Were I to write a fictional story set in present day with the theme of conspiracy as its backbone, I'd write about what's happening with the NFL and how it mysteriously coincides with what is happening in government/politics. You watch a football game played by pros, refereed by pros, and displayed to your eyes and/or ears by pros. (Now replace the football game with politicians speaking, debating, endorsing, opposing...etc.) pro's again.
Now, you get some fans of longtime losing teams that say, "get used to it" or "now you know how I feel" or "that same thing happened to us in year xxxx." And you've got the winning team's fans saying "sweet, we won, (and even though we saw the evidence to the contrary quite clearly in HD 1080p) we still won because that was the ruling on the field and the ruling stands. And you've even got some winning team's fans that will say quietly "holy cow, we got away with one there son, cheer but don't be obnoxious about it because that's just bad karma when you look at the evidence."
Then you've got the losing side's fans. Some literally ready to commit acts of what would be called terrorism if it were aimed at the government rather than the NFL (your "patriots clinging to their bibles and their guns"). Some not saying a word, rather, vowing to exclude themselves from football all together (your "non-voters" disgruntled by politics in general). And you've got the either/or's rationalizing both views down to some kind of moral precept that paints the fanatics as insane and the ones who just roll with it saying "oh well" as the enlightened. Plot of the story: Deal with it. Nothing's gonna change but you can sure as heck yell and scream about it, or not, we don't care. We made a ton of money out of the deal.
Andrew D. Zeise