The World Cup is over?

What? The Copa Mundial, the World Cup, is over?

It must mean the end of the world is not far behind.

Soccer, not very popular in America, is nevertheless the world’s sport. I imagine it was invented by a mom, the world’s first soccer mom, living long ago in the cradle of civilization, trying to work with kids under her feet. She wound reeds into a ball, threw it outside, and said, “Go play.”

The kids were gone for hours. The game has hardly changed at all. All you need is a ball or, if you are a solo, a ball and a wall. Scoring would not have come along until the dawn of the socio-political era, when it became important that somebody win. Still the kids were gone for hours, because it was hard to kick a ball into a goal through a crowd of kids using only your feet. And mom said, “No hands!” She knew a good thing when she saw it.

Soccer is also the world’s natural sport. It follows, even derives from, the pace of the universe. On the seventh day, God rested, and dreamed up soccer as the earthly symbol for a divine design in which things happen slowly. The universe is 12 billion years old now, and still expanding. It has taken human beings millions of years of evolving to become smart enough to know they have been evolving for millions of years. God is not in a hurry, and neither is soccer.

Millions of Americans love soccer; for awhile, in the 1600s and 1700s, it must have been the only sport in town. But Americans developed a natural impatience, with a tyrannical government to overthrow, a Constitution to get up and running, and a continent to conquer. Europeans, Africans, Asians, have had centuries to settle in; Americans for the last 200 years have been damned busy, and it has made us impatient. We want results. We want scoring.

Scoring is inevitable – witness the “survival of the fittest” evidence – but too much scoring is unnatural. That is not an American failure; cricket is a revered, old-world game in which scoring goes into the hundreds. That is clearly unnatural. In soccer, meanwhile, scoring more than a goal a week starts to strain the ancient, natural cause and effect balance, and most of the world’s population understands that. Points are not scored in soccer; they evolve, like the first mutation in a salamander’s gill from which buds an air sac, leading to a couple of brain cell changes indicating to the salamander that life on land might not be so bad, and then vestigial leg and arm buds follow, the first micro-inch of tail disappears, atoms clump into molecules forming a hair follicle, and so on, until finally Italy takes a shot on goal.

Americans are too impatient for that, unaware that in turning their backs, they are ignoring their own history. And, yet . . . . Watching Italy and France in the championship game – was it only three days ago? – there was the strongest desire, in our living room, to let them play on. They had played for 90 minutes, then 30 minutes of overtime, plus minutes lost to penalties, injuries, etc., and there was a nobility of purpose, and a divinity in the design, that begged to be honored, asking them to play on until the last man standing toed in a goal with his last breath, and God applauded.

Instead, they decided it in 10 minutes, on penalty kicks. Americans like to say that a tie is like “kissing your sister.” To soccer fans, penalty kicks must be like getting Sophia Loren into bed, and then her father walks in.

Declaration of Independence, July 4, 2006

For people out there who may be identifying with the feelings of Button Gwinnett, and the other signers of the Declaration of Independence in July, 1776, here is the Declaration of Independence edited to reflect your mood in July, 2006 . . .

When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. --That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any presidential administration becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to reject it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under relative indifference to their rights, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide competent new Guards for their future security. —Such has been the patient sufferance of these United States in the second administration of George II; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of the United States [George II] is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute power over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to the White House only.
He has called together political and legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved the intent of Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people to expect balance of powers;
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be heard; whereby the Legislative powers have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to incessant reminders of all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for acknowledging Judiciary oversight.
He has made Judges dependent on his advocacy alone, for the definition of their offices.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Discomfiture Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by the Authority of the good People of these United States, solemnly publish and declare, That these United States are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent people; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the Rovian doctrine, and that all political connection between them and the State of government under George II, is and ought to be totally contested, with vigor and firm reliance; and to this declaration we mutually pledge to each other our Efforts, our Fortunes, and our Hearts and Minds, to an outcome in November, 2006, and again in November, 2008, that will bring peace and independence to a nation returned to the rule of laws, and not of men.