23rd of November 2020
Winning feels nice; losing sucks. We all know this from playing Monopoly and chess to making war and politics and losing our beloved country.
Fact is…In the game of REAL POLITIK did we actually lose our country or were we cheated out of it?
A lot of white South Africans today do not feel as if they lost the game/war. They rather feel like they were cheated. Betrayed. Which means they feel like the actual winners and resent the cheating “Other side”.
Americans are currently going through the same process. Republicans against Democrats. Trump vs Biden. Who is cheating whom out of an election? Are the cheaters proud of winning through cheating? Are their fans proud supporters of the cheating? How can they be?
The morality of cheating can open a Pandora’s box on its own.
When I am talking of cheating, I am not talking about infidelity as in a relationship. I am talking of the type of cheating as in sports for instance.
Why people want to win at all costs is a despicable mystery to some as much as it is a logical conclusion to other competitors and even admired by winners. I mean, nobody competes to lose, right? What is the point?
But when you cheat to win…did you then actually win? Can you look yourself in the mirror? Can you tap yourself on the shoulder when you have cheated?
See, in order for cheating to exist, there has to be rules. There needs to be consensus to stick to these rules. Ultimately, these rules need to be subverted, circumvented or broken.
Attached to the official rules are other unwritten rules. Rules that spring from our value systems, our morals, our religions that we grew up with.
These are certain social norms, that make society function smoothly and without constant strife and conflict.
Let us face it, there might not be any official breaking of any rules or laws, but there are certain things that you simply do not do. You don’t jump the queue at the supermarket. You don’t piss the neighbours off with a constant hammering or barking dog. You respect people’s personal space at a urinal. When you are at someone else’s home, you do not scratch in their refrigerator or change the TV channels without asking. And when you are braaing at someone else’s home, FFS you don’t take your own sakkie-sakkie CD’s along.
There are social norms when it comes to behaviours around everything from using cell-phones to dining out, driving cars, using elevators, behaviour in a class or the workplace and treating the opposite gender.
Where social norms can be very subjective, based on the person’s value system he drags around with him, rules are more objective. Consensualised and often refereed.
However, often the interpretations of these rules by the belligerents or the referee can lead to conflict in itself where the wronged party feels that he or she is now being treated unfairly and unjustly. This leads to resentment, a need for revenge and justice, etc…
People cheat so much that cheating has become part of everyday life. People cheat in golf. Kids enter cheat codes when playing video games. Lance Armstrong used illegal substances in cycling, Australians cheat at cricket…
Cheating is so prevalent that itself has become a regulated norm. One team might have a “home advantage” now, but as long as we give the other side the same advantages at a later stage, it is OK. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) admits that cheating is widespread throughout athletics and sports. Just about everyone cheats.
One would think that a cheater in sport might feel guilty, but they don’t. Sport psychologists have done tests on people engaging in unethical behaviour and found that it did not trigger any negative effects, but instead positive effects. They talk of a “Cheater’s High”.
Fact is, cheaters enjoy cheating. They get off on it. And they don’t feel guilty about it at all.
After his fall from grace, paying millions in fines, federal law suits and $100 million in legal fees, Lance Armstrong said in a BBC interview that if it was still 1995, he would “probably do it again.”
See, no remorse…even after such severe punishment.
Which brings us to the point of punishment for cheaters…if any.
Remember I am not talking of decapitation or stoning as they do to people engaging in infidelity in some shithole middle eastern countries. I am talking here about sports people having their careers ended, stripped of their victories, handing back their medals and trophies, etc…to uphold the honesty and sanctity of the game for a broader community. Lance Armstrong was by far not the only person cheating. He was simply the one who got caught. Was it worth it? All the shame of being known as a cheat? For someone earning $28 million a year and having a personal worth of about $300 million…even after half of it was deducted for fines and legal fees…I think I can live quite comfortably as a cheat for the rest of my life on $150 million. At the end of the day, if the payoff is so huge why wouldn't you cheat?
And this is where the biggest problem comes in. The huge payoffs. Sometimes all that stands between you and a lifetime payoff of a billion dollars is another guy and if someone comes along and offers you a solution would you really hesitate?
Then there is the problem of the supporters of the cheater.
