The $1.2 Billion Value Extraction

Yesterday when I heard the news that Steve Ballmer was going to pay $2 billion for the Los Angeles Clippers NBA franchise I just about fell out of my chair. Thing is, I do know exactly why an $800 million team, tops, went for $2,000 million.

It has everything to do with the reigning zeitgeist constructors.

What the heck does that mean?

It means that people are going to pay through the nose for a team that is going way out of its way to ensure everyone that it doesn't have a racist at the helm. Come on, think about it. What is the Clippers? It is a basketball team, reasonably popular, it's made the playoffs a few times recently, it plays in the second largest media market in the country, yadda yadda. But what else?

The highest valued professional sports team franchise in the world is Manchester United, the European soccer club, at something a bit over $2 billion. The NFL's Dallas Cowboys is at around $2 billion I'm pretty sure, but I think part of all that involves its state-of-the-art stadium. Major league baseball's New York Yankees is around that, as are the Los Angeles Dodgers which were actually recently bought for an even $2 billion (and change). A handful of other NFL and European soccer teams are up close to that.

But the NBA's Clippers?

No. The fact is, that extra $1.2 billion is the price to ensure that unsavory ::cough cough - racist - cough cough:: elements are excised from the good and wholesome righteousnessosity of whatever that is for the just and true righteousnessimbility that NBA proudly stands for, and damn it that racist Donald Sterling just needs to get out. The price is that stratospheric because the World wants to convince us that they are pulling out all the stops to make sure evvverything is ohhh-kay, and if that's what it takes, well then...

The LA Times sportswriter Bill Plaschke was equally nonplussed in his take on it today, wondering what the huge price tag was all about. Interestingly he ended his piece with the thought that making sure people reeeally know you're not racist is priceless. Problem is people say that all the time -- that there are some things that are so spagnaminously boffo that they are "priceless", but an important economic truth is that everything does have a price. Every single thing. It may be very very high, but everything has some price.

People are thinking this rich guy Ballmer is ponying up that cash, yeah, that's it, he'll take care of it, he's super rich, that's cool, thanks for saving us from bad racist racism stuff Steve! But again, another economic truth. Sorry, but he's actually, really looking to get some return on his investment. Who's actually really paying for the most righteouslishiously just and true and pure organization there could ever be by golly God goodnessness?

You are.

You are, anyone who spends money on anything Clippers-esque whether it is products it advertises or the NBA stuff the NBA promotes or any of that. You are being flung on the altar of the powers-that-be human sacrifice and told to do so by media who are given the job to tell you to. How many stories have I heard about that racist Donald Sterling and how much of an idiot he is if he doesn't sell his team? Nothing new, just that he's a bad person of some kind and we're all supposed to hate him.

Over and over and over again I hear it and see it on the news. This isn't objective news reporting, it is indoctrination propaganda. It is designed to get people to believe the humanist dreck they want people to believe, and it works. It isn't enough we're all supposed to be sufficiently enraged at this guy, they're now reporting all over the place that he's certifiably crazy in some way.

Yesterday I saw a TV plug for Lisa Ling -- never heard of her before -- but she was hocking her show on Oprah Winfrey's network about demon possessed people. I don't mean to pick on her necessarily, because I'm sure these kinds of things show up all the time on cable. But this is a classic example of the partial hangout, media personnel hanging out in places where there's really nothing, showcasing stuff that directs your attention away from the more critically important truthful things.

The Lisa Lings of the world want you to believe that there are these kinds of weird people over there and, hey! Look! They're demon possessed and let's all watch. Is it real? Is it true? They always seem to end them with, "We'll never really know..."

Good thing us good wholesome righteouslishous people aren't like that -- whew.

The truth is the Devil is speaking to everyone, all the time. He speaks through the most religious places, through the most righteous sounding people. If you don't have the words of Christ woven through your psyche, you're toast. It seems like you're just okay and fine and dandy, but you're toast.

While another shooting and killing rampage was going on near Santa Barbara recently, other news stories came out about a young man shooting each member of his family then himself in a very upscale community, and another story came out about a woman stabbing her three daughters to death -- and all we get is endlessly droning "These people need psychiatric attention!" Megaphone holders screech numbingly about how we're all supposed to think and feel about it all, yet again.

They will never share the one thing that works. These people need Christ, and they need people who genuinely represent Him. Sure there is a ton to all of that, but the main point is that it isn't just the perpetrators who're being proficiently instructed by the Devil, it is also those getting the microphones shoved in their faces to give their what's-what for everyone to hear are as well. Everyone is exposed to the Devil's seductions in some way or another, and again, those who listen intently or even not-so intently are doing the Devil's bidding in ways they'll never get until they start prayerfully looking at it all with Christ's eyes and seeing it for what it is.

Oh, but yeah, sorry, forgot. That Jesus Christ stuff. That fairy tale stuff that's just for Sunday morning where no one will hurt anyone anyway. Oh that superstitious pap, yeah, right. Oh yeah. "The Devil." Ha! Yeah, riiight.

See what you've been taught? See what you're told to do when you speak, when you behave, when you even think deeply about what's really going on?

Wow.

By the way, just to add, I wrote about all this in my latest home page piece. It is here if you're interested.

Oh, and yeah, one more thing -- that whole Clippers sale thing? I thought a lot about this old Bloom County strip -- it is exactly like it. I love this particular episode, classic institutionalized codependent-driven value extraction in its most splendidly elementary form. It is indeed, the World doing what it does so well.



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