Monday, August 27, 2012

Exposed: Official Game Rules of American Politics (Satire)

Click here to access article by Carmen Yarrusso from Truthout

The author uses a metaphor of a professional baseball league consisting of two teams to explain the American election system. I'm not sure that this qualifies as "satire", because it is simply using a metaphor to explain how the system actually works. If he made fun of gullible Americans who believe the mythology about elections and their legitimacy, that would be satire.
The game of American Politics is played by skilled politicians (called players), but controlled by an elite ruling class of oligarchs (called owners). The game is comparable in many ways to pro baseball, except there are only two competing teams (called Republicans and Democrats). Like pro baseball, 1) the players work for the owners, not for the people who finance the game, 2) the players are well paid (especially highly skilled players), but the big profits go to the owners, and, 3) like baseball, the big profits in American Politics come from the pockets of the masses of people observing the game (called fans).