The Beautiful Game

It's something of a cliché that Americans know more about sports than politics.

Political wonks tend to say it while shaking their heads in disbelief, like it's some great mystery.

What we have in Washington and in state capitols across the country isn't the beautiful game.  It's even uglier than trash talking, taking dives, and Maradona's "hand of God."  It's a bunch of wooden-legged oafs socking it to each other.  It's hooligans knocking the shit out of one another on the sidelines and in the post-game wrap-up shows.  It's the clubs rolling in sponsorship profits that determine more about the outcome than the "plays" on the field below where everyone is primarily concerned with splitting an opponent's lip than actually sinking a goal.

It's no mystery why Americans would prefer to watch something they can cheer for...

When was the last time Washington took your breath away?  The last time you wanted to paint your beer gut blue or red, to hi-five your friends and hug the total stranger one seat over, or to bust out your vuvuzela and make joyful noise?!

For me, it was last Friday.

Granted, most days I'm not a spectator because I enjoy it; I'm a pungent, drunk barfly, backlit by neon and flickering news tickers.  I am glued to CSPAN out of both habit and despair, telling anyone who will listen that I could have been a contender instead of a bum before chucking a broken bottle at the Huffington Post's homepage and swearing a blue streak that ends with "--VAGINA, Michigan!  Motherfuckin' VAGINA."

And for some reason, in this sorry condition, I'd still bet my last nickel on Hope.

Sometimes, I  win it back.

On Friday, we saw a glimpse of the beautiful game.  That skinny guy with big ears -- the promising striker who missed a few shots early in the first half and spent most of the remaining time being pummeled by friend and foe alike -- was suddenly out front.  A dedicated cheer section coached him forward -- believing because they had to and not because they'd already pasted the bumper sticker on their Priuses.  And--

A goal.

It wasn't a soaring shot -- high and to the corner.  There wasn't even a long pass and a splendid break.  It most certainly wasn't a chain of light-footed pirouettes with a mysterious, magnetic attraction between player and ball.

It was a deliberate, grounded goal that trundled all of the way to the back of the webbing.

It wasn't all that hard to make in the moment.  The goalie wasn't tending his net; he had been busy roughing up the groundskeeper to cheers and jeers from the hooligans.  Mid-slap across his face with a thick wad of Benjamins, the goalie turned to see the shot roll across the line, and promptly creamed his tailored qiviuk shorts.

And that's when this unassuming goal became a play worthy of the beautiful game.

Suddenly, the boorish  players of the Southern Strategy wiped the slurs and spit flying from their mouths.  They thought that they'd pummeled that guy into submission, and there he was -- with the audacity to say "we are a better nation than one that expels young people."  And the best part?!  They had to agree when they took to the halftime shows because suddenly around 1 million young people could say -- without fear -- "no, I don't have to show you my papers; you show me your badge number."

That play exposed the Republican game plan; all the little Xs, Os, and arrows converged on one truth that the GOP hoped would be overlooked among flying elbows and posh sponsorship deals: majority-white America's days are numbered.  Both the Democrats and the Republicans would love to win the loyalty of Latino voters, but the GOP can't continue to be America's whites-only country club party and actively court a community that they want to relegate to the position of indentured servants.

Mind you, "the Latino vote" is a misnomer, but criminalizing all Latinos and threatening them with a one-way ticket to "Mexico" is a pretty good way to unite a sizeable chunk of an otherwise diverse community.  Looking to the highly vocal and vitriolic wing of the party, the GOP was almost as gleeful in the pursuit of this strategy as Democrats were cowed and grimly adherent.

The latter was, obviously, central to the GOP's playbook: banking on the Democratic propensity for election-year timidity, their plan was to continue poorly dubbing their message over a parade of non-Latino faces and issues (here, here, and here), have Romney wax sentimental about his "Mexican heritage" once or twice (but not enough to awaken The Birthers), and maybe throw Senator Rubio on the ticket (because the GOP hasn't yet understood the difference between tokenism and thoughtfully addressing the needs more prevalent within a given community).  They figured that this strategy might win them a few folks here or there.  Then they'd scour the voter roles for names like Hernandez and Gonzalez in important states like Florida.  And -- for their secret weapon: Obama himself!  Obama's own (in)actions would result in suppression-via-disenchantment -- especially in Western swing states like Colorado.  That, friends, is how you whip up a steaming pile of President Romney.

But Obama didn't play along.

Now the GOP is falling all over itself to find some way to excuse their appalling behavior toward the Latino community without sending their reactive base into apoplectic fits of tea bagging.  They've settled on a chant of "there's nothing wrong with Obama's decision -- just the way it was done and his obviously political motivation."

You'd think that such protests would ring hollow: if the decision isn't wrong, why did Romney vow to veto the DREAM Act?  And if it's such good politics for the GOP, why didn't Congress pass the damn thing when they had the chance?

So here I am on Friday: full face paint, vuvuzela in hand, gut-bumping anyone who might wander in on the one woman victory dance in my living room.  Lemme hear it, fellow progressives!  "When I say 'O--' you say '--bama!' 'O--'"

"YEAH!  What they said!"

Wait, what?!

