Yesterday I chronicled how I ended up choosing to be a Green Bay Packers fan. For the past 33 years I have chosen root for them through the good times and the rough times (because that's what a true fan does). Sometimes someone on the team does something I don't like, either on or off the field, but I still support my team. I enjoy football as a game, but really, it's rooting for my team that I enjoy most about football. After the Packers are done playing for the season, I'm basically done with football. If they aren't in the Superbowl, I'll still watch and try to pick a team to root for, but mostly I just watch for the commercials.
The interesting thing is when you think about what it means to be a sports fan. They don't need me, in particular. And there's nothing I can do individually to really affect the outcome of any game, no matter how much or how loudly I cheer. I don't know any of them personally and I have no financial stake in their success or failure. And yet I have chosen to support them as my team.
Which is fine when it comes to sports. Really, most fandom is the same way.
But I got to wondering about politics and I was thinking that sometimes we treat our political parties the way we treat our favorite sports teams. We support them because we chose to sometime in the past. Maybe we support our party because that is who our friends support. And we watch the TV commentators on the cable news networks and boo the other "team".
And sometimes we are loyal to our chosen party to a fault. We aren't always as discerning as we ought to be, just because we are supporting "our team". We have become "fans" of our political team.
People sometimes talk about sports becoming too political. I wonder if it's also the other way around. It may be that politics has become like a sport to us.
Something to think about.
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