The aftermath of a brutal week capping an impossibly bad year
Somehow, the worst year in any White Sox fans’ memory managed to get even worse this week. It’s left many of us numb, and dreading our future.
You may not be one of those fans. But this is not about how right or wrong we were when we punched our ballots on Tuesday.
What it is going to address, very briefly, is hatred.
We are fueled by it in today’s America. We had one campaign’s platform essentially built out of hatred, a platform it has full intention of executing. And there has been an eruption of unfettered hatred since the winner was named:
- Men gleefully threatening women in their moment of great sorrow, as their very lives are now more imperiled than ever due to policy change to come
- Black Americans spammed with horrific mass-texts about coming SLAVERY
- Stock in prison operators skyrocketing in anticipation of internment camps returning to U.S. soil, and the attendant zeal over stealing livelihoods away, ripping families apart, and even rolling back CITIZENSHIP itself
It’s wrong. Wherever you stand on the issues of the day, it’s wrong. There is nothing to celebrate in any of this.
It’s HATRED.
When do we have enough? We can philosophically cluck our tongues and say yeah buddy, this country was founded on genocide and enslavement, ripped to shreds by civil war, rung dry by world war — hatred is baked into the recipe. But even if granting those brutal building blocks, what’s the excuse today? There is no cause for any of these extremes.
We’ve spent the better part of two years, perhaps longer and maybe even extending back to the entirety of the rebuild, lamenting the execution of our hometown heroes, the White Sox. With the stakes extended only to sports, we ranted about the tone-deafness of our club. And yes, that includes fan-hating behavior illustrated in all manner of ways, from signing domestic abusers to whitewashing sexual predators to wishing away a ballpark shooting to trotting out the worst baseball team of the past 62 years and promising nothing to improve it.
Well, as of this week, that’s the light form of hating. “Hating,” even.
We are all going to have to make an effort to turn the temperature down. When the administration goes too far, or perhaps even a protest misses its mark, react with full throat. But hate in this pure, detestable, hobby form gets us nowhere.
If the bullet points above, summarizing just the past couple of days, are any indication we are in for some ugly, ugly, painful, devastating days ahead. As we live through them, remember the commonality we all share here, not just as White Sox fans but as Americans.
Most importantly of all, as human beings.