Political hopes of an American Red Sox fan

The United States of America is analogous to the New York Yankees. The Yankees are so big and successful that their fans seem terribly obnoxious and their players horribly arrogant. As such, the Yankees are the team everyone loves to hate. Critics have called them the Damn Yankees, the Bronx Zoo, the Evil Empire.

Every team has obnoxious fans and arrogant players, but the Yankees seem to have a lot more of them. But why not? As the most winning baseball team ever, the Yankees have the pedigree to support that egotism. They hold 27 World Series titles (the next closest team has won 11), and they hold the all-time win-loss record, both in sheer numbers and in winning percentage.

But it’s disingenuous for us to declare that everyone associated with the Yankees is obnoxious or arrogant. I’ve known some Yankees fans who are great people. And if you love the game, you can’t talk about some of the great players who have worn Yankee pinstripes and not tip your ball cap in respect.

I tell you this as a die-hard fan of the Boston Red Sox. In American baseball, the Yankees and the Red Sox are the ultimate archrivalry, one that came to a head in 2004. In a best-of-seven playoff series that decided who would go on to the World Series, the Red Sox dropped the first three games. All the Yankees had to do was win one game out of the remaining four.

No team had ever come back from an 0-3 deficit in a seven-game series, but the Red Sox did. They went on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals for their first World Series win in 86 years. Sometimes, the underdog wins. Sometimes, the big bad Yankees blow it.

On the world stage, the U.S. is sort of like the Yankees. The world often thinks of the U.S., as the big and powerful nation with a populace that is wholly obnoxious and arrogant in our self-importance. But we aren’t all like that. Like Yankees fans, many of us are decent people. Like Yankees legends, many of our leaders have been great. But because there are always rotten people and crappy leaders, it’s easy to hate us for anything. Even when the U.S. does something minor that is objectionable, you can bet that someone will stomp his feet and manufacture plenty of outrage.

However, none of the zillion reasons to hate the U.S. stops anyone from asking for our help. We give other nations money, food, technology, supplies, military support, and just about anything you can imagine. We might get something in return, but all too often we just help others out—even though the recipients will soon likely be complaining about us again.

As an American, I get disheartened at that, especially when people assume that the U.S. is full of nothing but 320 million assholes. This is similar to how we perceive the Yankees. Too often, we ignore the zillions that Yankees players, fans, and ownership have given to countless charities over the years. Thanks for the free money, Yankees, but you all suck! But since you have your wallets open, give us some more... you bastards!

The United States makes plenty of mistakes. I don’t pretend otherwise. But some of us here care very deeply about, and often disapprove of, what our nation does. I don’t order the bombs dropped. I don’t make political deals with other nations. I don’t deny your country things you ask us for but don’t get. And no one American can control our elected leadership. American elections never make everybody happy, in no small part because they’re mostly split between the two major political parties, the Democrats and the Republicans. Those parties’ very different ideologies sharply divide us as a people, and whichever one is in power makes a major difference in our way of life—and, ultimately, in the affairs of other nations.

One American’s political growth

When I was young, I made my own decisions about my principles. I was exposed to religion, but I’m not religious. I was exposed to intolerance of people unlike us, but I’m tolerant of others. I was exposed to beliefs that people should do as others feel is best, but I’ve developed my own sense of freedom and liberty. And as the years have gone on, I’ve become frustrated with what seems like an ongoing no-win situation.

I’m 45. I can recall Republican Gerald Ford on TV when I was very young, but the first president I really noticed was Democrat Jimmy Carter. The first election that I was aware of was Carter and Ronald Reagan in 1980. I was 11 when Reagan won his first term, so I spent my adolescence in the 1980s immersed in the Reagan Revolution. I learned what it meant for one group to believe that others who didn’t agree with their tenets were unworthy. With Reagan-era social conservatism, I became vividly aware of the political right’s desire to undo a woman’s right to make decisions about her body by making abortion illegal. That was just the tip of the conservative iceberg.

My high school did a mock presidential election in 1984 to politically engage us in ways that students should be but often aren’t. I was crushed when Reagan obliterated Walter Mondale (Mondale only won one state). Four years later, for the first election I could vote in, I was further crushed when George H. W. Bush destroyed Michael Dukakis almost as badly. During his campaign, Bush proclaimed that Dukakis was a “card-carrying member of the [American Civil Liberties Union],” as if supporting civil liberties was a bad thing—and it stunned me that half the nation appeared to agree with him. Bush also declared that atheists should not be considered patriots or even citizens because our nation was one under God. As a young atheist too afraid to admit to others what I was, this was beyond worrisome: It was deeply disturbing.

Luckily, four years later, Bill Clinton ousted Bush, and later won a second term. Clinton’s eight years should have had me firmly believing that we could truly move forward. Sadly, the Republicans took control of Congress and made his presidency a shadow of what it could have been. They obstructed Democrats at every turn. They did anything to ensure that it was their way or the no way at all. They wasted taxpayer money to investigate the president they hated just in case he’d lied about a blowjob.

