The Plus Side Of Bread And Circuses

It’s better the masses are outraged over NFL officiating rather than Trump

Super Bowl week is upon us. Prepare for some people to now complain about “bread and circuses.” The NFL championship game is the biggest spectacle in America. One has to hide under a rock to not notice it. Most Americans love it, but some find its low-brow, commercial nature contemptible. Echoing Marx, critics see the Super Bowl–and even sport itself–as the opiate of the masses. It lulls them into complacency and distracts them from the real issues.

However, this might actually be a good thing. The 2010s witnessed a dramatic politicization of the masses, much to America’s grief. When normies were whipped up about politics, they were prone to join online mobs against “racists” and other political dissidents. They would cut off friends merely for voting for Trump and encourage employers to fire them. They embraced Black Lives Matter and other elements of wokeness. Politics made normies very angry and impacted their daily lives. It wasn’t good for them or for the country.

Now hoi polloi seem focused on other things, such as football. The country is much calmer as a result. Trump won the election by a wide margin, and it resulted in zero turmoil. His supporters no longer fear job termination. They can even walk around in deep blue cities with MAGA hats on without trouble. Free speech is once again allowed on social media. Many popular entertainers feel safe to attack liberal shibboleths. The public isn’t bothered by Trump’s radical actions in the first days of his new term. Whereas his first term sparked public hysteria over Trump’s every move, the masses now shrug off the J6 pardons and the revoking of birthright citizenship.

Apparently, the people are too focused on mindless amusements to fixate on these things anymore. That’s (mostly) a good thing. Rather than making them super BASED, the politicization of the masses makes them foot soldiers of the Left. If you take away their entertainment, they’re bound to do something stupid.

Example: the BLM riots of 2020. All sports were cancelled in the months prior thanks to COVID. People were stuck in their homes with nothing to do. They didn’t delve into philosophy or literature; they sat and stewed. This anger and frustration was transferred to the cause of Black Lives Matter. While race riots and Antifa violence were common in the late 2010s, the magnitude of the Summer of Floyd was only possible due to the lockdowns. The lockdowns upended the lives of Americans and, naturally, they were upset about it. But instead of protesting against the source of their discontent, they marched for “racial justice.”

The return of sports calmed down the people somewhat. There were fewer riots once the NFL season began, but sports began to reflect the woke mood of the masses. Both the NFL and NBA displayed BLM propaganda during gameplay. The MLB was forced to hold off games in protest of the shooting of a black criminal in Kenosha, Wisconsin. The Milwaukee Bucks boycotted a playoff game over that same event. This woke focus was still evident after 2020. The MLB pulled its All-Star Game out of Georgia in 2021 in response to the state passing an election reform bill. The NFL kept up the BLM propaganda for that year and the next. The NHL and MLB made players wear Pride emblems.

This is why the old Greerhead pledge included “No NFL.” In the early 2020s, professional sports–particularly the NFL–were propagandizing leftism to the masses. It was odd for conservatives to eagerly support leagues that spit on their values and put BLM slogans in endzones. Not watching the NFL signified a rejection of this insidious development.

As America got further away from the dark days of 2020, professional sports began to shed wokeness. The BLM slogans went away. The NHL stopped making players wear Pride emblems. On-the-field political statements largely disappeared. The only one I can recall from last year was 49ers defensive end Nick Bosa wearing a MAGA hat after a game. The Trump dance became a popular celebration across sports. The Super Bowl announced it would no longer have an “End Racism” message in the endzone.

It’s not that sports veered from the Left to the Right. It’s just that they dropped politics and reverted back to pure entertainment. That’s what the people wanted. Wokeness interferes with bread and circuses. The audience doesn’t want lectures on police shootings, transgender issues, racism, or anything else. They just want to watch the game,

Another new development has further distracted the masses from politics: sports betting. We may come to see the 2018 Supreme Court decision legalizing sports betting as one of the most important decisions of the modern era. The industry went from nothing to raking in $11 billion in revenue in 2023. All the sports leagues are tied in with the betting apps. Every other commercial during a game is for a betting app, and stadiums are plastered with gambling advertisements. There is a very dark aspect to this. There is no value from sports betting. All it does is force millions of Americans into debt. The fact it’s so heavily promoted is shameful.

With that said, there is a silver lining to it. Many of the demographics that were involved in the riots and unrest of the 2020s, particularly black men, are now focused on FanDuel and DraftKings. They can’t be riled up to care about Trump or BLM when they’ve got parlays on the line. Black men are probably the demographic that experienced the most dramatic level of depoliticization over the last few years. They didn’t show up to vote for Kamala, and they didn’t show up to protest the exoneration of Daniel Penny. The proliferation of sports betting may explain why.

This is said not to encourage readers to indulge in bread and circuses. There is a very dumb, low common denominator aspect to these things. But that’s what appeals to the masses. They’re not going to have the same interests as intellectually curious types. They aren’t going to read Nietzsche and discuss the finer points of the Napoleonic Wars. The Romans understood that not all men are created equal. They gave the plebians the bread and circuses to maintain peace and order. This didn’t prevent Roman elites from pursuing higher passions. The blood sports and vulgar festivities were merely concessions to social stability.

The masses are usually motivated by base desires. It’s just how it is. One can wish they cared about more important things than who caught the most passes last Sunday, but that’s the way of the world. It is necessary to prevent them from indulging every vulgar passion. We don’t want them abusing drugs or watching porn in public. Those vices may ensure passivity among the lower sorts, but it harms the rest of society. Gambling is also one of those vices. The costs of legalized sports betting may soon come to bite us as millions drown themselves in debt and few pay it off.

But watching sports is harmless. Being obsessed with it and getting angry over the game’s results may be silly, but most hobbies would seem that way to the uninitiated. It’s better that hoi polloi are mad over refs favoring the Chiefs than Trump deporting criminal aliens.

Claims that we will get a right-wing “revolution” (whatever that would entail) if we simply take away the bread and circuses from the masses are wrong. As the Summer of 2020 shows, the masses are more likely to be brainwashed into a left-wing revolt.

Things may be bad now, but they can get a whole lot worse. We don’t want a return to peak woke. Let the people amuse themselves while Trump tries to make America great again.