Whenever I listen to the supporters of Mike Huckabee and Barack
Obama, I hear the dangerous music of utopianism. Christian
fundamentalists and secular progressive Americans all lust for the next
messiah king.
But in a democracy, each citizen should be profoundly unhappy with
the person she’s voting for. We should all feel compromised. Why?
Because our government is representative and should be as wonderful,
wicked, magical, inefficient, benevolent, and contradictory as any one
American.
In a similar sense, I think too many sports fans only root for
winners, and don’t appreciate the gorgeous contradiction of loving a
losing team.
On January 23, after Kevin Durant missed a last-second shot that
would have beaten the Houston Rockets and ended an 11-game losing
streak, I fought off tears. I didn’t want to cry over the Sonics. It
felt pathetic. But as I tried to sleep that night, tortured by the
loss, I did cry and wondered how the Sonics players cope with this epic
and public failure.
Seeking an escape from our flawed lives, we need
our athletes
(and presidents) to be perfect, even mythic.
So when they fail, I
think it makes us mortals feel even
more mortal. 