Too Many Americans Still Want To Believe Myths

One of things I am still trying to adapt to since I started writing on Bleacher Report is now I am writing for Americans as well as Canadians, and coming from Canada, being an "outsider," with different outlooks and prejudices, sometimes I forget who I am writing for and occasionally in my articles and comments, I say something that can be taken as anti-American.

Sometimes reading the articles and comments of Americans causes me to get "overheated" and respond accordingly. I want to shout "wake up!" A lot of my articles recently have been explorations of the difference between Americans and Canadians and this is another of them.

I recently wrote an article entitled You Can't Separate Sports From "Real Life". In it I tried to illustrate how American thinking to the World Baseball Classic is a symptom of American thinking to other things in life.

In this article, I'm going to go deeper into this subject, try and show that this kind of thinking can have at times hilarious but too often tragic results. I'm also going to show where a lot of the "anti-American" feeling that foreigners sometimes display comes from.

The results from the World Baseball Classic in which the United States posted a mediocre 4-4 record, bettered by five other countries; its poor showing in the 2006 tournament; and its bad Olympic record have caused some Americans to wake up and start questioning things.

I noticed a couple of articles that tried to maintain the "mirage" of American baseball superiority get derisive comments from other Americans who aren't fooled by the results. That's good.

But the fact that such articles continue to get written and too many mindless comments containing the usual WBC belittling and that American baseball is still "superior" and that there is "nothing to prove" will simply make Americans laughingstocks abroad and increase their unpopularity.

I pointed out in my recent article that the results prove that Americans are getting suckered; that they are paying major league prices to see minor league baseball while the best baseball players are those playing abroad at a fraction of the cost.

I also pointed out the difference between Canadian reaction to the shock of the 1972 hockey series with the USSR which produced a revolution in hockey, particularly for the future development of the NHL, and the current American denial of the WBC results.

The 1972 series forced Canadians to accept that foreigners could play hockey just as well as they could; it changed attitudes towards fitness and training, and it paved the way for Europeans to enter the NHL as equals.

The American denial of their poor baseball showing internationally, their belief in the American Baseball myths is well rooted in past thinking, a lot of it producing tragic and costly results.

In 1812, American myth slogans like "On To Canada" and that conquering it was "a matter of marching" helped start a war which in the first year caused the loss of three Western posts, several lost battles, and two horrible Indian massacres. (Canadians too created myths from this war that led to unfortunate behavior and thinking.)

In 1861, there was the famous "On To Richmond" and "90 Day Picnic" myths in the North that showed how inadequately they were prepared for civil war. It took four years of bloody war, sometimes characterized with bungling and poor leadership, before the North summoned up the forces necessary to overcome the South.

Myths continue today. 

I recently wrote an article explaining my own struggle with coronary heart disease and how I overcame it, thanks to the American creation of chelation remedies. But I also pointed out why these are not well known and that thousands of North Americans continue to die needlessly or accept expensive, unnecessary surgery like stents and bypasses while a cure costing $150 sits under their noses.

Why? Because the FDA clings to the myth that ALL "natural remedies" are on the level of "hillbilly medicine" and cannot be tested. Chelation then gets classified as "alternative medicine."

So what kind of myths are Americans going to cling to in the face of these WBC defeats? You got it, the Bad News Bears in baseball and the Mighty Ducks in hockey.

We know the next Bad News Bears movie is already on the drawing board. Somehow they'll be entered as the American representative in the next WBC tournament. 

Conveniently the Japanese, the Koreans, and everybody else will play like morons and the Bears will win the final before a sold out stadium filled with Americans waving flags. American baseball superiority will be proved again

In hockey, there is the Ducks. Disney has a market in Canada, so they know they can't offend Canadian feelings. So the Ducks never play Canada. They are always conveniently defeated by some other "bad guy" foreign team off camera leaving the Ducks to defend North America.

Now, I don't belittle American hockey victories like the 1980 "Miracle On Ice", but in the context of hockey history, they are few and far between.

But imagine you are a Canadian hockey fan or a Japanese baseball champion watching such rubbish. What are you going to think? You're either going to laugh hilariously or turn it off in disgust.

And what are you going to think of Americans? Are you going want them as friends? Do you want to associate with somebody who is going to deny reality, belittle your victories and achievements, and then make up myths that justifies them putting you down?

Then you're going get Americans wondering in bewilderment why there is such feeling against them.

In the recent WBC tournament, poor Kevin Youkilis got sworn at and then called an "idiot" and a "sexual predator" on the Yardbarker sports blog.

One of the best things the Blue Jays did when they started up was to hire one of the best American baseball commentators at the time, Tony Kubek, to be their color commentator.

Unlike many Americans, Kubek knew about foreign achievements in baseball.  Sometimes he would mention Japanese stars that his viewers had never heard of and looked forward to what he called a "true World Series" between the American and Japanese champion. 

The WBC was a step towards this goal.

But if Americans are going to belittle the WBC tournament, deny what is going on, and make up myths that are hilariously stupid or even taken as offensive by others, it may lead to consequences that may be funny at times but could also lead to tragedy.