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Democracy on Steroids

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by Jason Roth

The "war on drugs" has advanced its front lines beyond the trenches of the inner-city streets to the far more treacherous arena of professional sports. Keep your head down, soldier. Don't want it taken off by a fucking baseball.

Politicians have taken a much-needed vacation from our little skirmish in the Middle East to enlist in this battle. A "Senate Subcommittee on Steroids" has been created, and dozens of expert witnesses wearing athletic supporters, helmets, and pinstripes are lining the aisles awaiting their turn to contribute strategic advice to their country's battle plan. Alas, perhaps they've been asked to leave their headgear at home. And that's a real shame. I might have actually turned on C-SPAN for once if I knew I got to see a guy in a hockey mask and ice skates lumbering past a bunch of suits and scuffing up the Senate floor.

We are, of course, still afraid for the children. This time, though, our fear is not directed towards drug-pushing super-villains who miraculously find a way to keep their deeds permanently undetectable to parents. This time, the object of our fear is the man wielding a far more brutal and effective weapon in the war on drugs: the baseball bat. True, no one has yet gone so far as to say that José Canseco threatened to beat his underage fans with a bat unless they used steroids. But the implication is clear: parents' hopeless ineffectiveness against the unyielding intellectual force of the professional athlete will result in an epidemic on a scale approaching the annual sales of Big League Chew. If watching a baseball game really has the hypnotic capabilities that politicians are saying it has, then it's baseball we should be banning, not steroids.

But, hell. Baseball is as American as apple pie and congressional hearings for side-stepping our own legal system. If private organizations like Major League Baseball don't "choose" to "deal with the problem" "voluntarily", then it's "up to government" to "step in" and step on everyone's rights. And it's all for the goddamn children.

I'm a little curious whether anyone in government actually cares about children as human beings. I understand that they're great for getting votes and justifying your censorship of the word "cunt", but is there anything else they can do? Can they unclog my sink or remove carpet stains? If children are so great, let them do all the work and give me my summers back.

If children are important because they're human beings, then how about we give a little thought to what an adult human being's life requires? If it's ok to piss on the rights of human beings once they've become adults, I really don't see all the fuss about protecting them while they're children. I say we let them die young. Let the children die from their steroid-induced testicle implosions while they're still young, rather than making them wait 18 years before we crush their balls in a vice in the name of protecting some new batch of kids.

Yeah, I know. Steroid use is against the rules. So let the professional sports organizations tell their players, "You broke the rules." End of story.

If these organizations don't want to tell their players to stop using steroids, I'm fine with that, too. As long as athletes are using steroids, though, I suggest we find out if any of these guys has experienced any actual side effects. This seems to me like a decent opportunity for a medical study. If it turns out that there is, dare I say, a safe way to use steroids, then the organizations should encourage their players to use them. I'd sure hate to see the honest players who care about their bodies be deprived of steroids.

Granted, I'm no steroids expert. However, I do have a little knowledge on the subject of coffee. Apparently, it's addictive. I've heard it has adverse side-effects. But some people still claim it improves their concentration. Some say it even helps them work earlier in the morning. Certain companies give it out for free and don't even ask you for a doctor's note. You can't buy an Olympics steroids needle, but you can get an Olympics coffee mug.

Not once, though, have I heard anyone talk about banning coffee, in sports, at work, or anywhere else. (Well, not because of the caffeine, anyway. People in Berkeley wanted to ban coffee grown by poor people in third-world countries and the dangerous practice of recycling (gasp!) protective coffee-cup sleeves.)

I have a feeling that if companies did have a problem with jittery employees, and they linked the problem to coffee consumption, a few e-mails that said "We catch you drinking coffee and you're fired" would do the trick. Fundamentally, though, the healthfulness of steroids, or lack thereof, is beside the point. You can make that decision up for yourself and for your own children.

Here's what we're really talking about:

• Individual adults choosing to ingest a substance into their own bodies.

• Groups of individuals who are capable of determining the rules of their group's membership (based on the standards of long-term athletic ability, good health, fair play, crowd appeal, etc.) and enforcing those rules if they so choose.

What the creation of a governmental committee on steroids says is that the above groups of individuals have the "freedom" to act on the conclusions of their own minds, as long as the powers that be, representing the majority will rather than the rights of individuals, deem those thoughts and actions permissible. You're "free" if your conclusions are somehow mystically in synch with the brains of your brethren. You're "free" to act on your thoughts as long as those thoughts are a product of some kind of mental orgy, like they were ejaculated during the climax of a Vulcan mind-meld cluster-fuck. Choose wisely, my friend. One path will lead you down the path of collective truth, while the other will lead you to a big, ugly, three-headed ogre carrying a spiked, metal dildo telling you, "Nice try, fuckhead, now get your ass back on path number one."

Freedom is alive and well in America, as long as you do what the majority tells you to do, and as long as no politician has correctly estimated this majority and attempted to capitalize on it. This is not a democracy on steroids. This is democracy.

 

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Suggested reading:

Techniques On How To Inject Anabolic Steroids

Anabolic Steroid
(the alcoholic drink)

Are we a republic or a democracy?
by Walter Williams

(Just replace the phrase "the Great Legislator of the Universe" in the John Adams quote with "the nature of man". It was Ayn Rand who eliminated the mystical source of rights and identified the requirements of man's life as the source of, and reason for, his political rights. Perhaps one day she'll be considered a "founding mother". Too bad that doesn't roll of the tongue as well as the more common phrase.)

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