This is gonna be a doozy. I am posting this to all of my blogs, social media, and apps… I have struggled with wanting to put down what is going through my head for years. I have been afraid to say how I really feel, how what is going on in the world, both sports and non-sports affects me personally. The reason is I live in a world where I am a minority. I am a Middle aged, white, heterosexual, progressive (Liberal, Democrat, whatever..) male and the majority of the people that I interact with on a daily basis, including my family and closest friends are not, so you see my dilemma, do I spout my “demonic, commie, socialist, and heathen” ideas or just sit back and watch the world burn, only caring about my little circle of the world.
These fears are real, and they fester and stew in my brain on a daily basis. There are times when I want to shout it from the rooftops, and then there are times where I just want to crawl in a hole and hide, so as not to upset the proverbial apple cart. I know that if I truly post what I feel, I run the risk of alienating my family, my co-workers and the people I truly care about. Call this post a “coming out party” of sorts, because I have hidden behind these fears for years, and is why I usually take weeks-long breaks from posting, because I know that if I truly post what I feel, I’m gonna piss off the people I care about, and that is what prevents me from putting my thoughts down. I don’t know if it will affect my employment, affect my relationship with family, or alienate those friends that I hold dear.
Sure, I could just “stick to sports” I am The Sports Nerd after all, but lately real-world issues and politics have crossed over to the sports world and it has become more difficult to keep my thoughts to myself. I really don’t know how to react, or even if I should react. Maybe the words I want to put down won’t come easy, maybe I will screw up the message, maybe offend or piss off the wrong person. who knows, all I DO know is that I am in the minority of my circle of friends, family, and co-workers when it comes to politics and I have been a political junkie ever since just before 9/11 and since then have witnessed the country that I was taught was second to none in the world has become the very threat that we fought to eliminate in WWII. Today of all days, as we honor those that sacrificed everything on the beaches of Normandy I see our country separating families, allowing children to die in government custody, and punishing those that want a better life for themselves and their families, I sit here wondering if The United States has become the very evil it was created to fight against.
I am but one voice, I do not have resources to rise up and fight what I feel is wrong, but yet, with the advent of social media and the outreach it can create, I can’t help but wonder if I can, in fact, make a difference. I’m 52 years old with health issues, my time left on this Earth is limited, but yet I want to leave this life with a future that is hopeful, positive, and the promise of things being better for my son, who actually felt it better to move halfway across the world rather than stay in this country. I have always felt he was much smarter than I ever was, he immersed himself in music, playing the guitar, drums and whatever he could get his hands on, something that I was never able to accomplish post-high school. I honestly worry about his future, what we will leave behind, and how that will impact future generations. What I DO know is we can’t continue on the path we are on, because the endgame of that is the destruction of the human race as we know it. Global Warming is real folks, science has proven it, and it is fact. The United States continues to interfere with conflicts and governments across the globe, issues, and situations that we have no business interfering with, but yet our “leaders” say we have to be involved in order to guarantee freedom and liberty for everyone. My only question regarding that philosophy is how many women, children and innocent, unarmed civilians have died in the search for these ideals. Remember Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, and now Syria, Sudan, and lord know what other government we are sticking our noses into in order to preserve “freedom and Democracy”?
I don’t pretend to have any answers, nor do I intend to offer any here on this post, but this is the dilemma I live with on a daily basis. Inside I want to scream and say how wrong we are, how arrogant and vile we have become as a nation, where children are killed at school almost on a daily basis, how the very powerful and rich make all of the decisions, and how politics prevents any solutions to these problems from being corrected. I could sit here and write for days about the President or Congress (all of them) is the problem and what angers me but it won’t solve anything. I am just one voice, I am just one nameless person in a country of 350 million, in a world of 5 billion, but yet… here we are.
