{"id":801,"date":"2012-06-28T13:22:29","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T20:22:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/?p=801"},"modified":"2012-06-28T13:22:29","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T20:22:29","slug":"giants-and-greece","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/archives\/801","title":{"rendered":"Giants and Greece"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser<\/em> June 2012)<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t have to look far to see how pervasive suffering is in the world.\u201d Joseph Goldstein<\/em><\/p>\n

Matt Cain recently pitched a perfect game for the San Francisco Giants while Greece is in the midst of a massive economic collapse. Gregor Blanco made one of the great catches in Giants history to preserve Cain\u2019s perfecto while Spain is in economic freefall with over 25% unemployment and Spanish real estate prices falling falling falling. Cain gave his catcher Buster Posey much of the credit for the no-no while Syria is in the midst of a horribly bloody civil war with thousands of casualties, many of them women and children.<\/p>\n

Cain\u2019s perfect game is only the twenty-second perfect game in the 130-year history of baseball while the Japanese government has ordered the restarting of several of their dangerously unsafe nuclear power plants despite a vast majority of the Japanese people opposed to nuclear power in the wake of the ongoing catastrophic meltdowns at the Fukushima nuclear power plants.<\/p>\n

And how about Melky Cabrera, the Melkman, leading the National League in hitting while the American economy is collapsing around our ears. True, Tim Lincecum is having an awful year so far and Barry Zito is showing signs of faltering after a strong start, but the rest of the Giants starters are pitching magnificently while California\u2019s budget deficit is several billion dollars more than state officials anticipated, though anyone with half a brain knew that such drastic cuts in government spending would guarantee equally drastic economic contraction.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe may have compassion for the victims of social or political injustice, but can we feel compassion for those who perpetrate that injustice?\u201d Joseph Goldstein<\/em><\/p>\n

For many years I have been in the habit of listening to Giants baseball games on a little silver transistor radio I carry from room to room and out into the garden. When I lived in Berkeley, I had a neighbor who was bothered by my interest in the Giants, and he told me so one day when he found me in my vegetable patch listening to a game while I pulled weeds and watered.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou\u2019re such an intelligent person,\u201d he said, shaking his head. \u201cHow can you listen to that meaningless junk when there\u2019s so much suffering in the world?\u201d<\/p>\n

This fellow, I hasten to add, walked his talk. He was a medical doctor who worked long hours in a clinic for poor people and spent the rest of his time reading books about social injustice and political corruption and writing passionate letters to government officials and marching against social injustice and wars waged for corporate hegemony. He lived frugally and gave away most of the money he made to help fund the clinic where he worked, so\u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is an antidote to my own suffering,\u201d I replied, comforted by the inimitable ambience only baseball on the radio provides. \u201cA form of guided meditation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSponsored by earth-killing corporations,\u201d he said, pointing at my radio dangling amidst the snow pea vines. \u201cListen. Yet another ad for Chevron.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI studiously do not buy gas from Chevron,\u201d I said\u2014an easy boast since I didn\u2019t own a car.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut why do you like that garbage?\u201d he asked, visibly upset. \u201cYou like basketball, too, don\u2019t you?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLove basketball,\u201d I said, nodding. \u201cBasketball was my salvation and succor for many years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd you actually care<\/em> who wins?\u201d He sighed despondently. \u201cWhat a waste.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI care and I don\u2019t care,\u201d I said, as one of our boys led off the seventh with a single. \u201cThe game matters in the moment and doesn\u2019t matter in the next moment. I\u2019m not attached once the game is over. For long.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut do you know why<\/em> the major corporations sponsor these games?\u201d he asked, waving his arms in frustration. \u201cBecause it keeps people occupied so they won\u2019t take any meaningful action to create substantive change. It\u2019s a mechanism of social control. And look what they\u2019re selling. Gasoline, beer, cars, insurance, computers, plastic, Las Vegas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo what do you think I should do?\u201d I asked, trying not to hold him responsible for altering the game with his negative attitude (see quantum physics) and causing the double play that just wiped out our first decent scoring opportunity since the first inning. \u201cI don\u2019t have a television or a car or health insurance or really much of anything except a piano, a guitar, a very slow computer, and things to cook with. You want me to toss the little radio and take a vow of chastity and silence? Gimme a break, it\u2019s baseball. I love baseball. I played baseball growing up. Baseball is in my bones, in my blood.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cEntrained since childhood,\u201d he said, nodding dolefully. \u201cThat\u2019s what they do. Cradle to grave entrainment disguised as entertainment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Then it hit me: this guy did not play baseball growing up. Baseball was not in his bones, in his blood. He did not understand what I was experiencing when I listened to a game on the radio because he had no real understanding of the language of baseball. He might as well have been listening to someone speaking Greek, assuming he didn\u2019t understand Greek, which I think is a fair assumption.<\/p>\n

