Written by Lars Hancock

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This week the United States of America had an election. As a representative democracy, we do such things every now and then, because it makes us feel as if the people of the nation are in control of their own destiny. Ostensibly with our votes, we control the way our country is governed – if you suck, you get voted out, and those who can deliver real results get elected to govern our country to replace your worthless ass.

But that’s not how it really works, is it? In reality what we have in our country is two corporations that select the person who they feel best serves their interests, and they foist said individual upon us as one of two choices to lead our country.

Imagine that WalMart and Citibank were responsible for our elected officials. They would wage war to get their candidate elected so that their special interests would get promoted, and their specific bottom lines would be augmented. Both companies would resort to any dirty trick in the book to get power, because billions of dollars would be at stake. Horrible to consider, right? Yet in reality, how is that any different than our current system?

Fact is, 6 billion dollars was spent on the elections this year, and at the end of the day absolutely nothing was different. What did we get for that 6 billion dollars? The naïve would say “democracy” which is a really cute answer but ignores the reality of the situation. In reality, we created a lot of hate, animosity, and wasted a lot of productivity masturbating over a couple of worthless puppets to a corporate system that serves only to perpetuate itself, and not to serve the country. A pretty lousy investment if you ask me.

This brings to mind the terrible 1985 movie Brewster’s Millions, where Richard Pryor played a down on his luck loser who was suddenly given an inheritance of $300 million dollars. The only catch was he has to blow $30 million in a month, and have nothing of value to show for it at the end of the term. Analogously, America is the down on its luck loser, and we blew $6 billion over the election and have absolutely nothing to show for it. Sadly, that’s where the analogy ends, as there is $60 billion pie at the end of this on which we can feast as a nation. We’re just left with the exact same balance of power, the exact same system which produced it, and a perpetuation of the current economic conditions.

You may misconstrue this rant as sour grapes that my guy didn’t get elected. And this is partially true, but my guy Gary Johnson only got 1% of the vote. The rant would be the same here if Romney was elected over Obama, or if the Senate went Republican, or if the House went Democratic. Even so, none of those happened, and absolutely nothing changed, which highlights the Quixotian nature of the whole process which turned $6 billion dollars into a pile of nothing.

Imagine what we could have done with $6 billion instead of stoking the fires of hate and division for no tangible results. We could have delivered 6 billion meals to starving Haitians, feeding the impoverished island for 1000 meals, or even better, delivered sustainable business to them so they could feed themselves. We could have funded the salaries of 120,000 teachers to educate the youth of this nation, we could have given $25,000 grants to 240,000 small businesses to rebuild the economy, or we could have paid for 60,000 homes to recover from the devastation caused by frankenstorm Sandy. Instead, we moved from point A to point A, and created a whole lot of hate in the process.

But Lars, that’s the way the system works, right? Sure it is, so why change it? Let’s be victims to the circumstance and accept the suckiness of our government and the two-party system. Let’s hate each other, and work to defeat the other guy at all costs. They’re stupid and evil and must be stopped! It’s all about winning after all, even though I’m not sure what we win if we do “win” and then have to continue to fight.

Regardless of whether your guy won or not, you should have a bad taste in your mouth over this whole process. Why can’t we have intelligent discourse over issues, be truthful about our positions and the facts around the opposition, compromise for the good of the nation, remember we are serving the greatest nation on earth, and try to maintain the specialness of America? Thomas Jefferson and John Adams headed the opposing parties of the day, and real and fundamental differences in the construction of the experimental government of the day. Yet through it all, they remained the best of friends with a mutual respect for each other, up to the day they both simultaneously died, July 4, 1826.

We need to insist our political parties behave better and use their funds more judiciously. And we need to insist they get along and work together for the good of this nation. Because it isn’t WalMart and Citibank that decide the future of this nation, it is, in fact, you and me, and we can’t abdicate our maturity and responsibility to people who don’t shepherd it appropriately.

Which brings to mind the disaster that is the Browns. Jimmy Haslam just spent $1B on a team which is being run into the ground by feckless leadership and coaching. He has promised a revolution, one where accountability to the fan takes precedence over the bottom line in perpetuating the brand of the NFL and the Browns corporation. Though our “votes” (i.e. ticket and merchandise sales) over the past 13 years of misery and failure have been avid in support of the miserable failure of the team, at some point we are going to decide enough is enough and not take this crap anymore, and invest our entertainment dollars more wisely.

