We Got Weights in Fish

An Anthem of Outrage for an Age of Polarization

Before I took a break from writing this past Summer, I made a series of predictions for the next zeitgeist — including one that admittedly came with a bit of wishful thinking:

• The best way to advance your career will no longer be to “build your brand.” The best way to advance your career will be to do what you say you will do. Honesty will become the new currency.

Truth be told, this one could go either way, since I’m not convinced we’ve hit peak grift just yet. But it is of note that the past month has seen not one, but two cheating scandals rock two niche competitive sporting organizations.

In the chess world, the current world champion abruptly withdrew from a tournament after suffering a loss to a younger, lower ranked American grandmaster. The implication was clear; the world champion believed his opponent won the match by cheating. Although a follow-up investigation did find that the controversial winner was likely to have cheated in over 100 online games in the past, no conclusive evidence has demonstrated that this player cheated in the in-person match in question. The whole affair has resulted in calls for a lifetime ban from organized competition for the accused, who in turn has brought a $100 million defamation lawsuit against the world champion.

One would expect that such a messy controversy in the comparatively quiet world of competitive chess would be tough to top. Later that same month, however, a viral video of a competitive fishing scandal just might have given the chess world a run for its money. On September 30, outrage erupted at the Lake Erie Walleye Trail tournament, after it was discovered that a team of winning fishermen had added lead weights to their catch, in an effort to ensure their victory.

I won’t link to the viral video because I’d rather not endorse social media’s propensity for trial by mob; it is one thing for these disgraced tournament winners to face judgment at the hands of their community, but another thing altogether for them to face judgment at the hands of the entire world. I will, however, share that the video contains a memorable, meme-able opening shot of the tournament director yelling, “WE GOT WEIGHTS IN FISH!” and pumping his fist, in some mix of outrage and celebratory glee.

In a time that has gifted us precious little not to be outraged over, chess and fishing would seem to number among our last bastions of truth; two meritocratic ventures largely unaffected by the political sideshows that have marred so many professional organizations over the past few years. In a previous epoch, the general public would have likely responded to the suggestion that both of these humble sporting organizations could fall prey to grift with feelings of disenchantment. Perhaps the kind of disenchantment felt by children, upon learning that Santa Claus doesn’t exist. Or — more precisely —perhaps the sort of disenchantment that Simon & Garfunkel captured in that iconic lyric from their 1968 hit, “Mrs. Robinson”:

“Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? Our nation turns it lonely eyes to you.”

That “Mrs. Robinson” was written in 1968 would come as no surprise to those that remember the sheer turbulence of that year:

In January, it began with the media beaming the horrors of the Vietnam War to every home in America.

In April, it saw the tragic assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., the day after he delivered a powerful speech in Memphis that spoke of unity: “I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we, as a people, will get to the Promised Land.”

In June, it saw the assassination of the Democratic frontrunner for President, Robert F. Kennedy.

In August, it saw police violently clash with protestors outside the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago — violence which was then captured by television camera and gave birth to the iconic chant, “The whole world is watching.”

Back in 1968, “Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?” perfectly captured the disenchantment of a nation that had lost its innocence, live on television. In 2022, “WE GOT WEIGHTS IN FISH!” perfectly captures the gleeful outrage of a social media-siloed nation that no longer remembers what disenchantment feels like; a nation that no longer remembers just how turbulent things can get, when the ties that bind us to one another begin to unravel.

It is, of course, true that there are weights in lots of fish these days. The engagement-based algorithms that drive social media amplification can incentivize fraud and dishonest behavior — be it from narcissistic CEOs, popular politicians, or influential gurus and activists. At the same time, social media’s open framework and networking capabilities can also facilitate the discovery of unscrupulous behavior. The resulting world beamed from our smartphone screens is seemingly a never-ending vortex of melodrama; an always-on soap opera, tailor-made to appeal to our own niche interests. The outrage we feel enduring such turbulent shifts of public opinion is palpable, and is often entirely justifiable. After all, dishonest behavior from our leaders — duly elected or otherwise — can lead to real-world consequences far beyond the cash prize of a Lake Erie fishing competition.

It’s not the outrage behind “WE GOT WEIGHTS IN FISH!” that is the problem, however. It’s that little bit of glee with which we celebrate the discovery of each new transgression by our leaders — and one another — that should give us pause. Disenchantment would suggest that we still have a healthy amount of reverence for the offices that our leaders occupy and the dreams of our fellow Americans. Fist-pumping glee suggests that we are all too willing to burn it all down — real-world consequences be damned.

How did we get here? It might just be a downstream effect of living in what Epsilon Theory writer Ben Hunt terms the widening gyre, named after a line from the W. B. Yeats poem, “The Second Coming.” To Hunt, our modern political polarization is our widening gyre, sweeping through our culture and transforming all of our cooperative coordination games as Americans into competitive games. Here, the games to which Hunt is referring are not inherently competitive pursuits like chess and pro fishing; they are the inherently cooperative pursuits like creating tools to solve problems, protecting our communities, and teaching the next generation the skills that they need to succeed in the future.

