Combs: Basketball crazies are harmless, political crazies are dangerous

College basketball season is my favorite time of year. It absorbs me. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a Duke fan. I have no particular reason to be a Duke fan; I didn't go there, and no one I know is on the team or works for the program.

My brother and my grandmother went to Duke but my wife went to Chapel Hill. My sisters and my mother and I all went to other UNC schools. But there's no real connection; it's arbitrary. No one on either team cares if I live or die, and I don't really care if my team ever wins another game. It's a meaningless amusement, nothing more, but I still love it. I hate to miss any Duke game. I yell, jump, dance and break things and enjoy the fun of pretending I care.

The worst thing about being a sports fan is the fans who delude themselves into thinking there are important distinctions between these gangs of rich strangers in far-away cities. Following UNC-Chapel Hill's crushing home court loss to Virginia, I read some truly nasty, vitriolic comments about Coach Williams on the Winston-Salem Journal's Web site. To read these comments, you'd think Williams had bombed an orphanage and desecrated a church. In fact, he's a fine and talented man. So are his players; they'll be championship contenders in a year or two, just not this year.

The simple fact is that -- with the exception of Bob Knight and the entire Indiana program (note: irony), most of these folks are admirable and decent humans. People ridicule and cuss complete strangers over something that is absolutely meaningless. They ruin the experience of a fun, amusing pastime by inserting their arbitrary, meaningless, irrelevant, unreasoning, blind, animal passion. Because basketball is meaningless, there's no real loss when they do that. Life goes on.

Tragically, people apply the same destructive prejudice to things that do matter. They attach unreasoning loyalty and hate to political parties and governments -- and that gets people enslaved, impoverished and killed.

It amazes me, week after week, someone will cuss me for the crime of criticizing their favorite politician. There is the assumption that if I criticize the stupid murdering communist president, I must be taking big payoffs from my Republican corporate masters. If I criticize the stupid murdering fascist Republicans, I must be in Osama bin Laden's pocket, siding with America's enemies. Most Americans don't mind murder, treason, plunder, torture, theft or slavery; they just object when the Other Guy is doing it and Our Guy wasn't invited to the party.

There's no question of right and wrong, no consideration of the equal application of justice, no regard for the Golden Rule, just mad, blood-thirsty team spirit. Like Orwell's animals, the people chant, "Four legs good! Two legs bad!" and call it patriotism.

In the process, they get people killed: Afghans, Iraqis, Yugoslavs, Somalis, Lebanese, Palestinians, Haitians, Vietnamese, Nicaraguans, Cambodians, Laotians, Columbians, Salvadorans, Israelis, Kurds by the thousands die and bleed and burn because we allow -- indeed, encourage! -- our government to go on mad killing sprees whenever our chosen party is back in power. In the 1990s, Republicans vehemently condemned Clinton's various adventures, calculated as they clearly were to distract from his personal failings. Yet, as soon as Bush came to power, foreign adventures were the best things there ever were. Suddenly, to Republicans, even asking if attacking the entire Muslim world was a good idea was nothing less than treason.

As the Bush wars raged on, Democrats tore their hair out. Bush is a war criminal! Bring our boys home! But now that Obama is pulling the trigger, the Democrats' silence is deafening. War's not so bad! Go git 'em!

It's not just a problem abroad. No one objects to inflation, deficit spending, plunder, theft, counterfeiting, forfeiture, graft, corruption and influence peddling, as long as their guy is the one doing it.

"Blame the Bush administration; they got us into this mess."

"No, blame the Clintons. Bush inherited this mess."

Truth is, Dems and Pubs have worked hand-in-hand for a century to abolish the gold standard, empower the Fed, inflate our currency and impoverish us all. They are partners. You support one team or the other, and neither one of them cares if you live or die. They certainly don't care if you vote them out of office, because you'll vote them right back in again. They're tickled to take turns.

They kill people whenever they feel like it. Randy Weaver's family, Branch Davidians, the World War I veterans, civil rights marchers, why should they care? They have "prosecutorial immunity" and armies of bodyguards. There are no consequences for them. They can rob you, cheat you, betray you, drive your employer out of business, put you out of work, tax your last dollar, foreclose on your home and give it to the bank, along with a few trillion in bailout money.

"Blame the previous administration; they got us into this mess."

Sure. Eventually, Your Guy will emerge triumphant and the Other Guy will be utterly discredited. Go team! As Rorschach said, I hope that though comforts you as you wait for the axe to fall.