I'm not so sure about what Lincoln said about fooling people. Our politicians are pretty canny these days. They are good at fooling most of the people most of the time. Which brings me to a thought about my grandad.
In the 1950s my grandad was a great fan of the flamboyant, Italian-Argentinian wrestler, Antonino Rocca. Rocca who developed the acrobatic, dramatized flying-wrestling style for TV known as "western-wrestling" was immensely popular in the New York metropolitan area in those by-gone days of tiny, flickering black and white TV screens.
On our weekly visits to grandpa's house, we often found the old gentleman in his darkened living room, transfixed in front of the TV (with its giant magnifier over the tiny screen) . When the program was wrestling, grandpa's fists were clenched, and his body tense as he dodged and ducked to help deflect the blows directed at his favorite wrestler whom he referred to as 'Tonino'. He bobbed and weaved in time with Rocca's feints, and dodged the flying fists or the booted feet of the flamboyant Antonino's opponents.
I was only a ten-year old, but I quickly realized that the match was fixed! My view was that World Wrestling was simply entertainment for the gullible masses---not legitimate wrestling. Real wrestling was too slow and boring for TV. Rocca was a well-built, well-trained athlete, as well as a talented and inventive performer, who used flying bare-foot jumps, spinning holds (to get his opponent dizzy and confused), face slaps, and body slams to the padded canvas for quick take downs. It was exciting, but I was not taken in by it. It wasn't 'real' combat.
"But grandpa, d'ja see how Rocca jumped on that man's chest with both feet." I would timidly comment--poking my head out from the shadows behind grandpa's big leather chair. "Rocca would'a crushed that guy's chest flat, if he really did it," I would add, persistently.
Grandpa quickly twisted around in his chair to face the little disbeliever: "That's Joey Romain. He's a bull of a man. He could take it!" was grandpa's angry response, after which he'd turn quickly back to the screen, so as not to miss a thing.
"But, didn't you see how one foot landed along side of his chest, and not on it." I would prod him, determined to make my point..
But grandpa would have none of it. He focused on the stream of blue light from the TV and ignored me, just too engaged and emotionally involved to respond to a mere child.
Years went by. I never did get to tell grandpa that I had learned that both Rocca and all of his opponents worked for the same World Wrestling promoters. Both men in the ring knew just who was going to "win" that night, and who was going to "take a fall". And furthermore, it didn't matter which wrestler "won". Since the outcome was the same. Both men took home their well-established contracted salaries. The only real winners were the wrestling promoters, who gathered in the enormous fees for all those "sold-out" Madison Garden seats, and for the valuable and numerous advertisement on TV.
These days, near the end of the President Obama's first term, I'm beginning to feel just like my old grandad in the 1950s. Fooled by the politicians. All of us today are like grandad sitting in a darkened room staring intently at a little box and watching a dramatized event we think is the real thing. Modern-day American politics has become something else. It seems to be nothing but an emotionally-engaging pass-time for the masses. Like Rocca and his old-time opponents, both political parties are working for the same "bosses" and "promoters". They both take money from the same paymasters. Though the actual outcome may not be fully predicted, in the end, it does not matter who wins since the only real winners are the corporatists, bankers, military industrialists and oligarchs for whom the system and the two political parties really work. For the rest of us, we are simply impotent observers, dodging and feinting as our imagined favorites take or give a blow, but when the bell rings and the match is over and the 'ref' raises the hand of one or other party in victory--- there will be no significant change. The winners are the same as in grandad's day--the promoters. Our quadrennial political dance, like Antonino Rocca's phoney feints and fake body slams is so much "window dressing" for democracy. There is no real combat.
Was Lincoln wrong? Are all of us being fooled all of the time?
Get the picture?
rjk
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