Fraud Fraudulence

 

Trump’s fraudulent fraud speech about election fraud came after I’d sent in last week’s column. A dishonest beaut, is what it was, confirming everything written about his intent to discredit any election a Democrat wins. Better yet, to keep such an election from happening at all.

Because he’s unable to read for comprehension, and because it wasn’t presented to him in cartoon form, the evidence to which he referred, posted on his Truthless Sociopath website, proved the opposite of what he claimed. With satisfying irony (who really knows what “irony” means?) the material confirmed the election meddling he’s been denying since day one of his first “presidency.” You know, the “Russia hoax” that wasn’t. A hoax. Also, China’s. 

Which is more inexplicable: that he can fool all of MAGA all of the time, or that he isn’t struck by lightning when he eructates his gaseous lies? Maybe the MAGA cult is right, claiming he’s sent by God. To lie, though? Surprising. If so, we've been misinterpreting the Ten Commandments all this time. Could it be, instead of “He has a plan for us all,” it’s “He has a scam for us all”? With its countless rewritings and translations, original intent may have been lost to time.

In that bizarrely self-negating, proofless smog, Trump claimed illegal voting is rampant; perhaps his biggest lie of the night. Innumerable investigations show instances to be vanishingly small; many were unintentional errors or misunderstandings, never in numbers enough to affect any election, anywhere, ever. His pre-hyped “bombshells” were damp squibs.

Also inexplicable: does he know he’s lying, or does his malignant narcissism render him incapable of believing he lost in 2020? Whatever the answer, each of his appointees and nominees is terrified of saying Joe Biden won that election; only that he was sworn in. With serial cowardice, they and their Republican questioners prostitute and embarrass themselves at every Congressional hearing. It follows, though, that a “president” having no integrity can sniff its lack in others and anoint only them. Notwithstanding the uncountable mistakes he’s made in managing everything from pandemics to energy production to ill-advised, lie-based wars, he deserves credit for getting every one of his selections for office exactly right. If “right” means sycophancy first, competence and rectitude last.

Which brings us naturally to the World Cup, FIFA’s glorious spectacle, second only to awarding Trump its once-and-only Peace Prize. Having known nothing about soccer pre-parenthood, we came to love (and hate, as every fan understands) the sport as we saw, in our son, the effort and athleticism required to master it. He was good, a striker, faster than the effluvium of lies from Trump. His select team, having won a state championship, played in an invitational tourney in Canada. Work kept me from attending the first bout, against the Canadian U-17 national team. When I got there Saturday morning, a dad told me I’d missed the best game ever. Score: 0 – 0. Which confirmed our status as aficionados of the game. Even my parents, when they came, once, from Portland to watch their grandson play – their grandson!! – said it was boring. As to skill, well, it took our son years to get exceptionally good, whereas the first time he ran with a football, he scored a touchdown.

I’m with the rest of the world on this: Americans should call it football, too. Except for a few seconds of a game, what we call football isn’t. We should call it handball. Then what would we call Olympic-style handball? Soccer.

We watched almost every World Cup match, including the final, less exciting than the third-place game. Much as I relished knowing Trump would be presenting the trophy to Spain, toward which he’s been exceptionally nasty of late, I forwent the ceremony. It’d have been like finishing a Michelin-starred meal with a cyclospora salad. (Another Trumpic mess; following the screw worm screwup.)

Proving me prescient, America’s embarrassing “president” ignored FIFA’s president’s efforts to get him out of the way of team pictures. How great, though, that Spain later edited him out. Would that it were that easy elsehow.

If this column sags a bit, here’s why: On Monday, my wife and I had lunch downtown with Joanie T., best scrub nurse/surgical assistant ever, and the friends of a friend of her friend, who sends copies of my columns to them in Nebraska, America’s heartland in more ways than one, evidently. Through friend of friend and Joanie, they’d requested an audience, if I may so describe it, during a planned visit here. Wonderful people, great fun. (My longest-distance reader, far as I know, lives in China.)

I wasn’t feeling a column this week. I would have taken a minibreak, but I thought of how nice those folks were, how interesting and engaging, the mutual appreciation, and didn’t want to disappoint right after our meeting. So this one’s for them.

Flagellation

You can't really love soccer if you don't hate it.

• I know of no game in which the weaker team has such a chance of winning.
• There's no contest in which subjectivity -- or incompetence -- of a referee has such a role in the outcome. In other games, referees decide if something happened. In soccer, they also decide whether it was important. Important enough. For the location.
• In no sport are the required skills so difficult and so under-appreciated by unknowing viewers.
• There's no game in which the higher level you achieve the more inclined you are to fake injury and roll around like an idiot.
• Only in soccer is the scoring almost secondary to the appreciation of the work being done (which means appreciation is lacking in the uninitiated.)
• Offsides is something only real fans understand. Often, this excludes side judges.
• Deciding a tie by a shootout is the most horrible thing that happens in any sport, anywhere. At least in hockey they've made it more of a show.
• The difficulty of scoring explains much of the above.

I'd never seen a soccer game until my son started playing it. As he got better and better, making more and more highly select teams, which won more and tournaments and state championships, I came to appreciate what it took. Years, is what it was. As opposed to, say, (American) football, in the playing of which he scored a touchdown the first time he got the ball in a game. Tucking a ball under your arm and running with it, even if quickly and trickily, isn't anything compared to running full speed while controlling a ball with your feet. And then striking it, getting it to go more or less where aimed, still running full out. Or receiving and settling it, also while running, using only your feet, or your chest. Or both.

At a big-deal invitational tournament in Canada, work kept me from the first game. When I arrived at the motel the next morning, another dad told me I'd missed the best game he'd ever seen (our kids had played the Canadian U-17 national champions). I asked the score. Zero-zero (nil-nil, as it's said.) That's when I knew we were true fans.

But it does drive me crazy. Scoring is incredibly hard. A team can dominate another and lose, and it happens all the damn time. Infuriating.

I could never play soccer: too slow, too clumsy. And yet I was a pretty decent rugby player, which says something about skill. Back then, there were no subs in rugby, so we kept playing unless they had to carry you off. It's laughable to watch soccer players -- especially world class ones, like Ronaldo -- dive and roll over and over and over (point of observation: a player who is actually hurt will lie still. One that's a big bag of fakery will roll over and over and over, or flop around a lot. For super athletes, these guys are embarrassing; and they're not even good actors. Rich Franklin broke his arm and kept fighting Chuck Liddell. And knocked him out.)

With family and friends, we were at the World Cup in 1994. (I had to work for the final, but my wife and kid were there. Decided by penalty kicks, the shoot-out saw the Italian hero Robert Baggio boot his chance to save it for his country.) We watched Brazil sweep up the sides like peregrine falcons, center the ball with the grace of gods. Surrounded by Cameroonian fans wearing lion costumes, we reveled in the good vibe. We saw crazy fans, eighty-five thousand of them filling Stanford Stadium, faces painted, waving flags, beating drums, wearing tribal costumes and marching down streets. No badness, all happy to be there, crazy in love with the game.

It was the most fun at a sporting event, ever.

And not a single frickin' vuvuzela.