Trumpism Is Not A Team Sport

On February 28th, 2002, back when it was still acceptable to have a website with a bright yellow background and a “PRINT” button on each page, Bill Simmons published his infamous 20 Rules For Being A True Fan.

And ever since that day, writers have been trying to lay out the rules of sports fandom.

Some rules focused on attire:

Don’t wear cheap-looking replica jerseys or flimsy-looking bargain-basement hats. Come on. You’re representing every fan from your team. Show some pride.

Others offered relationship advice:

If your team defeats a good friend’s team in a crucial game or series, don’t rub it in with them unless they’ve been especially annoying/gloating/condescending/confrontational in the days leading up to the big battle...

But none captured the pathos of fandom better than Joshua Glasgow's ode to being a “real fan”:

The real fan identifies with her team. Your team loses, you lose with them. A player does something embarrassing, and you are embarrassed with them. You put in time, money, and emotion, and in return, you get disappointment, loss, and a level of tragedy that puts Greek drama to shame.

Most importantly, [real fans] are almost never allowed to stop rooting for their team—and especially not because the team has been losing lately.

The difference between a real fan and a fake fan is the choice between supporting your team or soothing your ego.

Because it turns out, you can't do both.

A couple of days ago, Donald Trump tweeted a familiar warning to his followers:

If Kamala wins, you are 3 days away from the start of a 1929-style economic depression. If I win, you are 3 days away from the best jobs, the biggest paychecks, and the brightest economic future the world has ever seen.

I say “familiar” because he offered an almost identical warning about Joe Biden in 2020:

If Biden [gets] in, you’ll have a stock market crash because they’re gonna raise your taxes to a level that nobody’s ever been raised before. You’ll have a stock market crash the likes of which nobody in this country has ever seen before. The likes of 1929 or worse.

(For the record, the stock market hit several record highs during Biden's presidency.)

And as I wondered, for the 30,574th time, why Trump’s supporters fall for these brazen, easily debunked lies, as I asked myself how they can be so enraged by facts yet unconcerned that their team is constantly lying to them, it occurred to me that many of them support their political team for the same reason they support sports teams: they “identify” with them.

Political parties don’t have voters anymore, they have fans. And fans have never required honesty or expected their players to back up their pre-game talk. It doesn't matter if teams take their fans for granted or their star quarterback occasionally quotes Hitler, all they have to do is clear the low bar of not being “the other guys." 

And to be clear, this isn't exclusively a Trump problem.