Trumpism Is Not A Team Sport
On February 28th, 2002, back when it was still acceptable to have a website with a bright yellow background and a “PRINT” button on each page, Bill Simmons published his infamous 20 Rules For Being A True Fan.
And ever since that day, writers have been trying to lay out the rules of sports fandom.
Some rules focused on attire:
Don’t wear cheap-looking replica jerseys or flimsy-looking bargain-basement hats. Come on. You’re representing every fan from your team. Show some pride.
Others offered relationship advice:
If your team defeats a good friend’s team in a crucial game or series, don’t rub it in with them unless they’ve been especially annoying/gloating/condescending/confrontational in the days leading up to the big battle…
But none captured the pathos of fandom better than Joshua Glasgow’s ode to being a “real fan”:
The real fan identifies with her team. Your team loses, you lose with them. A player does something embarrassing, and you are embarrassed with them. You put in time, money, and emotion, and in return, you get disappointment, loss, and a level of tragedy that puts Greek drama to shame.
Most importantly, [real fans] are almost never allowed to stop rooting for their team — and especially not because the team has been losing lately.
The difference between a real fan and a fake fan is the choice between supporting your team or soothing your ego.
Because it turns out, you can’t do both.
A couple of days ago, Donald Trump tweeted a familiar warning to his followers:
If Kamala wins, you are 3 days away from the start of a 1929-style economic depression. If I win, you are 3 days away from the best jobs, the biggest paychecks, and the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.
I say “familiar” because he offered an almost identical warning about Joe Biden in 2020:
If Biden [gets] in, you’ll have a stock market crash because they’re gonna raise your taxes to a level that nobody’s ever been raised before. You’ll have a stock market crash the likes of which nobody in this country has ever seen before. The likes of 1929 or worse.
(For the record, the stock market hit several record highs during Biden’s presidency.)
And as I wondered, for the 30,574th time, why Trump’s supporters fall for these brazen, easily debunked lies, as I asked myself how they can be so enraged by facts yet unconcerned that their team is constantly lying to them, it occurred to me that many of them support their political team for the same reason they support sports teams: they “identify” with them.
Political parties don’t have voters anymore, they have fans. And fans have never required honesty or expected their players to back up their pre-game talk. It doesn’t matter if teams take their fans for granted or their star quarterback occasionally quotes Hitler, all they have to do is clear the low bar of not being “the other guys.”
And to be clear, this isn’t exclusively a Trump problem.
After Joe Biden’s disastrous presidential debate in July, pundits and politicians didn’t even entertain the idea of replacing Biden with someone who could reliably make it through a sentence. The mere suggestion that he step aside was “foolhardy nonsense,” until it wasn’t.
Meanwhile, Trump voters have long affirmed that they’d vote for him “no matter what he says or does.” Trump himself pointed out that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any votes. And he’s probably right. Because the only thing anyone would care about is whether he killed one of ours or one of theirs.
So even though voters consistently prefer Kamala’s policies to Trump’s when they judge them blind, even though Trump’s supporters think he sounds like Hitler when they hear his quotes in isolation, and even though Trump’s economic plans will make life harder for the very people most likely to vote for him, this race is somehow on a knife-edge.
I guess trying to persuade true believers with facts and evidence is like trying to convince a Red Sox fan to switch to the Yankees.
On September 1st, 2018, back when it was still acceptable to not know what a coronavirus was, Barack Obama spoke at the funeral of his fierce political rival and dear friend, John McCain:
…every so often, over the course of my presidency, John would come over to the White House and we’d just sit and talk in the Oval Office. Just the two of us.
We’d talk about policy and we’d talk about family and we’d talk about the state of our politics. And our disagreements didn’t go away during these private conversations. Those were real and they were often deep. But we enjoyed the time we shared away from the bright lights. We laughed with each other and we learned from each other.
We never doubted the other man’s sincerity. Or the other man’s patriotism. Or that when all was said and done, we were on the same team. We never doubted we were on the same team.
Being on the same team didn’t mean Obama and McCain always agreed, far from it. It meant that despite their disagreements, they chose to talk and laugh and learn from each other.
It meant that when McCain’s supporters claimed Obama was an “Arab” and that they were “scared” of an Obama presidency, McCain didn’t encourage them. He assured them that “[Obama] is a decent, family man that [he] just happens to have disagreements with.”
And it meant that even after a long and gruelling campaign, despite the disappointment and frustration of losing, McCain conceded, congratulated Obama on a fight well fought, and offered his support in leading the country they both loved.
The reason it’s impossible to imagine Trump doing any of these things, the reason Trump is the only modern president who refused to concede, is that Trump only knows how to be on Team Trump. In the battle between his team and his ego, he’s only ever going to pick the latter.
This election isn’t about liberalism and conservatism, it’s not about being a fan of one candidate or one party, it’s about whether you think politics is about being a fan of Trump or of America.
Because, it turns out, you can’t do both.
Read more at The Commentary. A selection of beautiful, brilliant, and bizarre conversations about race, politics and culture. Sign up here.
