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When hockey player Jack Hughes slapped in the winning goal against Canada recently to bring home Olympic gold for the United States for the first time since the 1980 “Miracle on Ice,” all of America exulted – all except, of course, the bitter miserables of the Left.
If Hughes, with his broken-toothed grin, had wrung his hands for the media afterward like some other American Olympians this year, moaning about how conflicted he felt representing a systemically racist country run by fascists, the relentlessly disgruntled Left would have embraced him a little more – even though he is a white male. Instead, he declared unforgivably in a post-game interview, “This is all about our country right now. I love the USA… I’m so proud to be an American today, I love my country.” Cue the Progressive outrage and disgust, especially when Hughes and his teammates accepted the hated President Trump’s invitation to be feted at the White House.
The far-Left Democrat Party is a basket of miserables, to paraphrase Hillary Clinton’s infamous pejorative “deplorables” about the American people who didn’t vote for her. By its very nature, Leftism requires its adherents to live in perpetual grievance and bitterness. It thrives on overthrowing the status quo, preferably through violent revolution, and that demands a relentless discontent with, well, everything. It drives Leftists to politicize every aspect of their lives (“The personal is the political!”) so that they can’t even set aside their partisan fervor long enough to enjoy a sporting event. Leftism is also by its very nature anti-American, and so the Left despises the kind of unashamedly patriotic outburst Hughes displayed for our country.
One such Trump Derangement Syndrome sufferer tweeted about the Olympics, “Trump did this. He made it impossible to be proud of anything American. It’s straight up embarrassing & shameful to be an American now. Fuck trump. Fuck ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement]. Fuck his whole corrupt admin,” the bitter miserable concluded in the Left’s usual profane, inarticulate style.
In the wake of America’s exhilarating hockey victory in overtime, Monica Torres, a senior reporter at HuffPost, penned an opinion piece with the unintentionally comical headline, “There’s A Name For The Discomfort You’re Feeling Watching The Olympics Right Now,” with the teaser, “If waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you’re not alone.” