I watch football on TV now, something I never did when I was younger. I’ve become a fan, which some of you know is short for fanatic. So when a call goes against my team, I’m pretty vocal in my displeasure, often calling for the ref to be discomfited in some comically improbable manner. But if an obviously bad call goes against our opponents, I tend to shrug and say, “Hey, these things even out over time.” Likewise, if one of our guys gets injured, I want the other player tossed out and suspended. But if one of our guys injures one of them, my attitude is, “Football’s a tough game. You need to come prepared to play.”

I’m not proud of this behavior, and it certainly goes against everything my father taught me about sportsmanship. But it’s not like it affects the NFL in any way. It’s not even a bad influence on my sons, who see it as just one more opportunity to roll their eyes at the old man. I don’t think I’d act like this if I were sitting in the stadium; I have a few shreds of self-respect left. I think it’s a harmless way to consume football in the privacy of one’s home.

But the take-no-prisoners approach, when applied to politics, is poisoning our country.

Too many American voters today see politics as a team sport. They root for, lionize, and in some cases hero-worship candidates or elected officials as if they were gridiron stars. Not because they are upstanding human beings or effective public servants, but because they play for my team. And “my team” has to win, no matter what, because otherwise … well, otherwise the OTHER team would win! Can’t have that. Especially since we have been assured, in every media channel available, that a victory by the other team at the local, state, or national level would spell the end of western civilization and destroy our way of life.

I’m a member of one political party but have voted for candidates from the other side. This outrages people in my own party, but it absolutely and totally baffles people in the other. People from the other party have asked questions like, “Why would you do that?” “Did you make a mistake in the voting booth?” “Are you switching parties?” It doesn’t help them at all when I respond, “No, you guys just ran a better candidate.” Their look of confusion remains, and in many cases I can tell they want to ask me, “Why would that matter?”

You can point fingers at whomever you want for starting this, and you’d probably be right to some extent. But I think the blame for keeping it going comes from two sources.

Of course there are the media cultists on both sides, who have given up any pretense of providing factual information, and who now just compete for ratings and clicks and money by manufacturing, packaging and selling rage. Someone once said if you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention. But I think it’s more accurate today to say that if you remain in a constant state of outrage, you’re just a good little consumer of what they’re selling. Rage has become a marketable product on which empires are built, just like Coke or Levi’s. And luckily for the manufacturers, this product is addictive. To maintain your high, you need to keep coming back for more. (Don’t believe me? Try going without political “news” for a week. If you find yourself climbing the walls — or cheating — you’re not a patriot. Your brain is just craving a different kind of crystal meth.)

But I think the real promoters of the football ethos are the national parties: the DNC and the RNC, and their state and local affiliates. American political zoology used to include creatures called liberal Republicans and conservative Democrats. And both parties gave birth to hybrids called moderates. These extinct species engaged in now-unheard-of behaviors like reaching across the aisle, compromising and supporting each other’s initiatives if they benefited the greater good — even if that meant a “win” for the other guys. Because hey, these things even out over time. Now those creatures don’t survive their own primaries, because if it looks like they’re giving aid and comfort to the enemy, their party’s money goes to a more extreme primary challenger. Politics in America has gone from being the art of the possible to the quest for total domination. Just as in football, breaking even is a rare and unacceptable outcome.

It continues to astonish me that people in both parties see this as a good thing, and are proud of their devotion to party before all — before country, and before conscience. Is this a recipe for long-term success? Take a look at the blood- and misery-soaked 20th century, and some of the engines that drove it. Fascist Italy. Imperial Japan. Spain under Franco. Nazi Germany. The Soviet Union, and the European satellites like East Germany that lived under its thumb. Different creatures, with different political systems. But they all had one thing in common. At the start of their system’s rise to power, their people — often high on the drug of manufactured rage — all believed fervently in the righteousness of their cause, and had complete and utter faith that a one-party system would make their lives better — party uber alles. How did that work out for them? I think Captain Kirk put it best, in an early episode of StarTrek: “It was brutal, perverted, and had to be destroyed at a great cost.”

And so, we have another general election coming up in just 10 short months. (I know how you feel. I’m still exhausted from the last one too.) Will voters elect the best possible candidates, or just the ones that wear their team colors? And will the outcome make our lives better? I’ll bring the beer. You bring the nachos. Go, team.

Steve English is a technical writer who lives in Clarksville. His email address is FootballTeamVoting@gmail.com.