What if?

What if?

February 6, 2006

The Superbowl is over. The players, the fans have all gone home. The deed is done for one more year. In a few months, both teams will begin preparing, hoping their journey will end again next year at Superbowl 41.

The pre-Superbowl hype was astonishing. Tickets to the big game ran in the thousands of dollars. Travel agents went on the air to tell us how much it would cost to attend the big event, how hard it would be to get good tickets, how hard it would be to obtain a place to stay within easy access to Ford Field in Detroit. This hype continued for the better part of two weeks, day in and day out with reporters and crews running, driving and flying hither and yon in pursuit of the “big story.”

On Superbowl day all the sports bars, taverns, and pubs were packed, big screens blared, fans guzzled, ate, and cheered on their favorite team. Law enforcement was beefed up in search of fanatics, brawlers, and those who attempted to operate a vehicle while under the influence.

Quite obviously, this being a yearly event, this dance has been going on for years now, with fans forking over big bucks to partake of the pie. Media went so far as the report on the influx of cash local businesses would see from being within proximity of one of the Superbowl teams. When a storm packing high winds blew in off the Pacific to batter the Puget Sound (Seattle-Tacoma) area, the concern wasn’t for the damage the storm might cause but rather that Seattle might be without power on Superbowl Sunday.

This year, while the Seahawks made their way to Detroit and the big game, back home in Seattle the Sonics threatened to move their franchise elsewhere if Washingtonians didn’t forked over the bucks to build them a new place to play. After all, Washington taxpayers forked over the bucks to build the Seahawks a new place to play courtesy of the Washington Legislature, why not the Sonics, too. The fact that the Washington Legislature acted outside its authority, vesting taxpayer funds to build a new place for the Seahawks to play, is obviously beside the point. As was the case with Boeing, Washingtonians — the unimportant taxpaying little people of the state — are expected to bow and scrape before big business.

What if all those raucous Americans who cheered on their team descended on state capitols and Washington DC to address:

Bush’s sponsoring of illegal immigration?
The millions of illegal aliens now residing in the United States?
The unconstitutional U.S. Department of Education?
The tyrannical U.S. Department of Homeland Security?
The Bush invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan?
The tyrannical, un-American and unpatriotic Patriot Act?
The un-American activities of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)?
The stealing of children from their homes by Child Protective Services?
The pornography industry — both homosexual and heterosexual — aided and abetted by purveyors in Washington, DC?
The North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the Central American Free Trade Agreement (CAFTA) and all the rest of the anti-American, sovereignty-destroying agreements?
Outsourcing American jobs to other nations so CEO’s can make mega-bucks off the backs of slave labor in foreign countries while Americans can’t find a family-wage job?
The giving over of American soil to the United Nations?
The out-of-control spending by government?
The out-of-control judiciary?

Take your pick, add your own.

Just think how much better off our country would be today if we didn’t have all these problems created by government moguls. Maybe, just maybe, the poverty level would go down, the standard of living would go up, and the number of people depending on state aid (taxpayer $$$$’s) to live would decrease dramatically. That would engender shades of the nation our Founding Fathers envisioned.

Wouldn’t it be great if the American people showed the enthusiasm for their continued freedom that fans show for their favorite team?

And while Rome burned, Nero fiddled.