When David Walsh, the Irish sports journalist of the Sunday Times, brought down Lance Armstrong, he was pleasantly surprised to find out that Armstrong’s army of supporters would turn against him.
Not only did Walsh have to contend with Armstrong’s followers who did not want to know about the cheating, he was also shunned by his own colleagues, editor and degraded by his publisher. Nobody wanted to hear that Lance was cheating - even if he was.
The same can be said of football fans who have overwhelming supported Patriots quarterback Tom Brady, and ridiculed the NFL's commissioner Roger Goodall, over the Deflategate cheating charges and investigation.
Brady deflated footballs to cheat. Initially Brady referred to the accusations as "ridiculous" and claimed the balls went flat in the sun during half time. Scientific experiments and statistics proved that this could not be the case. Court case after court case followed and surprisingly…Not only his fans, but also the media sided with the cheating Brady.
It just proves again…fans support a winner, regardless how they win.
The question is thus…should doping and cheating be allowed?
When I grew up, Rugby was still mostly an amateur sport. Some countries like France and Italy turned pro already. Only after Francois Pienaar’s Springboks won the World Cup in 1995 did it turn professional worldwide.
In fact, in the old days we would never allow professional athletes to compete in the Olympics, seeing that they had an unfair advantage training professionally. Today they are allowed in the Olympics. Only Boxing and Wrestling still hold out against it. In fact, it was about to change in 2020, but that is gone now.
So, what changed? Basically, the rules. What is next if we allow doping? Probably genetic modification. It is all just forms of performance enhancement. At what point will we draw the line on performance enhancement?
In democracy politics when one candidate gets donated a lot more money than the other for its campaign, is this not the equivalent of a Roid shot? It is nothing other than “Performance Enhancement”.
Besides if we consider professional athletes to have an unfair advantage over amateur athletes, why do we then allow big tech companies like Google, Facebook, YouTube, Amazon, etc. to have an unfair advantage over other smaller companies? I mean everyone knows how Bill Gates cheated his way past Steve Jobs to the top. Yet we allow it. Tolerate it. Even admire it.
Taking a little blue pill to enhance sexual performance is cheating. It is unfairly overcoming mother nature and cheating a competitor out of a win.
When I see people get away with cheating, I stop supporting them straight away. After Hansie Cronje, Shane Warne and Mark Waugh were caught dealing with bookies, I stopped watching cricket. I haven’t watched a single game since. I was a huge Liverpool fan when I was a kid, but after Bruce Grobbelaar was caught throwing games, I stopped watching football altogether. Likewise, I was a huge boxing fan as a kid, but after I discovered that Don King was involved with the mafia and scamming everyone including his own fighters, I completely stopped watching Boxing.
I am just waiting for the exposés on cheating in the UFC and Female Beach Volleyball and I will have absolutely no more sports to watch.
So why have rules at all? Why not just say that we scrap all the rules, all weight classes and all gender separation?
Let as take the UFC for instance. If we say that there are no rules, what will it resemble and where do we draw the line? If we say it is a no-holds-barred unarmed combat between two participants, we are already setting rules. No weapons allowed is a rule. Limiting the number of combatants to two is a rule.
I have often wondered how such a sport would look like and to what it would lead. Pushed to its logical conclusion, my mind said to me it would lead to total annihilation of all life on earth.
However, in reality it would probably end up looking like WWE (Wrestling) where you have some big muscle men and women in ridiculous clothes and masks putting up a mock fight for the entertainment of the stupid public.
A public, mind you, who is fully aware of the massive amounts of doping. A public who is fully aware that it is all just a show. A public who knows all about the cheating…and are still HUGE fans, despite it all.
Or maybe it will resemble something like my favourite sport, Women’s Beach Volleyball…where, even after years of watching, still, nobody knows the rules and nobody cares.
See, when we are all in on the truth, honest with each other and there is nothing more to hide, then the cheating is no real cheating anymore. It is a mock cheating, there is no real competition and everyone is happy about it, because it is purely mindless entertainment.
That is what Americans will have to decide about their wonderful democracy. Either everyone plays by the rules with ZERO cheating or their elections will ultimately become a WWE sideshow with hidden scriptwriters and choreographers.