a sports analogy for every occasion

[rone]

Israel's like the obnoxious Yankees fan who insisted on moving to Boston because he can trace his ancestry all the way back to Plymouth Rock, then attends every Red Sox game at Fenway Park drunk to the gills, where he loudly taunts the locals about the Babe Ruth trade, Bucky Dent, Bill Buckner, Aaron Boone, and the Yankees' 26 championships.

And, to extend the analogy, Arab infighting is very reminiscent of the way Boston fans and media venemously argue over what the team should be doing next. And in the end, the Yankees and the Red Sox get way more notoriety than they deserve.

Comments

[thedarkages]

I'm working with the analogy. We've got Indians, who were done an injury in the past. The government "made them whole" by granting them casino licenses. But I think the implication is that the Indians were more than made whole by the grant. They are, according to the analogy, enriching themselves excessively -- I think the OP would go so far as to say "unjustly." That's far enough so that the moral suasion by which they got their licenses no longer sounds so persuasive; they have "used up" their moral credit. I don't think the moral credit gets used up, and that's where I think the OP gets into Godwin-esque territory. But I think I have remained true to the analogy.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

But I think the implication is that the Indians were more than made whole by the grant.

I don't. I don't even think the government "made them whole" by letting them have casinos. I have no idea where you're getting this.

[thedarkages]

I think it's inherent in the analogy. Suppose we eliminate the step of "redress" between what are now just two events:

1. The near-annihilation of the Indians
2. The Indians' enrichment at the hands of their near-annihilators.

There's now no causality between 1 and 2; the events are unrelated, except by sequence. The Indians appear to have gained the upper hand in their struggle, on a historical level. No judgment is made about their good fortune.

The entire reason I believed that the OP made his analogy was that he believed that there was causality, and that an over-balancing of justice had occurred -- i.e., that justice had erred too far in the other direction.

If, in fact, I am reading causality in, then the OP's analogy was non-judgmental in character, and would be an expression of Israel's paradoxical success at survival, an observation with which I can agree.

Thank you for helping me double-check my thinking.

[ronebofh.livejournal.com]

I read it primarily as an expression of irony.

Also, extending others' analogies is usually a recipe for trouble.

[sunburn.livejournal.com]

I don't think the government granted them casino licenses as much as granted them sovereignty and didn't back down on that grant when they created a venue for something the government has outlawed as vice. The reasons for which indian reservations are not hotbeds of prostition, drug production and slavery are, one presumes, reasons of the Indians alone. (And their desire not to put test to the circumstances of their existence.)

Heck, in the case of slavery, we might be compelled to act regardless of Indian sovereignty. In that respect, some moderation is its own act of self-preservation.