Think the art of oratory is dead? Watch professional wrestling sometime.

I confess it, I have a weakness for this stuff. The theatricality of it all, the absurd costumes, the painstakingly choreographed pseudo-violence. It's like an action movie, compressed into the space of a few minutes: there is a hero, and a villain, and sometimes a love interest. Most important, there is always a story. Sometimes this story is told through a narrator (the announcer), but most often it is conveyed through dialog. The two wrestlers confront one another, one typically hurling accusations at the other in order to win the audience's allegiance. Even when all they are doing is offering descriptions of what they intend to do to one another, the one we want to win is always the one with the most colorful action plan. Instead of saying, "I'm going to defeat you by employing wrestling moves X and Y," the wrestlers are more likely to say something like, "I'm going to rip your head off, scoop out your brain, attach a vinyl strap to each ear, and give it to my kid to use for trick-or-treating." See what I mean? The second one is much more compelling. This is the guy you want to win.

Sad to say, but I think professional wrestling is our Lincoln-Douglas debates. Sound weird? Just think about it. Today's political debates are nothing like they used to be. I love watching them, but the oratory is just not there. Most modern politicians can't deliver a stirring speech to save their lives. What we get instead is some jackass brandishing a Polaroid and droning on like Ben Stein about some average Joe or Jane he pretends to care about. "Now I want to tell you about a young lady in Michigan who has five kids and is on a very fixed income...blah blah blah blah." I'm not complaining about the subject matter here either, because ordinary people often have extraordinary stories to tell. What bugs me is the abyssmal mode of delivery. And lately, the higher up you get in politics, the worse the speeches get. I offer as an example a certain president who shall remain nameless, but whose oratory ability is about on par with a package of Beernuts. (Every time he says "umm" I want to smack him. Didn't he ever have a freaking speech tutor? My God.) But back to the point. Without political debates and speeches to stir our native passions, what are we supposed to do?

Throughout history, human beings have always had a hunger for oratory. We thrive on stories, presumably because they offer a way for us to interpret our own lives, for us to put names to our hidden dreams and secret rages. And this is where professional wrestling comes in. Especially with the rage part.

So here's the setting of my enlightenment:

A few nights ago, I was watching WWE at the gym when Rowdy Roddy Piper sauntered into the ring. At first I was surprised to see him. Seemed like the nursing home circuit would have been more age-appropriate for him (after all, it's tough to wrestle with dentures and a colostomy bag). But I adore the man, and I've adored him ever since his hilarious turn in They Live (probably the greatest film of our age), so I gave the screen my full attention. There he stood, sans sunglasses. A tartan skirt swirled around his muscular thighs, and a black motorcycle jacket clung to his massive pecs. His ruddy cheeks were glowing in a way that reminded me of a basted turkey.

Then this 20-something guy named Randy came out, and it turned out that he was the son of Cowboy Bob, one of Rowdy Roddy Piper's old-time opponents. Randy was young and beefy like a football player, and honestly, he looked like he could wax the floor with my favorite Scotsman. Looking at the two side by side, Piper looked less like a professional wrestler and more like the crazy guy at the bar who plays Foghat on the jukebox and starts pummelling people every time he gets a few drinks in him. But Rowdy Roddy Piper is scrappy. He's got that brash highlander thing going on (minus the immortality and the broadswords, sadly), so that despite the slight doughiness of his midsection, it's clear he's one hell of a fighter.

Then Randy began speaking. The vein on his forehead throbbed as he recounted the many times he came home from school to find his father bleeding and bruised, broken in body and spirit, because of a losing match with Piper. The story went on, and the crowd began to respond with sympathetic shouts. Some were standing, waving their fists. The picture was forming in all of our heads, that of a little boy who loves his father and wants to avenge the wrongs done to him. It's a revenge story. It's a Western. And the picture was so vivid that—even knowing the whole thing was about as real as the plastic vomit you get from the magic store—I found myself almost, almost, almost feeling sorry for big, beefy Randy. This guy was good. He delivered his truckstop-redneck lines with a sort of Shakespearean purity.

At some point, though, Rowdy Roddy Piper had heard enough. Bristling with contrived rage, he muscled this young whippersnapper to the floor and began pounding him until the referees handily jumped in and held him back. Then the oratory began again. It was really quite beautiful. Eventually they fought properly, this time with Cowboy Bob joining his son for a little tag-team retaliation.

What's really going on here, of course, is a sort of seduction of the audience, and I'm not just talking about when Trish comes onstage looking like she's smuggling produce from the local Kroger. No, this is more a seduction of thought. These matches are really just morality plays in miniature, riffing on the most rudimentary notions of right and wrong. Each confrontation is never just about two athletes sparring. It's about vengeance. It's about some guy who's mad that another guy flirted with his girlfriend. It's about loyalty and betrayal and other stuff we can all identify with. It's got all the epic themes, but delivered with salt-of-the-earth brand drama and roughhousing.

Just imagine if the ancient philosophers had added a dash of violence to spice up their oratory. The Socratic method would be an entirely different animal.

"So, my good friends, are we to understand that logic is merely a contrivance?...an ephemeral tool with which we reassure ourselves of our innate superiority over the natural world?"

(body slam)

"Shall we then, as an experiment, eliminate logic in order to discover a more honest view of our world, ourselves?"

(piledriver)

"And if we do discard logic in such a fashion, could we ever retrive it? Would we even recognize it for what it was?"

(Perhaps a chair is thrown at this point.)

So yeah, that's my theory. And if you disagree with me, I'm going to have to tear off your limbs, twist them into funny shapes like those balloon animals, and throw your torso into a pit full of wolves. Nothing personal.