The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
"Representing this country proudly is the only job American Olympic athletes have — and they’re failing at it."
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| Added by TD |
. . . "In our modern world, the Olympics strike as something of an anomaly: This isn’t the kind of event where everyone gets participation awards and goes home mildly annoyed that competition amounts to nothing these days. This isn’t some kind of global “kumbaya” where we erase our differences.
"No, this is where men and women patriotically do their best to represent the rest of us well (and to prove that all that money we sank into their training was worth it). The Olympic field is one where skill and expertise are rewarded; where countries are celebrated and patriotism is praised while the whole world watches.
"This is good old-fashioned competition and good old-fashioned national pride — sights you don’t see on the global stage every day.
"Of course, that’s not the world most of these athletes grew up in. Sure, they’ve been competitive (they wouldn’t be in Milan otherwise), but they’ve also spent their entire lives being indoctrinated in an ideology that believes national pride is a vice we should have all outgrown. Need proof? Newsweek has a list of all the U.S. athletes who have used their five minutes of fame to lambast their president.
"For instance, Rich Ruohonen, a lawyer turned athlete, told journalists in Milan that he believes there are constitutional issues with the way the federal government is trying to enforce its immigration law in his home state of Minnesota.
"Hunter Hess expressed his “mixed emotions” when it comes to representing the U.S. at the Olympics: “There’s obviously a lot going on that I’m not the biggest fan of, and I think a lot of people aren’t,” he said during a press conference. “I think for me it’s more I’m representing my, like, friends and family back home, the people that represented before me. All the things that I believe are good about the U.S. I just think if it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it.”
"President Donald Trump responded by [sadly] calling Hess a “real Loser.”
"Then there’s Amber Glenn, a figure skater and self-identified pansexual, who decided to use her newfound platform to publicly criticize the treatment the LGBTQ “community” has experienced under the Trump administration." . . . More...
Aubrey Harris is a graduate of Hillsdale College (2023), the former Intercollegiate Studies Institute fellow at The American Spectator and current columnist. She writes Spectator P.M. Newsletter for American Spectator subscribers where she rambles on current events, historical topics, and life in general. When she isn’t writing, Aubrey enjoys long runs, solving rock climbs, and rattling windows with the 32-foot pipes on the organ.
