carefully analyzing the lying, corrupt politicians working in a crappy and rigged system.
And then there are people like me who enjoy sports and see the state for what it is and want to abolish it.