The way I heard it, a man wealthy enough to build his own cricket ground and sponsor his own team in my native Guyana was so upset at an umpire’s ruling that he led his players off the field. I remembered the story as I watched a football game and recalled that, besides being beloved in much of the former British empire, the sport has come to define fairness to the point where doing something wrong is said to be “just not cricket.” Not so much for politics, especially now in the United States where what has been going on is definitely not cricket.

Football, for example, owes its popularity partly to the fact that perhaps 75,000 spectators pay the often hefty admission price to see a game because they are convinced that fair play – following the rules – will decide the winners. It would be a courageous owner, indeed, who would dare to take his team off the field because he disagrees with a referee’s call.

Still, there are ways by which a disgruntled loser can respond to a football ruling. For example, the loser can incite an insurrection, as happened on Jan. 6, 2021, after then President Donald J. Trump refused to accept his loss to Joseph R. Biden Sr. and has made that denial central to his persona. Even worse, the lie has infected the electoral process.

That should be a surprise. Football has refined its rules, but the political game has merely done an update from the built-in biases of the past, despite trophy but power at stake and that not only prevents making the rules fair but also corrupts the players. The political rules were designed and continue to be “reformed” not to strengthen integrity but to enable players to manipulate them to gain an advantage. Football’s rules ensure fairness but those governing politics do not keep politicians honest. That is so even with intense competition among both football fans and political partisans.

Football fans scream themselves hoarse, taunt the opposition with what they wear and the slogans they hold up and then go home, perhaps dejected, even angry, over their team’s loss but they do not storm the field and demand the fact that, as Mike Hogan, Duval County’s elections supervisor, posted online, voting originated in Greece in 508 B.C. – 2,500 years ago – more than 240 years in the case of the U.S. And yet politics still has a long way to go to reach the integrity of football, at least on the field.

Politics today is a sport, not with a trophy but power at stake and that not only prevents making the rules fair but also corrupts the players. The political rules were designed and continue to be “reformed” not to strengthen integrity but to enable players to manipulate them to gain an advantage. Football’s rules ensure fairness but those governing politics do not keep politicians honest. That is so even with intense competition among both football fans and political partisans.

Football fans scream themselves hoarse, taunt the opposition with what they wear and the slogans they hold up and then go home, perhaps dejected, even angry, over their team’s loss but they do not storm the field and demand that the referee and other officials be hanged. That may be because they approach the game as entertainment and do not see defeat as the end of civilization as they know it. Of course, winning or losing in politics has a much more significant impact, hence the willingness of some players to manipulate or change the rules — and even invoke God as a silent running mate.

Florida’s Gov. Ron DeSantis is a prime example – but not the only one – of what can happen when the rules are not followed – or, even worse, when they are changed to secure an advantage. He is also a prime practitioner of the God game. The voiceover in a 90-second campaign commercial posted to social media shortly before the Nov. 8 mid-term elections states:

“And on the eighth day God looked out on his planned paradise and said, ‘I need a protector.’ So God made a fighter. God said, ‘I need someone to get up before dawn, kiss his family goodbye, travel thousands of miles for no other reason than to serve the people, to save their jobs, their livelihoods, their liberty, their happiness.’ So God made a fighter.

“God said, ‘I need someone to be strong, advocate truth in the midst of hysteria, someone who challenges conventional wisdom and isn’t afraid to defend what he knows to be right and just.’ So God made a fighter.

“God said, ‘I need somebody who will take the arrows, stand firm in the face of unrelenting attacks, look a mother in the eyes and tell her that her child will be in school, she can keep her job, go to church, eat dinner with friends and hold the hand of an aging parent taking their breath for the last time.’ So God made a fighter.

“God said, ‘I need a family man, a man who would laugh and then sigh and then reply with smiling eyes when his daughter says she wants to spend her life doing what God does.’ So God made a fighter.”

There is no attribution and DeSantis is not mentioned by name but several video clips of him interspersed in the video leave no doubt who is the subject — and his loving wife reposted it. With such credentials, it is no wonder that the Legislature is planning, once again, to change the rules of the game, this time to allow DeSantis to run for president while remaining governor. And, despite the blasphemy and governmental over-reach, DeSantis won re-election by 20 points.

However, before DeSantis embraced divine pretensions, many top Christian leaders wrapped their arms around Trump as chosen by God to save the world – or at least America – from devil-worshiping, blood-sucking pedophiles. Other Trump wannabees have latched on to the tale and have at least gained recognition, if not victory, even though the inherent hypocrisy must be offensive to God.

The hypocrisy is on display most starkly in Georgia’s U.S. Senate runoff election campaign. The incumbent, the Rev. Raphael Warnock, is senior pastor of Ebenezer Baptist Church, where Martin Luther King Jr. preached. The challenger, Herschell Walker’s claim to fame is as a past football player whose qualification is that Trump handpicked him to run and he, in turn, is seeking to match his patron’s penchant for lying. Yet, as of this writing, only about five points separate them.

Why do voters fall for it? Because many are guided not by what is right and rejecting what is wrong but by the hypocrisy of the times as they snuggle into the “God, Country and Guns” cocoon. As for their leaders, what is in the DNA of some of them that they so badly want them to lord it over others that they refuse to play by the rules or choose to bend them to their advantage? Why did Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, announce that he will support DeSantis for president when he must know DeSantis’ track record of writing and rewriting the rules of the game to allow him to win, with God in his corner?

They obviously pay no heed to the caution given by Shakespeare’s Macbeth: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player/That struts and frets his hour upon the stage/And then is heard no more: it is a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, /Signifying nothing.”

Yep, here today, gone tomorrow, and as Macbeth reminds, “… all our yesterdays have lighted fools/The way to dusty death. …” Then it is game over. And what will they say when they come face to face with God? Perhaps: “Well, Lord, at least I did not collect the equipment and lead my team off the field.”