When I am grand dictator of all (pending) the following people go on my list of "amongst the first with their backs to the wall"
People who quip up with "Oh did you **actually** play the game" in response to "we won" when talking about a sport.
We is a perfectly acceptable associative reference to a team. Or electoral party. Or family. Or any group.
So we meaning, "South Africans" or "Liverpool Football Club Supporters" or "Labour Voters" doesn't mean you need to be the chap on the field to speak about having won. The players in the team represent something more than the 15 on the field. Ever wonder what the "shirt" or the "badge" is when players talk about playing for the shirt. It's the connectivity that teams have with their history and their fans. It's the "we".
So next time someone quips up "What do you mean _we_ did you actually play the game" just remember ... backs first to the wall when I'm grand lord dictator of all.
That is all.
1. Matt
Twunts!
2. Destructor
Well now we’re in a race to become Grand Dictator because when I am GD I am going to line up everyone who gets all proud of ‘their’ team as though by saying ‘I support X’ they are somehow responsible for X’s ‘achievement’ of punting a bit of leather onto a particular bit of grass and getting paid the GDP of a small country for their efforts. Which will leave the world nicely depopulated and thus solve a raft of other problems, like general idiocy.
3. Adrian
See this is why you’re back will be to the wall when I am GD.
Being proud of your teams achievement, and feeling a sense of connection with other people who are proud of the achievement in no way indicates they were responsible for the winning of the game. Just that they are connected through this vehicle of ” a team” to other people.
It’s basic human needs to feel belonging.
Some people have Elvis to connect them. Other people have a team. Others have national pride.
Anyone who saw what the RWC in 1995 did to bind a nation with a long ugly raciest past. Mandela putting on the captains rugby jersey did more to bring black and white people together as they were supporting the same team, regardless of colour. Teams give a shared experience to people and a sense of something that has history and transcends the 15 players on the field.
And not with standing the anthropological side of sport, if people are enjoying supporting a team, and other people don’t care, it does interest me why the people that don’t care take tremendous lengths to point out how idiotic it all is and how much they don’t care. Which just seems like sour grapes to those of us having fun watching the game.
4. Us
Us, we think you’re full of it, as usual.
(Not me personally of course)
5. D
Surely you don’t need to become Grand Dictator yourself by this philosophy, you just need to support the political party that will condone shooting people for negligble niggles, disagreements and annoyances and that way you can raise your arms up wide (well, one at least) say “we won” and if anyone questions you, you just shoot them, or put them on a truck with a few more and send them off into the countryside where you can do it more economically and away from any troubling witnesses who happen to agree with you.
I think any post that starts with “When I am grand dictator of all (pending)” is pre-Godwined
6. Adrian
Political parties always only represent “the party that has philosophies and ideologies that have the greatest correlation with your own”. they don’t unfortunately represent your views in their entirety.