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Getman shares sports column comparing athletes, demonstrators

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Guest Opinion

Some of you know that one of life's joys that I take pride in is my athletic career long ago on the championship football and basketball teams in Luverne. 
These memories, if verbalized, honor the coaches who were men of active faith who cared deeply for those of us who played for them. They focused more on character building than on winning, and as a result were perennial champions as winners in more ways than in just the "win/loss" column. I count them as people who shaped our lives and decisions.  
So I share today an insightful column from the sports page of my local daily newspaper, the Washington Post, by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sally Jenkins about how "real power" is illustrated and managed.  Her Jan. 8 column about the Jan. 6 mob attack on our great citadel, the Nation's Capitol, is an analysis of sportsmanship and how we manage ourselves in the arena of street politics. 
— Thomas Getman,
Washington, D.C.
 
Athletes know what rioters don’t: Real power is discipline, not unchecked rage
The difference between an athlete-champion activist and a mere street rioter is that one is an expert in real power and voluntary constraint of it, while the other is an aggrieved raver with an instinct to break down something because he is too weak to build up himself. What separates an activist from an arsonist is the difference between using a platform and lighting someone else’s on fire.
These raggedy snarlers miss the exercise of power entirely. The most powerful thing athletes do with their muscle is not run or rampage. The most powerful thing they do is stop. … when they reach that sideline, they stop. They reel in all of their uncoiled energy in an instant act of will to preserve not just themselves but their opponents. That, my friends, is real, honest-to-God power, and it’s a marvel to watch and admire.
When a football player hits someone out of bounds or attacks a ref, what happens? He is thrown out. And the reason is, sports really aren’t about violence but about real violence averted. Arenas and stadiums are circumscribed spaces — rotundas if you will — with miniature societal compacts, and when you lack self-management in that space, you get ejected. It’s a very useful tool, ejection.
But here’s the most interesting thing: Competitors abide by it. These mentally and physically strong men and women willingly accede to this ethos and recognize it as a higher authority. Otherwise, you aren’t a competitor; you’re just an uncontrolled hacker or jacker. When an umpire jerks a finger at the exit, the player leaves, voluntarily, no matter how aggrieved or unjustly wronged he may feel
… With that understanding, any American sports observer surely has been struck by what he or she has witnessed in the political arena over the past four years: the steady normalization of naked aggression and destruction of rules. The steady attempt to circumvent conventions, to redefine what people will accept, the continual fouls until officialdom is all but numb to offenses, the steady descent into uncontrolled brawl.
On Wednesday, the rioters were all about trashing the arena itself, stomping on every ordinance and protocol, crashing through gates and bashing in doors and windows. Richard “Bigo” Barnett of Gravette, Arkansas, pushed his way into the Capitol, broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, stole her mail, and left her a note that said, “Bigo was here, you b —,” and bragged that he had rubbed his crotch while he was at it. This was his idea of a power grab: a trespass, a brief foul boot across the boundaries of real strength.
How pathetic.
Our sports are not perfect, but one of their worthiest qualities is they still recognize and honor covenants. …  to limit behaviors for common good.
Take away the covenant, and there is no game. There is not even a floor or a field. Boxing can exist only if you agree not to hide a knife or a gun in your glove. Without the covenant … there is only an empty space of naked aggression, suspicion, instability, violence. Paranoia gaming.
And the only reason, you figure, that these people broke into the Capitol and broke the covenant is that they were interested less in competition than in destruction. If you are so comfortable yet utterly aggrieved that you have to wear a race-baiting slogan or flag over your paunch and storm the Capitol because you think you aren’t getting your due from crooked pervert politicians, well, nothing and no one can help you.
Bigo, he’s got nothing but a brag. He and his folks, they don’t trust themselves to excel inbounds, so they ignored the rules and, eventually, got themselves ejected. The arena still stands.
(This piece was edited for space. The full version can be read on the Washington Post website.)

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