TEXAS FOLD EM

By RAY WADDLE

The other day I turned on ESPN to catch some baseball. Instead, they were showing championship poker, four unglamorous guys sitting around a table.

So I flipped to ESPN Classic, ready to relive the glories of Super Bowls past. No. They were airing World Series of Poker 2003, four more dudes around a table.

Giving up on sports, I switched to Bravo -- only to find Celebrity Poker Showdown, four rich guys around a table.

TV used to be Carol Burnett, Wild World of Sports and Jed Clampett. Now poker defines the on-camera moment -- the political mood, a spiritual climate.

Forget the complaints that poker is not a sport, or poker is too boring to watch. They miss the point. People, of course, have always played poker, but now it is findiing new status as an alluring public ritual, an image of national life. The internet makes it easier to play. Movie stars give it cache and intimacy. It is tense, intricate, mentally absorbing and seriously addictive.

But theres more.

Poker re-enacts the drama of real life in todays America. What is poker, after all? A game that pits the individual against the odds, against the house. it is life stripped down to brute elements of conflict, risk and payoff. You are forced to play the cards dealt to you by fate. It is a way to test character and confront an opponent face-to-face, without rhetoric. It rewards skill, guts, stamina, ingenuity, bluff and nerve. And it is regular-looking people doing it on TV.

TV gaming happens to be huge at the moment when national life is frayed by political resentments, ethical business meltdowns, Mideast war and suspicions that institutions cant be trusted to deliver Social Security or affordable health care. Poker rewards the fearless stoicism of the lone individual. So does life in the USA. Texas Hold Em is the big-stakes game of the hour. The name pays homage to the state that is synonymous with freewheeling liberty, rough justice, Alamo stare-downs, big-sky defiance and endless swagger. Delaware Hold Em wouldnt work.

In poker, everybody fends for herself. Winner take all. Survival of the fittest. Thats a national motto, too. In the new economy, everybody jousts with unseen hostile forces of corporate cost-cutting and globalizatio. The Golden Rule is postponed, buried. When the safety net of pension plans finally falls in tatters, politicians will solemnly tell us there is only one national solution left: Each of us must strike it rich on our own, by entrepreneurial energy or by winning the lottery. This is the message -- the frantic dream, the statistical impossibility -- after 30 years of partisan contempt for government and loathing for progressive taxation.

Organized religion used to put up stout public resistance to gambling in all its forms. Betting was considered an irresponsible waste of money, the enemy of the work ethic, a dangerous addiction that ruined families. And the Bible was against it: gambling glorified lady luck instead of trust in the providence of God.

But by the 1980s religion was losing the argument. It lost its convictions. The feeble Tennessee anti-gambling campaign in 2002, for instance, never had a chance. It didnt really try. it was in fact a disgrace; some of the anti-gambling bigwigs were also anti-tax ideologues, a conflict of interest. Religious conservatives will secretly vote for legalized gambling over taxes any day. Let the poor pay our way by futilely buying up all those lottery tickets.

At some point, the smoky backroom thrills of gambling went mainstream, and neighborly religious values got elbowed out. Legalized gambling is now a matter of public policy, a daily instinct, an alternative to taxes. What happened? Liberal religion, which always opposed gambling, lost its public voice and abdicated the Bible to the right-wing. Conservative religion joined forces with secular political power and relentless marketing values that trumpet the strong over the weak, the dogma of social Darwinism. Traditional values used to include a heart for the underdog. No longer.

The TV poker craze isnt to blame for the ills of society. Its exciting, strategic, ruthless and not for kids. Its also a handy symbol for understanding how a superpower at war is dealing the cards in the new century.