Is LeBron Like Ike?

Often my greatest fear is the lurking possibility that what I imagine about reality is false. Frequently it manifests as insecurity about girls. Occasionally it looms as the existential worry that the world is an utter illusion. The problem is a matter of communication. Do my senses and perceptions faithfully communicate a true interface with matter, and even more questionably, is there any way for me to be in touch verifiably with other personalities -- other people?

Inversely, I doubt I can make my own mind, my own identity and ideas, accessible to others. For the past few weeks I've been struggling to write an essay comparing Dwight Eisenhower to LeBron James the basketball star. My main problem was an oppressive concern over how to address the piece (analytically? aggressively?) in order to make the arguments plain and yet thorough, convincing. I also suffered a sneaking doubt about the validity of my theories, like some critical part wouldn't hold up, but it was more a matter of how to frame the thing. I was certain of my thesis and its constellation of minor observations but I seemed incapable of translating it verbally.

Basically, the idea went like this: Society's tendency to elevate leaders comes out of the same solipsistic terror. The moment a human identity emerges, that sensibility is carved from -- cut off from -- the interconnected particles and interrelations of the universe, because to identify is to separate. So to place someone ahead of others enables individuals to follow, to be a part of something and even to remove some of the responsibility and danger of acting independently. Just as important is to grant the leader some kind of lineage: an origin connected to the beginnings of all things, both to unite the individual with an ancestry connecting people together (as in evolutionary branches) and more subtly to make a link to a time when minds lacked self-consciousness and therefore lacked the dividing factor of identity. Eisenhower was the model, because his life represented a progression of leadership, a sort of validation or sign of anointment. Before being president of Columbia University, he was president of the U.S.; before that the spearhead of D-Day and Allied operations in Europe; long before that a football star at West Point. This follows religious and royal precedent that kings and prophets must be descended from earlier founding figures or their early life full of portent and auspice, and preferably both (hence Moses and the bulrushes, David defeating Goliath, Jesus' annunciation, etc). Some modern scholars believe most of these origin stories were invented to author the kind of authenticity described above. Well LeBron James entered the national scene as a junior in high school with a sports illustrated cover headlined "The Chosen One" and I intended to demonstrate a kind of Biblical search for prophecied savior (or, if you prefer, like the search for a child Lama) after a line of "false prophets" (Iverson, Kobe, etc.) anticipating a "next Jordan". Then a discussion of what might lie ahead for the young LeBron, considering the ostensibly portentous example of Eisenhower, himself once a young star athlete who went on to excel at every level. But the possibility of a President BronBron (one nickname is already King James) raises the question of what kind of figure would he be, and this is where it connects back to solipsism. My idea is that, especially given the illusory nature of these "ascendant descendant" mythologies, presumed leaders do not transgress the solipsistic barrier presented by identity unless they resist or even shatter (by a mechanism of fragmenting contradiction through rebellion) the structure that identifies them (as that leader). Obviously, Eisenhower was not that counterstructural figure. Could LeBron be? Not likely, but possibly… etc etc

Unfortunately for my essay, I discovered Eisenhower's athletic past was not as glorious as I thought I'd learned. Though impressive as an Army running back, young Ike broke his leg and ended his playing career midway through his only season. He wasn't exactly the LeBron James of his day. It doesn't obliterate the underlying philosophy which was really the subject of the writing and which I still stand by (in a certain sense, my belief in the non-true early-Eisenhower kind of bolsters the illusory-anointment idea), but it kind of makes the supposed connection silly. Indeed all I reinforced is that what I think may not be grounded in reality, and any attempt to communicate seems rife with clouds of doubt.