Americans Come Together
Nothing brings together more Americans — not awards shows, not television series finales, not even presidential debates — than the Super Bowl.
…Las Vegas is hosting its first Super Bowl today. The city has a fraught history with professional sports because of its association with gambling, and leagues have kept teams away to maintain their sports’ appearance of integrity. That changed in 2018, when the Supreme Court cleared the way for legalized sports betting. Vegas officials, eager to boost tourism, lured professional baseball and football teams to the city. Hosting the Super Bowl is a crowning achievement.
Not everyone is happy about the transformation, though. Officials provided $750 million in subsidies to help build Allegiant Stadium, where the Super Bowl will take place, even as the city’s public schools have languished.
The Morning, The New York Times, 2/11/2024
Uncanny quiet prevailed over the room. Sunday at Starbucks is typically a bustling scene. Not this morning. I assume a majority of us are ‘sleeping in’. The Sunday routine is delayed because the great event is to take place late in the day in Las Vegas. Most of us will be gazing into our glowing LCD screens. The Super Bowl, season’s final, most hyped match of pro football will take place in Las Vegas. Vegas. You know, “sin city” built by the mob in the Nevada desert.
The passage quoted is from today’s New York Times. In these times of gaping income disparity, political dysfunction, and regional antipathy is there anything that brings Americans together? It is hard to miss the ‘tongue in cheek’ opening line of the Times piece.
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I finished reading the essay by Martin Heidegger. Here are several lines near to the end of his essay. The supra-sensory term refers to the supernatural. Heidegger writes to gain for himself a better grasp of Friedrich Nietzsche’s point in the “God Is Dead” parable of the madman found in The Gay Science.
Heidegger concludes in agreement with Nietzsche. The madman is not deranged, but those ‘good people’, the majority un-mindfully going about their lives. On this Sunday, everyone ‘sleeps in’. In a few hours Americans will view the big spectacle, better than ever, hosted in Las Vegas!
And the single life that each of us has, – why that’s nothing but a wager. A few in a penthouse office suites count their profits, and the rest of us…
We stare into our screens.
The realm that constitutes the supra-sensory,
which as such, is in itself
no longer stands over man
as the authoritative light.
The whole field of vision has been wiped away.
The horizon no longer emits light of itself.
It is now nothing
but the point-of-view posited
in the value positing of
the will to power.
The Word of Nietzsche: “God Is Dead” by Martin Heidegger p. 107
2 thoughts on “Americans Come Together”
This phenomenon is older than the pyramids, clash of the titans, tribe against tribe, engrained in our unconscious psyches, it plays out on that hundred yards of faux turf. I can feel it rise in me as well, especially when my tribes (I grew up in the San Francisco area and lived in Kansas City) are battling each other to the death, or at least to see who make more money. Should we turn our backs on this territorial imperative embedded in our amygdala, or should we embrace the testosterone rush, knowing full well that it is ultimately meaningless, while we passionately root for whichever team represents our tribe? The faithful will pay thousands of dollars to witness this tete a tete in person, painting their collective faces to match their tribe’s pennant colors (unfortunately for those armchair warriors, this year both team’s colors are the same).
In the end, it’s just a game. Win or lose, nothing changes except a bump in the winning team’s bank account. Everyone goes back to the jobs they say they’re going to quit someday, while prognosticators rev up for the 2024 preseason which begins in less than 6 months. And so it goes, on and on, until we are no more. What a cynic I am!
Well said. I’ve nothing more to add.