re: Thoughts from the nose bleeds

I'm not sure that follows. The people yelling at the refs may be more convinced of their ability to influence those refs than are those same people of their ability to influence their representatives. I'll give you that (though I think yelling at a ref may be more part of the ritual than actual attempt at influence).

However, I don't think that speaks to the ability of the citizen/fan to make arguments about any topic. Specifically, your observation explains why people rant at refs more than they rant at reps. That's a separate issue from whether they can formulate arguments about which to rant, be it to a ref or a rep.

It may be that fans visceral connection to sports motivates them to apply their faculties to sports. I can see that people do not have that connection to government, and there's plenty of outrage that's lacking. But I still think Chomsky is right: the ability is there. It's just unfocused.

But I don't want the issue to be: "how do we make politics more like sports." I think that's already happening. We have too many winners and losers in politics, and not enough Americans. How do we get people to care about things that matter to them, and not just about whether my regional and/or collegiate athletic group scores more points than yours?

Thoughts from the nose-bleeds

On January 20, 2011, Juhmeez wrote:

I had a thought during the game that related back to our conversation about the American voting public. You had made the point that Chomsky often makes regarding our ability to put together coherent well reasoned arguments about complex topics relating to sports, so it follows that we should be able to do the same with respect to politics. I had a revelation during the game about this. I think this ability to put together complex thoughts about sports has something to do with our ability to over-estimate our importance and ability to influence sporting events. That is, a number of times during the b-game, there were fans who were yelling at the refs and coaches, directing them to do something different (I am sure there were plenty of fans yelling at the tv as well). The thought that a fan in 20,000 seat arena could be heard is completely irrational, but nonetheless 100s if not 1000s of fans were doing so (now there could be something said about collectively yelling). There was one instance in which one fan just lost it, and he lost it on a play that no one else saw. He was waiving his arms, yelling, going crazy (he was right) but we're in the nose bleeds, so it is useless, but he nonetheless continued. I think it's this relationship with sports that allows the fan to think at such a high level and reason well, but the public has a more realistic view of their ability to influence politics. So I'll rephrase my argument to say that the public is not too intellectually limited to think at a high level about politics, but rather, too realistic to know thinking about anything will change the outcome. Not sure if this thought process is a conscious one, as there is enough marketing and emotional responses to sports that could account for the public's over estimation of their abilities.