Global Superpower High School

For a while I have been toying with this notion: In the eyes of the world superpowers, if they are considered (on a relative time-scale) as all being in the same high school Planet Earth HS, the United States would be the jock; meaning that, the U.S. is an athletically powerful, pop-icon despite its immature intelligence and behavior; whereas other nations like mainly Japan, S. Korea, China, etc. are considered "nerdy" and are constantly picked on by the popular nations. However, these nerdy nations later rise to financial success, circumventing the need for brawn to protect and assert themselves.

Now, I have been stewing on this concept for some time and have recently had my position reinforced ironically enough by Chuck Klosterman in his U.S. pop analysis, "Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs." In his pop analysis he seems to be attacking plenty of popular items in Postmodern America for how they perverse certain social relations and interactions. In his attacks on icons, at times just over-critical analysis, he deconstructs the attitudes accepted towards such icons in a way that brings the reader to understand why we idolize these people/things on a philosophical level.

I fully respect him for this, and believe it is quite clever actually; though, when I reached his dismantling of "Soccer as the sport of the future," and his praise for Baseball, I became rather furious. Especially since he deems soccer players/fans as athe "social outcasts" and says "outcasts may grow up to be novelists and filmmakers and computer tycoons, but they will never be the athletic ruling class." Considering his sentiment, let us return to my global super-power high school metaphor. It seems to me that the outcasts never have to be the athletic ruling class, because once the athletic ruling class graduates the high school, chances are most never focused on academics and stereotypically become the manager of the local mall's Footlocker. Meanwhile, the outcasts (at least a good percentage of them), had focused on academics and will use their wit and talent in non-athletic avenues to become the financial ruling class; and, they will go to that Footlocker with all their children and buy the top-of-the-line shoes from the has-been jock and get to leave realizing: though they were the outcasts or nerds , they were the entire time the "rulers of the future, " and thus, carrying on from Chuck's sentiment, grants that, "Soccer IS the sport of the future."