Most of my loved ones, friends, co-workers and those that know me from my past will probably disagree with me, but I speak these words from not just my head, but from my heart, and I tell you, this country is not the greatest country in the world, it is not the be all end all poster child for Democracy, it is, in fact, a Republic, and as all Republics, it is flawed, and it becomes more flawed each and every day. You can put blinders on and think that it will get better, or you can rise up and get involved to make it better. I have always believed that making things better has nothing to do with who is the President, or even who represents us in Washington. It matters what happens at the local level, at the state level, because meaningful change happens from the ground up. When we strive to make changes at the local and state level, the ramifications and the wave of change will impact what happens at the national level.
A true Republic looks out for its citizens, whether they be Black, White, Latino, Gay, Straight, Tran-sexual, whatever, it doesn’t matter. We have people living on the streets, both veteran and non-veteran, we have a gun problem, we have problems with infrastructure, with minimum wage, with unemployment, and we have the 1% controlling everything from manufacturing to wages, to politics, to keeping the common man in its place. It’s easy for me to sit here and point my fingers at the rich since I am not one of them, I earn less than $40,000 per year, I have Credit card debt, student loan debt, and am living paycheck to paycheck. I don’t have a college degree, and I have been divorced, TWICE, but even with all of those problems and issues, I can still see where my country has no longer become the answer, but part of the problem that is infecting the world and there is no power out there that can interfere with our intrusion of other cultures, other governments, and most of all, the day-to-day happenings of not only other countries citizens but our citizens in the US as well.
This has been a long-winded post thus far, and I suppose I will pay for it eventually, because I will be traveling to my folks place in north Florida in about a month and will have to face my Conservative family and listen to their praises of the current administration and the glory of The United States of America. I will be uncomfortable, I will be chastised, and they will probably try and set me straight to the error of my ways, but they can’t change my mind, nor more than I can change theirs. This will not diminish my love for all of them, and it will not prevent me from future visits, because blood is thicker than water and I love them no matter their political leanings. I will not instigate, I will not criticize, and I will not dislike them or disown them for their beliefs because as family, I love them for who they are, not what they believe.
We all have to live with our decisions, and we all have to live with how we view the world. I prefer to move on in life not judging people based on their political leanings, but on how they treat me and how they treat others because that is the only true judge of character. If you treat others like shit, then you are shit, if you treat others with respect then the other things don’t matter. I treat others as I want to be treated, and if you wrong me, then I have no respect for you. The friends I have met over the years are dear to me, and I love them no matter what they believe, that will never change. In return, I ask that they respect and love me for who I am, and not who they may feel I am. We all have to go through this life on our own path, and if you believe in a higher power than we all believe that power will judge us when our time here on Earth is done based on what we did for each other and our actions. I don’t judge you for your beliefs any more than I expect you to judge me based on what I believe, but human emotions have a tendency to get in the way, so there will be those that judge me based on those emotions, and I am OK with that.
I have been holding this in for a long time and it feels pretty good to get it out, but I know there are ramifications for it, because there are some out there that won’t agree with what I have had to say, and that’s OK, because no two people see things exactly the same. All I can say is that I have kept these feelings tied up inside for a long time. To be honest, these emotions have prevented me from writing more and from putting what I really thought down for the world to see. Moving forward, I will NOT allow these voices to get the best of me and cause me to pause before putting what I am REALLY thinking down for the world to see. I may lose friends along the way, hell I may alienate some family members along the way, but fear will no longer dictate how I feel and how I express how I feel. I will focus mostly on sports, and I will not shy away from my opinions regarding the state of whatever sport I decide to discuss on any given day but also understand that if world events warrant it, I will express EXACTLY how I feel.
With that all being said… Go St Louis… Go Toronto… Go Tribe…
Go Browns… We are less than 100 days from opening day of the 2019 NFL season, and I can’t wait for Football to start. Fuck off to any team from Boston, Pittsburgh, and the Big 10 outside of Columbus Ohio. Thank you for reading this long-winded gas baggery of a post… I ask that you are kind to yourself, and to each other… see you soon…
Scott “The Sports Nerd”