Mr. Haslam, if you don’t want to be the Montgomery Brewster of the NFL and blow your $1B with nothing to show for it at the end, you need to blow up this whole organization. Immediately. You need to fire the worthless dolt of a coach we have, and start to show the fans that you not only care about them, but will do whatever is right to retain, to earn, their loyalty. Shurmur only serves to destroy fan and team morale, and perpetuate a culture of pathetic losing. November 7^th didn’t produce a revolution, but you can create one November 9^th by firing that idiot today. To deliver Hope for Browns fans, Change we can believe in, and move the franchise Forward.

Anyway, off to the questions.

With much consternation I find myself often concurring with much of what Peek deduces. Forgive me. Which is why I am troubled by his disdain of the Francona hire. I just don't see any down side. The argument that "he has never won by developing talent rather had a massive payroll" is an interesting point but in my estimation not a good enough reason to be anti-Tito. I love Sandy, but nobody can win with this roster. At least Tito knows what a real team would look like and perhaps steer us in that direction. Sandy deserves a "better" chance when he takes a managerial job. Part of Peek's natural skepticism is also duly noted in his question, "Why would he want this job?" Lars, please help me convince Peek the Tito hire was actually a coup for the Tribe. -pod

I was elated that Terry Francona was hired to coach the Indians, and similarly confused as to why he would take the job. Here is the guy that broke the curse of the Bambino, and if you can break one of the longest and most well-established curses in all of sport, Cleveland seems a good destination for you and your brand of witch doctor black magic. He has indeed managed two World Series winners, and knows how to get the most out of his team. You need evidence of his competence, look what Bobby Valentine did with basically the same team Francona left this year – the horrific abortion that was the 2012 Red Sox was a shameful step off the giant cliff of winning Francona built there.

But the Indians are no Red Sox. We need to home grow our talent to compete, and will always be doing it with younger guys and a miniscule payroll. Years of bad drafting and poor return on trades have left the talent cupboard quite bare, a fact that is not a secret across baseball fans, let alone executives in the know. So why would Francona take this job where his chances of success are quite low? It is like Gordon Ramsey taking a job at Denny’s – yeah, the man knows how to cook, but you can only do so much with boxes of frozen shoe-leather grade Salisbury Steak.

Francona’s 2004 and 2007 Red Sox teams were stacked with talent at every position, and had four quality starters on each team with a dynamite bullpen. None of that was Tito’s doing, and you can argue that Bigfoot could have managed those teams to success. Tito didn’t manage any young homegrown talent, no, he got his GM to trade it for perennial all-stars. And yet he is signing up for a gig in Cleveland where he will never have that luxury. Managing to win is easy when you can trot out the Gas House Gorillas’ lineup, but how do you take the Tea Totallers and turn them into a champion?

Francona is a smart man who knows his services are in demand, and obviously feels he can make this situation work. By taking this job, he walked away from a different gig where he could have repeated his glory more easily. The bottom line is the man has won, and knows how to win, and knows how to inspire his troops to win. He knows how to wrestle massive egos into a cohesive team, an increasingly necessary skill for a major league manager, and knows how to get the right effort out of men at the right time. Fact is, nobody is going to make chicken salad out of the chicken shit Shapiro and Antonetti are serving, but I’d much rather eat a plate of it served by Michal Symon than Ronald McDonald. And as such, I firmly believe Francona is as good of a skipper as we could hope for in Cleveland.

Should I start planning my move to Colorado now or wait for the legal challenges from the feds to die down? –That_Guy

As you are well aware, I’ve long been an advocate of marijuana legalization because the opposing position, which was the status quo up to Tuesday evening, is completely nonsensical. Note this is completely different from advocating marijuana use - I will not avow an opinion here because whether you want to be coherent, articulate, and aware should be a personal decision you make on your own based on your life situation and circumstance. The outlawing of a drug more benign than alcohol, the associated dollar drain for the prosecution of crimes related to the use and trafficking of said, and the funneling of dollars to truly evil people as a result of the outlawing of marijuana creates a drain and loss on society that is morally and financially improper. Yet, somehow, we perpetuate the racist-spawned laws of the past because, well, because we were taught drugs are bad m’kay?

