arizona and its blood sport economy

Perspective for your consideration …What does it look like when it’s fixed…?
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One of the lead articles in Sunday’s – Arizona Republic – 9-28-08 is entitled … CAGE FIGHTS MAY PACK AN ECONOMIC PUNCH …

When “we” choose to see – cage fighting – as a pillar in our state’s economy, it makes the action of some of our soldiers guarding unarmed shackled prisoners in Iraq at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba while indicative of distressing aberrant avaricious desires to pummel another human being into a bewildered catatonic state, understandable.

Americans are voyeurs who appear to thrive on drawing blood and humiliation of others of our species. In Arizona our Governor and the 90 mental pigmies we elect to our State Legislature to “serve & protect” us spend their time endeavoring to see how bloody they are able to make the “rules” governing this aberrant form of entertainment, while covering it with a thinnest blanket of civility.

Might it be time for us to consider whether these forms of entertainment have a carry-over effect into our daily lives…? And, might this carry-over effect have negative consequences on how we choose to view others holding views, opinions, and beliefs different than ours…?

The American answer to most any difference between men and/or countries holding a different view, belief or opinion is to immediately strike the alleged opponent. Hit them and as savagely and as brutality and as often as possible within the shortest amount of time. Defeating them is not sufficient we need to bludgeon them into submission.

I dare say, this notion of defeating and beating to submission we choose to carry-over into many of our so-called sport activities, i.e. football, basketball, baseball, hockey, soccer, not to mention boxing or wrestling. We carry this defeating and beating, down to our children’s play ground level where “winning” is everything, there is no such thing as enjoying the game or being a good sport … as we ingrain our children to understand those notions are only for losers.

Tell me, what is the difference between the “blood” sports we use as forms of entertainment today and those used in ancient Rome…? Please do not tell me we don’t kill those who entertain us, for we surely do. And we can forget their passing as easily as we draw our next breath. We conjure up the belief they voluntarily chose to get involved.

In Arizona this form of entertainment passes the “smell” test of our Governor and our State Legislature as civil behavior…?

And guess, what you actually pay $$$ to watch the debacle… and we call that civil behavior…?

George Orwell summed it up quite succinctly …. " Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words: it is war minus the shooting. "