Many people see politics as I see sports. There are two teams, and my team is going to beat yours, and nothing else matters. Winning is everything. And that’s a bad mistake. Because as we noted yesterday, while sports is a simulation of war — it’s harmless to project tribalism on the symbols of basketball or baseball — it’s not harmless to do that with politics. We’re not manipulating symbols there. There are real armies and economies at stake. Nuclear weapons. The viability of the planet. The future of our species. If we see this as war, then it is war. How much do you know about war, and do you really want to usher it in so quickly, without thinking.

Dave Winer, on the difference between politics and sports (“One is frivolous and the other is anything but”).