The biggest loser

Looks like we may finally have some sense of resolution to the presidential election.  Most of us already felt that way, of course, but for a certain segment of the population, it wasn’t yet settled.  Perhaps now everyone can move on with their lives.

 

This whole sad affair has gotten me thinking about that most American of traditions—the sore loser.  The United States appears to have a longer and richer history of people who didn’t necessarily accept the outright results of a political contest where there was real or implied.  Or sports fans who believe their team was the rightful winner of a Super Bowl where the outcome was influenced by a controversial call by an official.  Or a baseball game that was going one way, then the other after a pitcher became incensed by the umpire’s strike zone and then allowed several runs.  And so on.

 

I think it’s safe to say that when you lose an election by over 70 electoral votes or by seven MILLION actual votes that you’ve lost.  Or at least it used to be.

 

Now, the loser is within his rights to claim not only that he won, but that he won by a landslide, and that a substantial bloc of votes should not be counted because of how they were cast, or when they arrived to be counted, and so on.  And whereas in the past a politician would be counseled by his party elders about how to proceed after a loss, apparent or otherwise, but now such “leaders” clam up and say that the aggrieved candidate has the right to appeal, explore options, etc.

 

This reminds me a lot of when I was a kid.  I’m the middle of three brothers.  My older brother is two years and one day older than I am, and he never forgave me for being born.  We were compulsory playmates, living in the same house and such, so I wound up playing a lot of basketball and whiffleball and other sports with him when we were young.  And I seldom won.  This was somewhat because my brother was bigger and stronger and probably more athletically inclined that I was.

 

But it was also because he was a compulsive cheater.  In basketball he freely committed fouls without apology, and routinely explained them away with nonsense like “the hand is part of the ball, so there’s no foul.”  He would trip me as I went to the basket and deny having even made contact.  Playing board games was no better, he would actually steal Monopoly money when others playing weren’t looking.  There have been other instances in our relationship that were not related to playing a game that had more consequence that were much the same.

 

And on and on and on.  But on the rare occasions when he actually lost to me at anything, you should have heard him!   

 

So all of this hogwash (hadn’t heard that word in some time until a recent commercial unearthed it) that we’re seeing and hearing sounds rather familiar.