Colorado and Washington took the bold steps to say “fuck that” and overcame the powerful momentum of the status quo.  Their voters rejected bad moral and economic policy, and legalized the status quo: that people smoke weed. The question here is what is the federal government going to do about this?

States rights vs. federal authority has been a debate point since the days of Jefferson and Adams. Does the fed say, no, drugs are indeed bad, m’kay, so your voter initiatives are invalid? Or do they just let it go? Considering the Democrats are in power, you’d think the administration would be more libertarian toward drugs, but in no way was legalization ever a promoted party position. Additionally, Democrats are more in favor of a strong Federal government, meaning quelling revolution from accepted Federal government practice is in their party interest. Considering you now have to have drug border checkpoints within your contiguous 50 states if you allow Colorado and Washington to deviate from the norm, and you’ve got one hell of a mess on your hands. Welcome back to office Mr. Obama!

Frankly, I can’t see the feds not challenge this one. It will take years of court time and billions of wasted dollars before the first Starbuds opens in Boulder, and the result of that process will have a dramatic and revolutionary effect on the drug policy of America as a whole. If CO and WA win, Ohio will win too. My advice to you would be not to move if you’re looking to dance with Mary Jane, because she’s coming to a town near you if she goes to Colorado.

Bigfoot. What's your take? –justmebd

Bigfoot is an interesting myth to have perpetuated all these years. People seem fascinated that a hair-covered barely articulate hominoid may be walking the hills of Appalachia, but I ask: does this not describe your average Steelers fan?

It is somewhat fascinating that the lore of Bigfoot exists in almost every culture on every continent on the planet. This can lead us to three logical conclusions: 1) Bigfoot is real, 2) Bigfoot was real some time ago, and 3) People across the planet are full of shit and like to tell tall tales. And while #3 does seem the most likely – noted bullshitter Daniel Boone even claims to have shot a bigfoot once – let’s explore the other two options before we automatically go there.

First off, could there be Bigfoot like creatures walking the earth this day? The answer here is almost certainly no. While man does not inhabit but a small percentage of the land on the earth, we have mapped the entire planet, and have explored most of the habitable land as we live on or near it. For Bigfoot to exist, we must assume he has a lifespan similar to other hominoids which would mean that Bigfoot would have to be born and bred every hundred years or so at a minimum. That means families of Bigfeet would need to exist to perpetuate the species, and exist in sufficient number so they don’t wind up inbreeding to the point of creating a genetic monstrosity (and no, we’re still not talking about Steeler nation). And where as a single isolated Bigfoot just may elude capture from the ubiquitous cell phone camera, a whole tribe of them would certainly have been found by now, making the existence of such a creature impossible today.

But could they have existed in the past? Certainly it would figure that the evolutionary pathway that produced man could have spit out other hominoids throughout the generations between us and our dear Uncle Primordial Ooze. This “missing link” would be halfway between humans and gorillas, less smart than the former and less strong than the latter (think Tony Siragusa). Could such a creature survive? Potentially, yes, such a creature could have evolved, and it would almost certainly be pushed out of its habitat by stronger and/or smarter beings, to the point where a Bigfoot would be a non-viable species. Early man would certainly kill them out of fear, sport, or ennui, as would modern man for that matter. So there could certainly have been encounters which would have been noteworthy as cultures across the globe hunted Bigfoot to extinction.

If that was true, however, you’d think you’d find some sort of fossil evidence of a giant man-like beast. A giant femur or a skull kept as a trophy would certainly have survived through the years as evidence of this creature, but nothing dug up from any habitable land even grossly resembles an artifact from a Bigfoot. Anecdotal evidence doesn’t even record anything in any culture that indicates a Bigfoot contact, save a number of tall tales spun over the years. It seems as the missing link was indeed missing, and Bigfeet never walked the earth.

Which curiously leads us then to the conclusion that every culture has created a fantastic tale of giant men walking in the woods nearby. Considering that television and film have only existed in the modern era, it makes perfect sense that earlier George Lucases would have created such fanciful tales as they would be well received and interesting to people, and people could create a cult around the stories. Basically, therefore, we must conclude Bigfoot is a beloved rerun from the past, like the Brady Bunch or Gilligan’s Island.

 

Please email questions to lars.hancock@yahoo.com, tweet them @ReasonsImADrunk, or DM them to me in the forae to LarsHancock.