It’s How You Play The Game
I have been watching the ongoing story about Major League Baseball and performance enhancing substances for a couple months now. Well really all my life, because the same basic story concerning “artificial” training techniques and athletes has been going on for as long as I have been alive or longer. But until recently, I don’t remember elected officials in our Federal Government thinking they should get involved in this nonsense. Seeing clips from recent congressional hearings on the news, I finally felt that I had to write something on the topic.
Why do our congressmen think that it is their duty to interfere in the rules and regulations of a game being played for entertainment purposes by private citizens? The usual reason of course… no, not just because they all really enjoy hearing themselves talk, seeing themselves on television, and exercising arbitrary power over other human beings - how cynical of you to even think that! They don’t do these things for themselves - it’s all for the children…
You see, famous sports figures are role models for our kids - and our leaders don’t want our kids learning to do illegal or immoral things to win a contest.
That being the case, I guess it is fortunate that our elected leaders are not also role models for our kids. The number of illegal and immoral things they do to win elections and gain more fame and power certainly makes me wish those guys would confine their ambitions to just using potentially dangerous substances on their own bodies. And I definitely wouldn’t want my kids learning how to conduct the sort of political witch hunts that our leaders have demonstrated again and again throughout history.
There is not much difference between the communist witch hunts started by Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s and the congressional hearings I am seeing today. In fact, the parallels make the two cases seem disturbingly similar. A situation exists in which public figures in an entertainment industry are being accused of certain past actions - things they might have done that were not against the rules or even particularly frowned upon in their industry at the time. They now risk serious damage to their careers, if they confirm the allegations. If they deny the allegations, they may be jailed for lying to congress. They can not stand mute because that would be contempt of congress, and the fifth amendment won’t protect them because the things they are on trial for are not actually illegal.
Additionally, those who agree to inform on their friends are applauded as heroes, and those who refuse to do so are branded as un-American scoundrels.
What a wonderful lesson for the children.
In the case of the communist witch hunts, the “evil” behavior in question was holding certain political views at some point in the past. In this case, it is having chosen to use certain substances at some point in the past. I don’t think it is too much of a stretch to see a strong parallel between the basic human right to control the contents of one’s own mind and one’s own body.
Senator Joseph McCarthy played this same game, and he played it well. He won contest upon contest, disgracing and/or jailing many famous people, thus increasing his own fame. But our current generation of congressmen should remember that, in this bit of history, McCarthy is remembered as the villain of the story - not the hero. They should also try to recall an important lesson that they were all supposed to have learned as children and are now supposed to be trying to pass on to the next generation by virtue of their own actions:
It’s not whether you win or lose - it’s how you play the game.
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