Here we go again…

Two notable, and I think related, events have arisen this week that suggest how at least the first few decades of this twenty-first (at least as the Christians count) century are going. First, the once and future president Donald T. announced he was running again for president in 2024—a statement brimming with the confidence of a man who had cost dozens of candidates their elected positions on/after November 8th. Second, the World Cup kicks off November 20th in Qatar—a quadrennial footballing feast that FIFA seems to be trying to shove down the disposal while mere fans are left hungry at the palace gates.

Efforts to explain how the predicted Red Wave turned into a Red Piddle continue, but let’s not fool ourselves into thinking the electorate generally or the Republican Party specifically has seen the emperor without his clothes or that notable constituencies of either/both of those demographics have had enough of the lies and threats. Trump was not on the ballot, of course, so we should not see the losses of those he mentioned at his rallies as losses for him, just as we should not see losses for Russian soldiers retreating from (if not dead near) Kherson as losses for Putin. Trump’s support comes from a different set of needs and emotions than does the support of those he purports to support.

Moreover, Ron DeSantis, the one Trumpic candidate to win his election, is not likely to be a national frontrunner in 2024 because his path is already sullied by Trump, who probably proclaimed his candidacy precisely because he sees the threat that DeSantis represents (to be added to the threats from the State Department, the FBI, the January 6th Commission, and various jurisdictions in New York filing cases against him). One of the many ways “the left”, or at least Democrats, continue to misunderstand Trump and his support is that Trump’s messianic self-absorption is the point. To ask Trump supporters today to explain a specific “great” thing he did as president is to ask for the importance of the atmosphere. It is everything and its value is that it exists, not that it “does” anything for us in any specific way that needs enumeration. 

Personally, I really enjoy the ways Colbert’s Late Show skewers the guy. But because so many of his detractors keep poking his supporters for “reasons” or “examples” as to why he can be trusted to maga© , we keep enjoying/reviling the freak-show qualities of his rallies and trains while we continue to miss the grift and corruption that glom onto any of what we might call the “public things” (like voting laws or infrastructure or elected offices or classified documents) that the Romans called the “res publicae”.

As his detractors continue to satirize, many of them—presumably inadvertently—show us an important point while they also seem not to see it, namely, that his committed followers are looking for validation, not policy or consistency or even success. Thus they can offer oxymoronic rejoinders and nebulous associations about electoral outcomes, space lasers, and grooming, all without cost. An important quality that cults and conspiracies share for the adherents is that the value of the community is reinforced both by success and by failure—by evidence and by a lack of evidence. Where the cult succeeds in helping someone, I get reinforcement of my beliefs. Where the cult fails to help, I get reinforcement that indeed other forces are trying to stop my cult’s benevolence. Where I have evidence of a conspiracy, I am right to fight against it. Where I don’t have evidence of a conspiracy, that just proves how powerful the conspiracy is. When “the left” continues to respond to him, to roll eyes about him, or to poke at his followers to see what silliness they’ll say, the left—presumably inadvertently—is complicit in encouraging the very speeches and voting behaviors they abhor.

Thus, the failures of the many MAGA candidates over these last couple of weeks reinforces at least two qualities of the culture of MAGA Land that will make it difficult to overcome in 2024. First, the losses demonstrate how deep the state is and how the lamestream media are beholden to the blood-drinking pedophiles. But if Jesus were alive today He’d smite His enemy, the Democratic Party, and Trump’s supporters will be ever more motivated to be sure He has easy access to semi-automatic weapons to get the job done. Second, Trump Land is Trump’s Land. No one can do Trump like Trump, and not many people seem interested in voting for a wannabe. They await his second coming, and likely haven’t put much thought into any need for a successor. If I am right on these points, then DeSanctimonious will be out of contention by mid-March 2024. As for the party tearing itself apart as these two mud-wrestle and ball-slap for the nomination? Don’t bet on it. Many are in it for the blood sport, not in spite of it.

And now for something completely different.

Or is it? The World Cup being hosted in Qatar was a horrorshow at the launch, and inspired FBI and Treasury Department investigations into corruption that emptied the Baur al Lac and upended the bank accounts of many a member of the Council that awarded the festival first to Russia (much maligned on this blog) then to Qatar—albeit to both on the same day to bring as much cash into the pockets of voting members as could be had. If you are interested in what the hullabaloo is about, a great place to catch up is the Netflix series “FIFA Uncovered” that traces the world football organization from the early 1970s through the selection process that brought us tournaments in Russia and Qatar and even Gianni Infantino’s rise to the presidency after Blatter’s fall. More on Infantino in a moment, but what is perhaps most striking about the four-part series is how it portrays the workaday palm greasing and de rigueur kickbacking that has made FIFA both one of the most powerful organizations on the planet, and one of the most reviled—rather like Trump.

FIFA was always a gentlemen’s club, and that club gave Mussolini’s Italy the honor of hosting in 1934,  (though a cold historical look at Italian fascism before the pact of 1936 would probably exonerate FIFA of being an accessory to sportswashing in that instance). No doubt the club needed to modernize and make some effort to represent the world, not just Europe and a few footballing powers in South America. João Havelange promised to do that in 1974, and he knew that boatloads of money would be needed to make that happen. He also understood (or, more generously, quickly learned) that as money flowed in, no one really paid attention to the exact numbers going back out. He offered a tv-rights monopoly to International Sport and Leisure, a “Swiss” corporation really governed by the German president of Adidas, Horst Dassler, who also (like Havelange) kept his finger in the pie of the International Olympic Committee. Needless to say, Adidas equipment has had a monopoly of supplying the World Cup finals ever since, though ISL went spectacularly bankrupt in 2001. To go bankrupt and owe some $300 million as the sole owner of rights to televise the World Cup—the single most watched event in human history that gets bigger every quadrennium—must take quite similar talents to, say, driving a casino consortium to bankruptcy when it’s the only game in Atlantic City.

Havelange “retired” from the IOC a few weeks before it was to launch an investigation into his committee upon concerns of corruption. A couple of years later he then was pushed to “retire” of FIFA in 2013 at a similar juncture. One of his closes allies over the last few years of his tenure, and the man who knew where the bundles of cash were buried because he worked as the liaison between ISL and FIFA, was General Secretary Sepp Blatter. As “FIFA Uncovered” demonstrates, Blatter superbly positioned himself to lament the fall of his mentor before the tv cameras while plunging a knife in Havelange’s back as the Brazilian mounted the stairs of FIFA’s Senate. Et tu, Blatté?

Who has paid for the World Cup in 2030?

Most of the series concerns Blatter’s reign, his arrest and conviction on corruption charges, the dismissal of some of those charges, and his being banned from football for six years. One of the surprising scenes in the series concerns the announcement of Qatar as hosts back in 2010, when Blatter actually looks shaken when he reads the name. A number of insiders who agreed to be a part of the Netflix documentary state that Blatter knew at that point that the pyramid of corruption he had manhandled over the past 20 years was in danger of collapse. Indeed, after the deaths of over 3500 guest workers who built new stadia and roads and hotels and airport terminals for a few dollars an hour, Blatter now “bravely” admits that Qatar should not have won the right to host the World Cup. His career as el presidente is as full of unintended ironies as Brazil’s is full of trophies: My faves are that he has an honorary (water) trough at FIFA’s HQ, and the council’s meeting room is fondly reminiscent of the war room in Dr. Strangelove–which is what you might have thought you saw at the top of the post.

Blatter was slow-marched out of office over a period between 2014 and 2016. One of his ardent supporters for the first few months of the firestorm was Gianni Infantino, General Secretary, stating over and over all the good that Blatter and FIFA had brought to football in regions like the Caribbean and North America and sub-Saharan Africa. (Save for the vuvuzelas, most seem to agree that the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, even if bought, was a success.) You may be shocked—shocked!— to discover that Infantino is now the president, and a bloody knife was found in his underwear drawer after he moved into the palace. Or, as better said by Pete Townsend, “Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss.”

And now we are hours away from the kickoff of Qatar’s World Cup, and in the interim since Blatter’s confession, Qatari authorities have threatened European press agents, banned beer from the stadia (still unclear as of writing how Budweiser feels about this, given its monopoly on sales), and continued to push the falsehood that perhaps three people died due to work-related injuries or exhaustion. This is a notable omission of over three thousand souls from the peoples who passed on the mathematical concept of ‘0’ from India to the west. Infantino has offered an embarrassingly absurd defense of what the Qatari authorities are doing, which includes the fact that his sympathy for the family who run the place comes from the fact that he too was picked on growing up for having red hair and freckles. As a middle-aged man with red hair and freckles who was picked on, I am not sure I can find the equivalence, given the fact that some 3400 redheads have not died from being picked on, nor are any of us in danger of being executed for our redheaded orientation.

His tirade is not worth too much time, but I think it worth noting that Infantino’s logic is that of a drunk falling off his stool screaming that the others in the bar are drinking too and thus are hypocritical for calling him out. Or, as better said by Shakespeare, “[He] doth protest too much, methinks…”

So here we go again. Trump will win the Republican nomination because most Republicans don’t have the wherewithal to admit his corruption and incompetence, many Republicans thrive on his corruption and incompetence, and his supporters benefit from neither but are too invested in the carnival to expect their money back at this point. At the same time, Democrats hope building up Trump and his apostles will benefit their own branding and fundraising. Qatar deserve to host the World Cup because Qatar understood better than other bidders for the 2022 edition that timely payments into FIFA to help underdeveloped footballing communities in Trinidad and Tobago or Chad or Venezuela won’t be scrutinized on their way back out. Who’s to say if votes from those countries were because of the payments? Kids desperate to play for their nations at the greatest show on earth won’t really benefit from the payments, but the local associations, whose representatives sit on the FIFA voting council, are too invested in getting access to luxury boxes in the new stadia and paying off yachts in Doha’s harbor to stand up to the cosa nostra of Zurich. My money is on the fact that we will, in spite of it all, get some sublime football and some amazing matches at this carnival too. Does that make me complicit?