THINGS ARE NOT OFTEN WHAT THEY SEEM

 

 THINGS ARE NOT OFTEN WHAT THEY SEEM

 

James R. Fisher, Jr., Ph.D.

© December 15, 2020

 

Last night I stayed up late to watch the NFL game between the Cleveland Browns and the Baltimore Ravens, the name of the Baltimore team a tribute to the late Baltimore poet, Edgar Allen Poe.

 

The Cleveland Browns had not been a relevant football team for twenty-five years or since 1995.  Hope reigns eternal for a city that has had several Great Depressions since The Great Depression of 1929, economically, culturally and historically.

 

I asked my wife, BB, if she had ever been to Cleveland.  She said, “No.” 

 

“Why?” she asked.

 

“Oh!” I said, “I suppose because I sat in my sofa chair for more than an hour after the game was over thinking about this metropolitan community, and the heartache it has often experienced with economic downturns, commercial enterprises abandoning the city for greener pastures, whole communities run down within much like ruins of an earlier prominence, putting one in mind of the remains of say, the Roman Empire but without the attractive skeletal remains of the likes of the Roman Coliseum.”

 

“But I don’t follow.”

 

“Honey,” I said, “I’m just thinking what has happened and what might have happened here with how this game turned out if it were not for the pandemic.

 

“Now, I’m really confused.”

 

“Several years ago, Venezuela lost the World Cup when one of its players inadvertently scored a goal for the other team, and they lost the World Cup.  The young man went back to his home in Caracas and was murdered for his miscue. 

 

“Last night the Cleveland Brown's kicker missed an extra point and a chip shot field goal.  Were he to have made them both, the return of Baltimore’s quarterback Lamar Jackson, who had left the game for leg cramps, might have proven academic.  As it turned out, Jackson's return was monumental as he drove his team down the field so that their premier kicker could win the game. 

 

“Events relating to this supreme quarterback, who performed like Superman, as did Cleveland Indians’ quarterback Baker Mayfield, the outcome would have saved Cleveland from its ghosts of the past.”

 

“So?  Remember, this was only a football game.”

 

“Yes, that is true.  And in a paradoxical sense, thanks ironically to the pandemic only 12,000 fans were dispersed across the gigantic stadium rather than 90,000 cramped together in confining and agitating space.  

 

"Were the arena filled to capacity, I suspect there would have been riots in the streets, burning cars, trashing buildings, contorted conflicts with police, and with each other.   That is how the hoi-polloi often behave.”

 

“Doesn’t that word mean the rich, pompous and pretentious?”

 

“No, it means the common people in mass behaving irresponsibly because of anger and angst.  

 

"Who you describe are commonly referred to as "the hifalutin," or the elitist.  They are equally incensed and disruptive when angry and many times more destructive but in more subtle and sustaining ways. 

 

“Why?  Because they have the power and influence to cover their tracks.  Ordinary souls such as people such as ourselves are in your face when angry or disappointed, whereas “the hifalutin” tend to be invisible masterminding their disruption behind the scenes.  My book with Eric Hoffer covers this fanaticism and duplicity.”

 

“The book that I am to edit.”

 

“Yes, when you get the time.”

 

“Yes, when I get the time.”

 

“Why do people behave as they do?”

 

“Why do people behave as they do?  Now that is the $64,000 question.  

 

“I remember when I was a boy in the 1940s, and would go to downtown Detroit, and Cadillac Square and shop with my Uncle Leonard, my idol, and a prominent professor at the University of Detroit and with my cousin, Robert.  Downtown Detroit was in pristine condition, as was Belle Isle nearby, where we would go on to dinner at my uncle’s yacht club, and see a film there. 

 

“But Detroit was already changing in the 1940s as African Americans from the Deep South were coming in droves to this metropolitan area to work in the automotive plants and other factories in support of the war effort during WWII.

 

“In the 1960s, wherever I might be traveling, be it across the United States, South America or Europe, I would drop by Detroit to visit my uncle and have dinner with him at the Detroit Yacht Club.  

 

“Downtown Detroit had changed dramatically.  Now, tens of thousands from the Deep South were living in Detroit which dramatically changed the character, complexion, and culture of what I had remembered this city as being. 

 

“At precisely the same time, this was happening in Cleveland, which I have always thought of as a “Little Detroit.” 

 

“So, what is wrong with that?”

 

“Nothing, that is, on the surface.  But in the 1970s into the 1980s, I was now a private consultant and witnessed the cosmetic and structural change to both these cities, as American industry was no longer “king,” having had its prominent markets severely reduced in computers, kitchen appliances, light fixtures and automobiles and parts by Japan, Inc., Germany, Sweden, Finland, Korea and China. 

 

“This had created an economic hole in the heart of Detroit and Cleveland among other northern “Rust Belt” cities. 

 

“This ultimately translated into African American homes in Detroit and Cleveland, and other Northern Cities, being victims of downsizing to good paying industrial manufacturing jobs, and like Kafka's Joseph K in "The Trial," they had done nothing wrong.  

 

“Hope was replaced by despair with these communities taking on a blight that has translated into a collective edginess that finds them desperately looking for something upon which to build their pride, such as a football team such as the Cleveland Browns.”

 

“That was what you were thinking sitting there after the game?”

 

“Well, it was what I was thinking in part . . .”

 

“No, don’t go there.  You’ve already given me a headache.”

 

“Sorry.”

 

“You’re forgiven.”