One of my favorite things about sports is that they provide a mostly harmless setting for me to vent my more bloodcurdlingly reactionary impulses, which, if I applied them to the political realm, might result in my favoring things such as the restoration of Stuart sovereignty over North America or the prosecution and public flogging of Uber drivers who play David Guetta while shuffling me around Brooklyn.
Sports are, after all, one of the few remaining realms in which we generally accept the legitimacy of hierarchy and order. Anyone can play, of course, but some people are simply better than others, and this fact is out in public for everyone to see. You cannot cry or bully your way into victory. You cannot call HR or summon a Twitter mob to wangle your way out of defeat. And excuses, everyone understands, are for losers. In sports, there is talent, hard work, sheer dumb luck, and nothing else — a fitting metaphor for life, whether or not we choose to acknowledge it.
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