I realized today what I really love about the WWF.

But reading it again reminded me of how great it really is, how it has something I've never found anywhere else: It has a boundless and totally unreserved admiration and respect for the individual human being. No one gets across the idea that we can do great things as well as Rand, and no one else I've read matches her vision of the potential of the human mind.

As I was reading I glanced up and saw the WWF: Eve of Destruction tape I'd bought at Walmart for five bucks. It's only a compilation of matches with additional commentary, but it's called Eve of Destruction. How ridiculous is that? Then I glanced over at the HHH magazine my dad bought me for christmas. Hunter is on the cover, standing in front of a flaming, destroyed city, hands in the air, bellowing at the top of his lungs because he thinks he is the greatest man in the world. He portrays that image of himself, when all he really does is perform an acrobatic, athletic show with another performer, and if all goes well nobody gets too hurt.

But he is The Game, he is the best, these aren't just matches, this is the Eve of Destruction, this is Judgment Day, this is The Rock, this is Stone Cold Steve Austin and Mick Foley, these are the Hardy Boyz, these are the greatest people in the entire world, and when I'm entranced in front of the television, watching a WWF show, I believe it. WWF may not have the brutality of ECW, it may not have the athleticism of japanese or mexican wrestling, but it has the image. WWF claims that these people are gods, and I believe it, because I want to believe it. I want someone to tell me they are amazing, I want someone to consider themselves incredible, I want them to be the greatest because no one else seems to be filling the shoes. No one but the WWF is billing itself so fully and so unapologetically as the Greatest Show on Earth.

If a wrestler gets over by making fun of his opponents, he is the most funny, the most scathing person ever to hold a microphone. If a wrestler gets over by doing high spots, he is the most death defying, the most athletic man in history. If a wrestler gets over by taking beatings, it's because he can take a better beating than any other man alive. Not everyone in the company takes that attitude, but all of the top talent do. All of my favorite wrestlers are my favorites because they don't back down, they step up to the plate and say I am the greatest, and no amount of suplexes and chairshots and verbal bashing will make them step down. They play the part of Gods, and it's a part I will watch hours of commercials and pay piles of money to see, because watching and temporarily believing it is a great feeling.

In movies and tv dramas, characters are never really great. They have a dark past, they reveal their inner weaknesses, they're too developed, they're too real. In the WWF it isn't like that. These people are great, period. No excuses, no qualifiers, even if they're great because they beat the shit out of someone backstage with a sledgehammer, they're still completely unrepentant. They are the greatest cheaters of all time, they are the best conniving fuckers you'll ever meet. That's what I love about the WWF. The top talent and the company itself present the image of rampant egomania, of invincibility, of transcending absolutely everything and coming out on top.

Atlas Shrugged had a profound effect on my life, it altered the way I see the world. WWF isn't like that, it isn't profound, it isn't life-changing. Watching WWF is a break, a respite from a world that doesn't think much of itself. For a couple of hours I can stare at a tv screen and smile because that feeling, that inner sense that I will do great things and that I have nothing to be ashamed or afraid of is reflected back. It's reflected in a very general way, I don't think the WWF could fundamentally instill that feeling in a person, but if it's already inside of you the WWF can draw it out, and it's a feeling I can find nowhere else on television.