VICTORY LAPS

Participation trophies devalue individual achievement. 

President Trump declares victory almost everyday on some issue. I sometimes wonder if he gives a victory speech to his bathroom mirror every morning after a successful defecation. The reality is that Mr. President is a brilliant PR Monster from the NYC business machine. So be it. He is our elected POTUS.

Mr. Trump's self-aggrandisement does not bother me as long as he is putting in the hours and upholds American Constitutional Law in the interests of American citizens/taxpayers. And I think he is. Success is his drug of choice. That works for me as his constituent.

Others have taken victory laps without victories. George W. Bush famously declared victory in Iraq and Afghanistan 16 yrs ago. He even dressed up in military drag to do it on a naval vessel. The man was downright silly. He had famously never served in the military during the Vietnam War due to his aristocratic privilege, but dared play Dress-up Commander-in-Chief to announce a victory which most likely will never happen. 

Barack Obama was awarded a trophy in the form of a Nobel Peace Prize before doing anything to actually accomplish peace anywhere. He subsequently oversaw the violent destabilization of The Middle East and ignored the rise of murderous Mexican cartels to our south until they gained status as international businesses. His greatest success in eight years was being the first visibly multiracial POTUS. Period. And he repeatedly took a victory lap for his genetics, over which he had no control.

The same will probably be said for the First Woman POTUS and the First LGBTQ-(etc.) POTUS. There is no mystery in the current cultural obsession with identity in the U.S.. When the common citizen sees the adulation heaped on leaders based on how they physically present themselves, as opposed to what they actually accomplish for the republic, identity becomes a validated and valuable social currency.

I happen to think this process actually bubbled up from our primary education system. When everybody gets a trophy, all discernment of success or accomplishment is blinded. By eliminating failure, our educators are unavoidably eliminating true achievement.

Judgement-free society is a stupid society, and one vulnerable to all the dysfunctions of human beings with personality disturbances. One Planet Fitness, which touts itself as a Judgement-Free gym franchise, experienced one such test when a member entered, stripped off and started to do naked yoga on communal mats. Perhaps a similar judgement-free rationale is employed by Antifa members who riot and commit violence in the name of social justice.

If every person's insanity is admirable, then it follows that sanity itself is devalued.

Reality-TV's popularity is the manifestation of narcissistic self-congratulation and its resulting self-devaluation. Whether the viewer says, "I'm not that nuts!", or "That's what I would do.", it does not matter. The process of millions of people being drawn to watch the minutiae of strangers' lives on a two-dimensional screen for hours in a day speaks to social dysfunction in the real world on an epic scale.

True human victory in The Universe comes from overcoming Entropy (Chaos). If ants and bees can be victorious as species in this way, then the evolution of human beings has given us the potential to continue to do great things. The current social and political trends in developed nations are eroding that wired social capacity of our species.

One example: The organization of functional and somewhat democratic nation states in the last several centuries has occurred through great violence and expense, culminating in WWII and the development of weapons of human extinction. This subsequently led to the development of Space exploration and the development of the technologies which are now fueling health care, transportation and all infrastructure. It also led to the development of digital communication.

Paradoxically, digital communication, based in a single dominant language (English), may be the counterbalance to other forms of scientific progress. Rather than consolidating national identities to do great things, digital communication is being used to undermine social cohesion of nations in favor of control by global oligarchs. These oligarchs are in favor of the destruction of nation states to expedite aristocratic-bureaucratic global rule. The EU is an actualization of that system.

The masses are being encouraged to pull inward individually. To be divided and conquered. 

Conformist individuals are given tailored pats on the head by their mesmerizing media screens. Outspoken critics, or skeptics, are either silenced on those screens or demonized. The victory lap of the inane presenter who acquires one million subscribers on YouTube by presenting innocuous content is encouraged. The controversial skeptic who gets one million subscribers is in danger of being de-platformed. 

We are all winners, as long as we keep our mouths shut and nod to the dictated "correct" answer. Those who have been raised to believe being a winner is essential to being human, regardless of the true nature of their abilities, cannot cope with failure. They feel dehumanized and humiliated. This is a powerful weapon in the hands of those oligarchs who wish to rule us and exploit us.