A spot-on essay on the common good and profit in kids sports - I read it without realizing who wrote it [View all]

I read most of the essay before i saw the name or had an inkling it was someone in public office.
It is written as a parent whose junior high child plays in a hockey league. Parents aren’t allowed to videotape their own kids’ games (!!) — even to show the other parent the film, or grandparents.
Why not, you ask?
You aren’t seriously going to tell me it’s about protecting the children are you? In THIS America?
No, it’s because the private-equity backed owners of the league want people to pay $37 a month to subscribe to an AI-driven tape recording that they provide.

Virtually everything in America has become a commodity—even middle-school hockey. Every minute of our life is fodder for profit maximization. And when everything exists primarily for someone else’s gain—even your child’s Saturday-afternoon game—it breeds emptiness and resentment.

That discontent doesn’t stay contained. It spills, inevitably, into our politics. Donald Trump is a symptom, not the cause, of America’s spiritual unraveling. He is no ordinary symptom. He could prove fatal to our 250-year experiment in multicultural democracy. But our nation would make a grave error if we believed we could repair what is broken within us simply by defeating Trump—or his successor—at the ballot box. A deeper rot festers in the American soul: a callousness toward our neighbors, a me-first selfishness, a relentless focus on “getting mine” even if it leaves others behind. Today, we worship false cults—profit at any cost, consumerism instead of citizenship, a blind faith in technology, a winner-takes-all politics—that leaves us feeling empty and devoid of purpose.
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Americans want to feel powerful and connected—in their individual life, in their family life, and in their community. They want work that feels meaningful and tethered to something more than the cold accumulation of profit. They want to live in communities whose fate is determined not by faraway forces but by the contributions and shared projects of their neighbors. They want a capitalism that rewards ingenuity and hard work but doesn’t leave people living lives of indignity. They want ethical and moral rules that bind everyone, with no exemptions for people with money or political power..

Most people I know — especially young people — are fed up with commercialized everything. It has become harder to remember just how free our lives were of constant advertising. But occasionally I DO remember. I DO remember my days filled with a school that was not corporate, textbooks written by scholars free of advertising, biking to the library, church service on Sundays, playing tennis for free at the city courts, playing board games or outdoor games with family or friends. Television had ads, but we weren’t paying a monthly fee, and there were 3 or 4 channels with solid programming. You interacted with people everywhere you went, and you were expected to be polite to each other and treat each other like humans. Nobody was selling ‘naming rights’ either.

Chris Murphy has a new book coming out called ‘Crisis of the Common Good’. If this essay is an indication, it is a valuable badly needed perspective.