The Washington Post reports that climate activists are planning to disrupt the annual Congressional Baseball Game later this month if Democrats do not pass a climate bill — provisions for which were in President Biden’s failed “Build Back Better” plan — via reconciliation. “We refuse to watch a member of Congress play baseball while the world burns,” said Jamie DeMarco, federal policy director for Chesapeake Climate Action Network.
This behavior is deserving of mockery as entitled and childish, not to mention as yet another display of the strategic brilliance of climate activists. There was a recent example of this in the Beltway area, when some activists blocked traffic by sitting down across a highway. Among those blocked from getting where he needed to go was a parolee who was legally required to report for work; they refused to move for him even after he explained his situation, and he ended up being arrested.
But it’s worth emphasizing, beyond mere mockery, that this kind of behavior does long-term damage to the remaining parts of our social fabric that are able to suspend, even momentarily, partisan animosities. I’m not some milquetoast, “why can’t we all get along?” centrist. But I do believe that partisanship should be restrained in at least certain areas of life — and sports is one such area. At the macro level, entire cities, states, regions, and even countries can unite in support of their favorite teams (or against their hated rivals). At a smaller level, sports can subordinate everyday concerns to more-immediate, less consequential, and plainly enjoyable ends. Otherwise destructive tribal passions are sublimated, becoming harmless and even healthy.
The Congressional Baseball Game is not the only such event in which members of Congress can participate; earlier this year, National Review fielded a team in the ACLI Capital Challenge, a three-mile race. Runners included several members of Congress, from opposite parties, and many of their staff; I recall no partisan animosity. If anything, we need more stuff like this, and we need it to remain separate from the squabbles already eating up so much of politicians’ time.
To see such spaces as problematic and requiring political disruption betrays a malicious, totalistic mindset. It was that sort of mindset that motivated protesters to attempt to disrupt Senator Kyrsten Sinema’s participation in last year’s Boston Marathon (injury kept her from competing, unfortunately). And it’s what was behind the various activist disruptions of Sinema’s personal life that attempted to bully her into changing her mind on certain political issues.
What occurred the day before the scheduled 2017 Congressional Baseball Game, when a madman opened fire on a baseball field where Republican members of Congress and their staff were practicing, was a truly destructive violation of an apolitical space. Only quick action by several on the scene kept the carnage, though considerable, from being much worse. (Representative Steve Scalise was seriously wounded, though he did recover; others were also injured.)
It would, of course, be unfair to say that the climate activists have similar intent, and that is not at all my meaning. I am merely supporting a clear demarcation, on select occasions, between the political and the apolitical. There is plenty of time for rank partisanship elsewhere.