For some unfathomable reason, upon seeing a ball in the net for the first time in a long time -- seeing the GOP suddenly discursively recognizing the acceptability of the presence of a million people in their midst -- a sizable chunk of the left is looking to the disgruntled players of the Southern Strategy and... agreeing?!

My fellow progressives, how sad is it -- how fucking cynical are we?! -- that all we can say is: "Not gonna deport a million young people, huh?  You're such an asshole, Obama.  Not gonna fool me this time."

Please, Mr. President, resume the shin-kicking; it turns out no one wants to watch the beautiful game after all.

By now, dear reader, you are probably sick of my sports metaphor, if not outright offended.  You're saying, "this is not a game to the DREAMers!  This is their futures, their homes, their families and friends -- in short, their lives."  And I agree entirely.  (Note the subject of this blog and the circumstances in which it is written.)

Yes: it galls me that the "stuff" of people's lives is the "stuff" of politics.  It galls me, but it's the truth.  Feminists have been saying it for almost half of a decade: the personal is political.

From the food you ingest to the "facts" in your children's textbooks to the ultrasound wand being rammed up your "Michigan Unmentionables" -- YOU are the stuff of politics.  And you're constantly being played.

Obviously, sports don't matter in the way that politics matter, but in both, victory is not merely about how far or fast you can run or how much you want it; it's about strategy.

Pretty much nothing ever happens in politics simply because it's the right thing.  If that were the case, simply penning "all men (sic) are created equal" would have done the trick!

It didn't.

But sometimes we see glimpses of that promise in all of its muddy, grubby, fiercely contested glory here on our very flawed little planet in our very belligerent little nation.

And I find that beautiful.

If the only progress you find acceptable is when the clouds part and a disembodied voice booms directives, then you've probably been waiting about 3000 years for justice, and you're likely to wait at least another 3000.

That's not what Dr. King's mountaintop looked like.

Progress will always be messy.  It will always be incomplete.  It is a commitment and a process.  There is ugliness in the beauty and beauty in the ugliness.

When we look back at 1964, do we say "there's nothing wrong with the Civil Rights Act -- just the way it was done and its obviously political motivation?"  Of course not -- even though it was motivated in large part by the Democrats' desire manipulate changing demographics outside the South and even though Johnson exploited Kennedy's death to get it passed ("No memorial oration or eulogy could more eloquently honour President Kennedy's memory than the earliest possible passage of the civil rights bill for which he fought so long").  We remember the Civil Rights Act as an important victory even though it didn't bring back James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, or Michael Schwerner (lynched only 2 weeks prior) and others who dreamt of and died for a more just nation.  We don't consider it a failure even though the country has continued to be painfully and shamefully racist during the subsequent 50 years!

It brought us one step closer to being able to say "we are better nation than one that _____."

Of course, the Democrats' actions were political and the right thing to do.  The GOP also saw a political opportunity: after signing the Civil Rights Act, Johnson supposedly said "we have lost the South for a generation," and thus the contemporary Republican Party was born.  Was the Southern Strategy also a political ploy?  Absolutely.

Which brings us to the present: good and bad things are done in politics -- and every last one of them is politically motivated.

So I suppose we have to consider wisdom from another pastime that Americans likely give more credence than Washington: "rock and roll" -- specifically, a certain Bruce "The Boss" Springsteen (who himself troubles the distinction between art and politics).  In one song, he asks "who will be the last to die for a mistake?" (And would ya look at that: it was inspired by the 1971 Congressional testimony of a young John Kerry -- at that time on the other side of the table.)

We have to think about the last DREAMer shuttled onto a plane and dumped into a foreign country.  We have to think about him or her looking back across the land or water between there and home, knowing that his or her life has been abruptly and irreversibly altered; we have to let that devastation and loss weigh heavily on our consciences.  Relief did not come soon enough.  That faraway DREAMer -- the many faraway DREAMers -- were wronged.  Deeply and cruelly wronged.  But we don't right that wrong by putting another DREAMer on another plane -- because God forbid the just and humane thing be done for political reasons!

Even as we lament the exile of faraway DREAMers, I am joyful that another will not follow him or her.  Frankly, I think we owe it to the DREAMers still in their homes and communities to be joyful and to be vocal in our support of this policy because it's not a permanent solution; it's a first step.  The next step requires action by Congress; it requires robust, broad-based political will that we can only construct by saying unequivocally: "this was the right thing to do.  We stand behind Obama, and we will stand behind any other politician who supports CIR with a permanent solution for DREAMers.  We will support their re-election when anti-immigration forces threaten it because good things can also be good politics -- and because we believe that 'we are a better country than one that expels young people.'"

Progress is a process.  Gains are hard won.  Losses have casualties.

And so do excuses.

So let this moment be a lesson in democratic government: to the Obama Administration, it is a lesson on playing offence.  My sincere hope is that this is one good deed that will go unpunished!

And for the rest of us, let this be a lesson in how to make the government one that represents you; let the DREAMers -- who risked everything merely to gain what you already have -- be your teachers.

Because if there is no other proof that the DREAMers are, in fact, more American than most, it's their commitment to justice and democracy: how they made the game beautiful.