And the moment I realized that his antipathy was as much about what he didn\u2019t<\/em> understand about baseball as it was about what he did<\/em> understand about corporate control of the media, I was filled with compassion and said, \u201cWant any lettuce? I have a vast surplus in need of harvesting.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cLove some,\u201d he said, his frown giving way to a smile.<\/p>\n

\u201cCompassion is the tender readiness of the heart to respond to one\u2019s own or another\u2019s pain, without resentment or aversion.\u201d Joseph Goldstein<\/em><\/p>\n

There are only eleven million people in Greece, about a quarter of the population of California, and because Greece is so small, relatively speaking, the annihilation of Greek society by their corrupt government in collusion with their corrupt banking system is easier to discern than the annihilation of American society by our corrupt government in collusion with our corrupt banking system. But the mechanisms of both annihilations are identical (not to mention intertwined), and what unfolds in Greece is predictive of things about to unfold here if the powers-that-be don\u2019t quickly and dramatically shift current fiscal policy away from austerity to something resembling the stimulating policies of Franklin Delano Roosevelt.<\/p>\n

That is to say, a small minority of unscrupulous people in the banking\/government system of America, stole trillions of dollars from the people of America, kept billions of those dollars in their personal bank accounts, and gambled away the rest. Then when the financial system began to totter and fall, these same criminals stole trillions more to prop up the markets and the banks a little while longer\u2014which is where we are today.<\/p>\n

In their most recent election, enough Greeks were scared by erroneous propaganda into voting for the same criminals who created the current economic mess so that the annihilation of their country will continue, in the same way that enough Americans in our upcoming election will be scared into voting for the same criminals who created our portion of the global mess so the annihilation of our country and the world will continue.<\/p>\n

The good news is that the Giants are doing remarkably well this season and are poised to make a strong run in the second half. If Lincecum can get back on track and Pablo will shed twenty pounds and stop swinging at high pitches out of the strike zone, and if Blanco can keep getting on base ahead of Melky, and Melky and Buster keep hitting well, and Crawford keeps being Crawford, we might very well go deep into the post season if not all the way to the World Series. And once there, as we know from recent experience, anything is possible.<\/p>\n

As Charles Dickens wrote to begin A Tale of Two Cities<\/em>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

And as Joseph Campbell said so eloquently on his eightieth birthday, \u201cThe field of time is a field of sorrow. Life is sorrowful. How do you live with that? You realize the eternal within yourself. You disengage and yet re-engage. You\u2014and here is the beautiful formula: you participate with joy in the sorrows of the world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(This article appeared in the Anderson Valley Advertiser June 2012) \u201cWe don\u2019t have to look far to see how pervasive suffering is in the world.\u201d Joseph Goldstein Matt Cain recently pitched a perfect game for the San Francisco Giants while Greece is in the midst of a massive economic collapse. Gregor Blanco made one of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1676,268,1671,160,1677,1669,1674,487,1672,17,1675,916,1666,1538,1673,1668,1032,1629,1022,1667,1670,261,102,36,1021,1665,281,9,33,1678],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":803,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801\/revisions\/803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/underthetablebooks.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}