On Rules, Order and Accusations

When I was a young boy, around the age of 7 or 8, I loved baseball. It was my sport. I loved playing the game. I loved the competition. I loved challenging myself and being good on a team. The summers were filled with games and the winters consisted of me memorizing baseball card stats and looking forward to when it was warm enough to play again.

One night, I had a dream. A dream so vivid in fact that the lesson remains stuck in my brain 25 years later.

In this dream, I was playing the game with my friends. Slowly, I began noticing the umpires stopped calling strikes and outs. Gradually, they began not caring. I remember looking around in bewilderment, trying to comprehend what was happening. Slowly, this apathy from the 'enforcers' of the game rules spread into our opponents and my team.

There were no outs. Baserunners could run wherever they wanted. Runs stopped mattering because it was no longer a game. It was kids playing in a field on their own.

I remember feeling a distinct sense of despair. This wasn't how the game was supposed to be played. I didn't want to just run around in the dirt.

There was no longer a sense of 'team'. It was just everyone on their own, doing whatever they wanted with no objective in mind.

Fortunately, I woke up and baseball was still the game I loved. I forgot about this dream for many years, until recently, I was reminded of this dream. I'm not quite sure what reminded me of this, but it was kicked up from the abyss of my mind, nonetheless.

Looking around at the world, I see different behaviors in public figures that reminds me of these umpires in the nightmare I had about baseball. They simply stopped caring about the rules. Worse yet, they stopped even pretending that they cared about the rules. This same mentality has been spreading, it seems to me, for years.

Now, I already hear the howls of me being a statist or some pawn, but frankly, I don't care. This is my perspective and its based on my own existence and experience of how life is. I've seen this play out with elected officials. Those with the most power or wealth become the only ones who can protect themselves from scrutiny or consequences.

The rules stop mattering. The game stops being fun. The team dissolves. Every person for themselves.

I realize the analogy is far from perfect, and the 'opponent' in life isn't another team. But the feeling is the same.

I know the rules and the consequences for mishandling of classified data, because I've handled classified data and I still hold these secrets in my head because those were the rules I agreed to. Seeing someone escape these same consequences that others who have done far less, in much less important positions, with much less of a sinister motive (selling access to power to the highest bidders) was a glaring indicator that something is simply not right in the power structure.

To add insult to injury, the same people who brazenly throw away the rules to the game that they personally agreed to in the middle of the game, accuse me of the basest of motivations for calling for their punishment for breaking the rules of the game. I don't see a white woman trying to be elected president, I see an Secretary of State bypassing Freedom of Information Act regulations in order to obfuscate the selling of her power and influence to foreign powers.

I don't see a black woman meeting with a white man in an airplane, I see the Attorney General meeting with the husband of a Presidential candidate who is being investigated for serious crimes.

I don't see a black woman testifying in congress, I see the highest lawyer in the land pleading the Fifth Amendment when questioned by elected representatives who are charged with oversight and accountability.

I don't see a white woman accusing me of sexism, bigotry, hatred, and racism. I see a presidential candidate telling me and half of the American population that my concerns of her behavior is invalid because my thought process is faulty, disturbed, or simply wrong.

I don't see this as an issue of racism or sexism, or any other -ism for that matter. I see this as a matter of law, order, justice, and consequence. The more I'm told that my thinking is flawed for holding this perspective, the more convinced that I am right in my assessment. When someone is compulsively lying, the closer you get to the truth, the angrier they get.

So, keep telling me I'm a racist or hateful. Keep setting fires and rioting and looting. Keep telling me that I'm wrong for making a serious decision as a well-informed, reasoning adult.

It only convinces me more that I'm on the right path and moving closer to a world where there are rules to the game again. That we'll actually be on a team again and not divided into voting blocs by skin color, sexual preference, sexual anatomy, or religious background.