But when George W. Bush narrowly beat Al Gore in 2000 with the Supreme Court’s assistance, we hoped for the best but braced for the worst. His presidency quickly became a complete embarrassment, a deep frustration, and a terrifying danger. I placed my hopes in John Kerry four years later... and was crushed again when, against all common-sense expectations, Bush actually won the privilege of destroying the country for four more years.

When Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton came along during the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries, I was never more hopeful. Either of those two leading candidates would be a powerhouse in the Oval Office, and either represented a solid chance at the presidency against the Republicans. After Obama won the nomination, I honestly thought McCain would be trouble. Luckily for us, McCain had a tremendous lapse of common sense when he picked as his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. This was a woman so apparently mentally deficient and socially retarded as to make George W. Bush look like Franklin Delano Roosevelt. She was probably the biggest reason Obama won and gave this country a new chance.

Obama gave us four gold-standard years even as he had to fight against an angry, vindictive Republican Party every step of the way. They blocked him at every turn, putting up walls of oppression and obstruction, walls of dishonesty and insanity, walls of racism and hate. So when 2012 came around, I knew that if Mitt Romney, a dangerous political joke who seemed to be the poster child of every disastrous Republican ideal, were to unseat Obama, I’d lose faith in the American people and in our political system.

Obama won, but the Republican-controlled House of Representatives stonewalled his every move. When they also took the Senate in 2014, it became the Clinton years all over again. The Republicans have refused to compromise, have obstructed and delayed, have rammed through legislation the president will never sign, and have used taxpayer money to sue the president to get their way. What has impressed me more than anything about Obama through all of this is that he refuses to relent. He’s no lame duck. Against overwhelming Republican strong-arming, he pushes his agenda, one that is designed to benefit all Americans and our society as a whole.

The conservative alternative is one where we craft a caste system, where the impoverished are kept in the gutters and the middle class supports the rich getting richer. It’s one where everyone must agree with the Christian majority or be trodden upon. It’s one where the hopes and dreams of the masses have no merit and must be crushed if they don’t agree with the basic Republican tenet: “This is the way we want it, so get used to it.” This alternative is frightening, selfish, inhuman, and evil.

U.S. politics affect the world

Non-Americans must understand just what is at stake because of American politics, because what happens here affects everyone abroad. Let me break down the key differences between the Democrats and the Republicans.

Democrats believe in equal rights for all, in supporting the impoverished, of giving everyone an equal chance. Republicans believe that you should adhere to all of their beliefs, and that nothing that they view as the American way of life should ever change.

Democrats believe in assistance for those who need it and advocating for the 99 percent of us who aren’t filthy rich. Republicans believe in oppressing groups they find objectionable, in lining their pockets at the expense of social services, and in favoring that filthy-rich 1 percent.

Democrats accept defeat on bills in Congress and work to find new solutions. Republicans refuse to accept defeat in Congress and behave like spoiled children, holding the budget, the debt ceiling, legislation, and anything else hostage as they try to get their way.

Democrats work toward meaningful goals. Republicans hold repeated symbolic votes to repeal legislation they don’t like, even though nothing will come of such votes when the president will only veto them.

Democrats believe in looking forward and moving forward. Republicans believe in looking backward and being backward.

So why am I telling you all this?

There’s a world of difference between the ideologies of the Democrats and Republicans. And when the Republicans are in power, they damage the U.S. economy, which ripples across the world and affects other nations’ economies. Their unwillingness to support equal rights for all here means that they have less empathy for such people in other nations. They rule with religion, threats, intimidation, hate, racism, and intolerance, and they rally weak-minded citizens to their cause. And their presidential candidates will carry these behaviors into foreign policies.

The United States is a powerful nation, a key player on the world stage. What happens here affects everyone, and when it’s bad, everyone notices. We become the hated New York Yankees, anything else we do be damned.

In a few days, baseball season will open. When the Red Sox meet the Yankees for their first game in New York on April 10, the Yankees will seem arrogant and their fans will seem obnoxious, but I’ll remind myself that all of them aren’t bad. There are good people there.

Luckily, baseball is ultimately just a game. It doesn’t really matter if every last Yankee player is arrogant and every single Yankee fan is obnoxious. But when it comes to the elected leaders in the U.S., it matters very, very much—to everyone.

To those of you who want the elected leaders of the United States to do the right thing and make the world a better place: I swear to you that there are some of us who are doing our best to get the right people elected. Doing, trying, hoping, and waiting. It’s the best that we can do, and it’s not enough.

Like the Yankees, I promise that there are good people here. When our nation does wrong, we cringe, we lose a little sleep, and we’re sometimes moved to tears.

That’s where my analogy breaks down. You sure as hell won’t find that sort of behavior from Yankees fans.

David M. Fitzpatrick is a fiction writer in Maine, USA. His many short stories have appeared in print magazines and anthologies around the world. He writes for a newspaper, writes fiction, edits anthologies, and teaches creative writing. Visit him at www.fitz42.net/writer to learn more.