Watching AARP wrestling superstars Hulk Hogan and Ric Flair trade barbs, then come to blows, at the outset of the Hulkamania: Let The Battle Begin tour of Australia, one can’t help thinking of that other battle of the geezers, Senator Joe “Spoiler” Lieberman and Harry “Really, I’m In Charge” Reid – two old pros locking horns, going for broke, and remaining relevant to the game, regardless of the outcome.

For non-fans, one of the great head-scratchers of professional wrestling is how so much attention can be paid to staging elaborate, fake fights that inflict real, crippling damage on the wrestlers’ bodies. Bodies bruise, bones break, blood flows. Why devote so much attention to careful planning, if everyone still gets hurt in the end?

In the October 19^th issue of The New Yorker, Malcolm Gladwell draws disturbing parallels between the practice of dog fighting and playing football. He notes how sports like NASCAR, following significant in-action damage, responded quickly with wholesale changes that diminished the prospect of future catastrophe: improved technology, better on-site reaction time, changes to rules that de-incentivize brutal behavior.

But, Gladwell notes, in football the opposite seems to be happening. The athletes grow bigger and stronger, the pads get light and thinner, the hits become dirtier and more crippling. As a result, incidences of brain trauma increase, and onset earlier, resulting in a near 17-times increase in the likelihood that a retired football player in his 40s suffers from early-onset dementia and Alzheimer’s.

Like dogs, Gladwell concludes, football players become so archetypal in their embodiment of virtues like courage, sacrifice, and determination that fans lose sight of the humans under the helmet, and the terrible abuse they endure in the ritualistic and cathartic violence.

One would like to imagine that American politicians readily fall on their swords, but even the most casual observer quickly understands otherwise. In politics, as in professional wrestling, a pantomime of risk-taking—and the “selling” required to make that pantomime convincing to the viewing audience—typically suffices for the actual thing.

Americans like to believe that their elected representatives are virtuous, noble, selfless (mostly white) men of the people, tirelessly advocating for the well-being of all humanity, or, barring that, all humanity within the most recent incarnations of their gerrymandered districts. In reality, we know that nearly all politicians are not-so-bright egomaniacal manipulators, who secretly know that they are one election cycle away from blowing this two-bit whatever and really hitting the bit time.

And yet, those very qualities that make for an effective political candidate—handsome fake smiles, fingertip-ready generalities, a firm handshake, a capacity for seeming bold while never offending anyone—embody the very slipperiness that political observers so readily decry.

“What to make of our thwarted expectations?” the thinking seems to go. “Why isn’t my hero heroic?”

So it is that we find Harry Reid initiating, this Saturday, the first procedural vote for what will undoubtedly be a tedious legislative process that, in the end, will commence a watered-down version of health care reform that may or may not reduce your co-pays come 2035.

That some version of the legislation will come to a vote, and pass, is in little doubt to anyone paying attention.

And yet, in this corner stands Smoking Joey L, screaming to anyone who will listen that he will personally filibuster any bill that even smells like a public option.

Of course, the public option that the Senate is considering is a watered-down compromise of the watered-down compromise that the House kind-of-not-really passed into committee two weeks ago.

Think ordering Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter and getting half a cupful of Natty Light from a keg, and you’ve about got it right.

And, in that corner stands Huckleberry Harry, pouring shots of bar whiskey from of a bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, promising health care for all if this bill just passes!

And over in Australia a paunchy Nature Boy slaps a foggy Hulkster, who quickly blades his forehead, then stumbles through a bloody hazy. Hogan and Flair walk through the motions and rile up the crowd like they always do. And they get paid well to do it.

When you’re tired of doing real work, you can at least bloody your own face and hands. No one’s going to know the difference and it doesn’t really matter.

Right?

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