Dignity in defeat

Losing can be a beautiful thing. That's the message I took away from a New York Times report on the Chicago White Sox's historically bad season, which has seen the team match the 1962 Mets' record of 120 losses — a record they may have shattered by the time you're reading this. Times writer Sam Anderson details how the White Sox have "explored the full spectrum of losing," like "the way a jazz saxophonist probes every note in a scale." They've gone down in squeakers and in routs, on sunny days and in the rain, and in games in which the entire team played like All-Stars and in one where the White Sox "hit their catcher in the groin with the baseball three separate times in a single inning."

Despite those many humiliations, a group of dedicated fans continues to show up in Section 108 of the White Sox stadium to gripe and (occasionally) cheer. Those loyalists say they're now rooting for an all-time loss record; one is selling T-shirts that declare, "We witnessed history." Meanwhile, the players themselves have shown remarkable grace, Anderson writes, a willingness to talk about losing and then "stride forward into the next potential loss."

At this fraught political moment, the "White Sux" might be the role models America needs. In MAGA world, it has become a sin to lose. After trying and failing to overturn Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 election, Trump and his allies are now aiming to head off the possibility of defeat in November by changing the rules of the game. GOP activists are attempting to toss tens of thousands of voters from the rolls in critical battlegrounds and are pushing for last-minute changes to election procedures in Georgia and other swing states.

Chaos and ugliness seem all but certain in November because our two-party democracy needs one side to admit defeat and walk away. Swallowing a loss is miserable, as the fans in Section 108 can attest. But as Anderson notes, it's also a "civic miracle that keeps us from tearing each other's heads off."

This is the editor's letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.