Klosterman: Esquire 11/06

Here's an excerpt from Chuck Klosterman's America: You're Not Wrong (his entertaining and informative monthly column for Esquire):

Perhaps everbody's right.

Whenever we hear ideologues arguing, we tend to believe one of two things: We either assume one party is mostly correct, or we assume both parties are mostly confused. For most of my life, I have felt comfortable suspecting that everyone was wrong about everything, pretty much all the time. However, I am starting to wonder if this is no longer the case. I am starting to suspect that absolutely everybody is 100 percent right about everything, which leads me to believe the world is going to end in less than twenty-five years.

....

As it turns out, everybody's right. Right now, some highly motivated dude in Tehran (or possibly Dearborn, Michigan) wants to blow you up, and there is absolutely nothing that will change his mind. You could give this theoretical person a newborn puppy, and he would quite possibly say, "Thank you for this wonderful furry creature! You are a fine person!" He would then jam a stick of dynamite down the puppy's throat and tie it to your car. I do not doubt this. He would do this because you are an American, and he believes that America is waging a war against his religion. And he believes this because that (more or less) is exactly what seems to be happening. At this very moment, one of the peripheral discussions on my television is whether or not the president should be allowed to refer to terror suspects as "Islamic fascists," a phrase he has already used on multiple occasions. Not surprisingly, the fellows on Fox seem to think it is essential that George Bush use that term as often as possible. Personally, I have a hard time seeing the benefit of insulting impoverished zealots as a means of ending terrorism. This kind of behavior—along with arbitrarily invading foreign countries that do not have weapons of mass destruction—can be confusing to the thirteen-year-old potential terrorist. Do you remember when a bunch of teenagers listened to an Ozzy Osbourne song before trying to kill themselves? Ozzy's response was basically "Hey, man, that song wasn't even about suicide." And that (of course) was true. But the song was titled "Suicide Solution," and drunk teenagers are (of course) crazy and illogical. So this situation is kind of like that one, except with more car bombs and fewer guitar solos.

Will there always be a handful of Islamic fundamentalists who want to destroy us? Totally. Is the Bush administration making that situation worse? Totally. Is our occupation of Iraq and the limiting of civil liberties lowering the short-term likelihood of domestic terrorism? Probably. Will those same things increase the long-term likelihood of domestic terrorism? Probably. Everybody's right,. All of these media pundits keep pretending that they're having an argument, but all they're doing is espousing different fragments of the same truth: We're fucked. It's over. Our society is out of ideas. It's like we're in the final two minutes of an NBA game, but—for some insane, desperate reason—both teams are committing intentional fouls on every possession (and Ben Wallace is somehow playing for both teams). No one is ahead, but we're all behind.

BONUS: An Argument For The NBA

Pro basketball has a problem, and the problem is this: It's actually meaningful.

Football is more popular, and baseball will always be more iconic. But both of those sports are inherently (and consciously) conservative; the greatest things about football and baseball are the things that never change. Basketball is different. Pro basketball changes with culture. It's a youth game, it's a street game, and it's an artists' game. Unlike football, its players have more control than their coaches. Unlike baseball, its style of play reinvents itself every five or ten years. Basketball is dynamic, and basketball is reflective; if you profoundly understand the NBA, you can partially understand America. This is why the NBA is important. This is also why aging fans inevitably conclude that they no longer like it.

Comments

[Edward]

I'm afraid that basketball has never really captured my imagination, and I wonder how related that is to my understanding of America. I assume that one of the reasons I don't like basketball (quite apart from how repetitive it seems to me), is that I'm not tall enough to be any good at it, so perhaps my failure to understand certain aspects of American culture and politics is due to me being only 174cm tall (that's 5 foot 9" for you imperialists, oops, I mean those of you using the imperial system).

[MC]

Basketball is still one of my favorite sports to play, maybe because of my above average height. But really I'm small for the game. People my size usually play point guard. I like the fast paced high scoring aspect of it.

[Edward]

Yeah, it's probably better to play than to watch. I found the no-contact rule rather frustrating though - I was forever causing fouls yet could never draw a foul.