Just win, baby

“The only crime is getting caught.”

Such were the 1980s ethics of the now-myopically lionized Reagan administration. King Ronald the Vague would have gone to prison over the Iran-Contra arms-for-hostages affair save for one guy: his longtime fixer Edwin Meese.

Ronnie appointed Attorney General Meese to investigate his own boss. (Sound familiar?) Meese kept no notes regarding his “investigation,” giving special prosecutors nothing to subpoena. Reagan even “forgot” but later admitted that he had signed an illegal executive order authorizing the gun deal. The docs were kept in a top-secret vault.

Reagan got caught. Meese made sure his boss won.

By 1999, even getting caught had succumbed to the ethics of winning at any cost.

Soccer star Brandi Chastain won the Womens’ World Cup with a penalty kick in the championship game played at the Pasadena Rose Bowl on national TV. She got the opportunity because of a shameless official who failed to flag an illegal U.S. shot block.

Venerable sportscaster Frank Deford used the “win” to bemoan the decline of sportsmanship. Prevailing “by cheating” was not winning, DeFord said.

Maybe he was wrong.

Sportsmanship? A mythological concept you can’t cash at the bank. The US team’s win on home soil skyrocketed the sports’ popularity and thus marketability. Cha-ching.

A Gilded Age politician once said “patriotism is for old women and little children. I’m here to protect my stockholders.”

That was more than a hundred years ago. Alas and alack, everything old is new again.

We’ve regressed to a point that today, not only unethical but criminal conduct is celebrated. Just win baby. Let the echoes of ancient analog cash registers ring in the sound of freedom. Winning is the new First Commandment.

Even bloodsport is making a comeback. “Ultimate” cage-fighting was brutal enough. Now, somebody is promoting bare-knuckle boxing, another relic of the Gilded Age. Everything old is new again. Can bullfighting be far away?

An undereducated populace is fertile ground for such aberrations.

America’s 1776 experiment in democracy succeeded because we had a well-educated population ready to try self-government.

One of my college history profs often repeated an old truism: Democracy without education becomes tyranny without limitation.

But who needs education when you’ve got emojis? To write in Chinese, you have to learn how to interpret the juxtapositions of some 50,000 characters. I have enough trouble with the Arabic alphabet of 26 symbols. Both are now obsolete. We’re going back to ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, picture writing.

I recently caught an NCIS episode wherein detectives questioned two 17-somethings about e-mails from one of their teachers.

The young ladies could tell which e’s came from the educator because he wrote in complete sentences with punctuation, “like old people.” WTF!

The first rule I learned in the advertising business commanded liberal use of two key words: “free” and “new.”

Our infatuation with novelty leads our semi-literate populace to unquestioningly consume just because something’s NEW! No matter if it’s a candidate or can of beans.

Phony TV competitions like “Survivor.” Long-banned bloodsports like bare knuckle brutality. How about rule by royal decree? It’s new, so we just gotta try it, right?

Supporting a king makes life simple. Just do what he says and you don’t have to worry about the messier things in life like politics.

A king is no more than the proprietor of a personality cult which can easily morph into a religion.

Kings can do anything. Order up wars. Execute wives. Raise taxes. Don’tcha worry about a thing. Trust his majesty the king.

My late talk radio and Tribune colleague in columny Travus T. Hipp decried “softshoe fascism” infecting the body politick of the U.S. And he said it 40 years ago. Think Hitler without the jackboots. Until last Saturday. (See below.)

Fascism and Leninism (Communism has rarely been tried) are two sides of the same coin. Both are authoritarian dictatorships. Under fascism, the means of production are in private hands like Russia today. Under Leninism, the dictatorial government owns the means of production. Think North Korea.

There was a time when overt sympathy for “communist Russia” would get you blackballed at best, jailed at worst. Now, it’s fashionable. It’s new.

Last Saturday, a cadre of Neo-Nazis marched through Nashville wearing “blood tribe” t-shirts. Sieg heil.

Commissar T-Rump’s new shill running the U.S. House of Representatives just announced “Vladimir Putin will not lose this (Ukraine) war.” He thus effectively conceded World War Three before it has officially started, all to help his god head win the throne.

He didn’t have to worry about getting caught. He was saying something new.

Brand new dictatorship: Available free for those content to do nothing.

SPEAKING OF FASCISTS: Nevada’s Number One corporate welfare queen, Elon Musk, has allowed TwitterX to delete the account of the widow of murdered Russian freedom fighter Aleksei Navalny.

There’s a remedy for the depredations of anti-social media. Make web-based distributors of libel and slander subject to defamation law like mainstream media. Decades ago, Congress enacted a loophole exempting online companies from liability in order to promote the growth of the Internet.

The monster has bitten us in the ass so often that the only ass left is running for king. Again.

Just win, baby, just win. That’s nothing new.

CESAR CHAVEZ XVIII happens at Circus Circus-Reno April 5. Details at CesarChavezNevada.com/

Vaxx up, stay safe, pray for Ukraine and almost 100 other currently war-torn lands.

Be well. Raise hell. / Esté bien. Haga infierno.

Andrew Quarantino Barbáno is a 55-year Nevadan and editor of NevadaLabor.com and CesarChavezNevada.com/ Barbwire by Barbano has originated in the Tribune since 1988. E-mail barbano@frontpage.reno.nv.us