In the widening gyre, disenchantment is but a relic from a bygone era; a time when television viewers of all leanings were shocked by the ad hominem attacks exchanged during the 1968 debates between public intellectuals William F. Buckley, Jr. and Gore Vidal. In the perpetually politicized world of today, we are taught that maintaining a state of perpetual outrage is practically our civic duty. The stakes have never been higher! In such a competitive, zero-sum world, gleeful fist-pumping is of course a perfectly reasonable reaction to the discovery of weights in fish; had we not discovered them, who knows how far our adversaries would have gone to rig the game against us?

If we dare to look beyond the widening gyre, however, we would see that we are not actually living in a zero-sum competitive game; we are only made to believe that we are by those that seek to use us as digital cannon fodder. And as much as “winning” this game might appeal to our base competitive instincts, such a hollow victory — and any victory that does not include our fellow citizens is a hollow victory —will ultimately do little more than window-dress the profound sadness that will undoubtedly come later, when we turn our lonely eyes to survey the wreckage that comes from a failure to envision a future that fully includes one another. Such a victory is bound to bring us about as much comfort as a first-place fishing trophy that — deep down — we know we failed to earn.

What might it look like, however, if we were to replace the celebratory glee of “WE GOT WEIGHTS IN FISH!” with a bit of sobriety, instead? If we chose to acknowledge that yes, there are weights in fish, and seek to fix these problems in a logical, principled manner — without slipping into the competitive games that pit neighbor against neighbor? If we outright refused to view other Americans as digital cannon fodder — even those that seemingly have resigned themselves to such fate? If we reacquainted ourselves with the timeworn virtues of forgiveness and empathy — even when it seems impossible to do so?

It might look a bit like the story of Daryl Davis. Back in that turbulent year of 1968, Davis — then a 10-year-old African American child — was pelted by rocks and bottles while marching with the all-white Cub Scout troupe that he joined in Belmont, Massachusetts. It was a traumatic, racist assault — the kind of experience that would probably lead any one of us to harden our hearts in response. Not Davis, however. Courageously, he made it his lifelong mission to win the coordination game and defeat a destructive ideology. Blessed with a seemingly endless amount of forgiveness and empathy, he went on to spend over 30 years befriending members of the Ku Klux Klan, working to change their hearts, one by one. He has since convinced hundreds of them to give up their robes and renounce their former views. One former Klansman even credits Davis with saving his life.

Davis’ approach was as wise as it was courageous. He understood that any victory obtained through sheer competition was a hollow one; in order to truly defeat a destructive ideology, he had to engage cooperatively, with forgiveness and empathy in his heart. Achieving victory through coordination transforms a zero-sum battle into a true win-win scenario. This transformation lies at the heart of the nonviolence espoused by Gandhi and most famously implemented by Martin Luther King, Jr. Indeed; if we are to reach the Promised Land that King spoke of in 1968, it will not be through competition, but through coordination. It will not come through the grips of vicious, hard-hearted punishment, but through the embrace of virtuous, open-hearted forgiveness.

Coordination is also our only defense against the widening gyre, which — true to its name — threatens to wreck everything in its path. Owning the Libs and Exposing the GOP are hollow pursuits if they don’t ultimately include an olive branch — a way for Americans to move past their differences and cooperate in building a better life for future generations. Although I can’t speak for Paul Simon or Joltin’ Joe, I believe that the hero of Mrs. Robinson’s mind would not have chosen schadenfreude at a time that required courage. Neither would Daryl Davis.

Yes, we got weights in fish. Yes, there is dishonesty, corruption, and unfairness. Yes, there are bad ideas that lead to foolish policy decisions. Yes, there are also dangerous, destructive ideologies that threaten to bring us harm. But we need only to open our lonely eyes to see that there is better, more courageous way to tackle these problems than by relying on the toolkit that is sold to us by the zero-sum political operatives that have recruited us for their competitive games.

We need not look too far, either. If we boldly venture immediately outside of the widening gyre, we find nonpartisan organizations like Braver Angels, which seeks to depolarize America by bringing citizens of both “red” and “blue” America together to engage in real, face-to-face dialogue, with the goal of turning feelings of hatred and disdain for another into those of respect and appreciation. Their goal is not to create a nation of political centrists, but a nation that allows for real dialogue across the partisan divide; a dialogue free of the stereotypes and strawmen that hamper our ability to understand each other’s concerns. As the name suggests, theirs is an approach of courage — one based on the words of another great uniter, Abraham Lincoln, when he called on a once-divided country to rebuild itself “with malice toward none, with charity for all.”

Such a vision might seem impossible to us, right now.

So seemed Daryl Davis’ mission, back in 1983.

And so seemed the mission of the three-person crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft, back in 1968. But on Christmas Eve of that most turbulent, most disenchanting of years, Frank Borman, William Anders, and Jim Lowell went on to become the first humans to orbit the Moon, nonetheless. It was then —as the Apollo 8 rounded the dark side of the Moon and reconnected with ground control — that Lowell capped the seemingly impossible feat off with some iconic words of his own:

“Houston, please be informed there is a Santa Claus.”

For a moment, the whole world watched in enchantment.

-SB