by Guy Herman
enslavement and, witness the housing bubble and foreclosure rate, there is little left for the security of 300 million Americans who can lose half their net worth to the tomfoolery of BofA and CitiGroup with AIG supporting in a secondary role and indemnified all the while by the very institution, presumably there to serve the purposes of the common good, more resembling a common slave’s tax or tithe paid sum.
Football, curiously, so ubiquitous, provides a single opportunity for all of the prisoners of debt, the ‘have not’s’ of society as well as those who act differently but still espouse publicly the outcomes of freedom, a moment to see the structure and form of a whole microcosm of life played on a national stage with the truths and fairness of a ‘rule of law’, and the underpinning of commonwealth, persuasive of democracy. Though we know lesser species to be amoral, to kill, violate our notion of the ‘ten commandments’ and act in ways regularly and pervasively for their personal gain, we know they protect their family with a fierceness and indomitable life force we all admire.
In football, we see yet another reflection of ourselves, and perhaps the most sought after and forgiving, which is benign, despite the violence, honorable, despite the savagery, admirable despite the brutality and estimable for the absolute and unambiguous tenant obliging all to play by and honor the law of ‘rules’.