Sports, the new opiate of the people

[Shankapotomus]

49. I wouldn't say sports fans

neccessarily know less about politics but I do think, to a certain extent, they subconsciously accept a competative orientation that can give one the false premise that life is a zero sum game and prep them for seeing relationships with others as interactions between winners and losers with no room for cooperation to mutual benefit. If I wanted to prep the young mind for war, I would use the analogy of competative sports.

Of course, as an adult many can separate real life from sports. But, as we all see in the many sports analogies made by republican politicians and the predominance of republican politians who were ex-professional athletes, many can not.

As for myself, as I've gotten older and wiser, I have really soured on competative sports because I feel so manipulated watching/caring about it. Why should I care so much about the outcome of a game? There is definately psychological manipulation going on behind sports and the commercialized/money factor just makes it more obvious. They want you to stay interested in the outcome of a game and the feats of different players for the commercials in between. So I think that does illustrate a certain degree of gulability in the typical sports fan who is not conscious that these manipulations are going on.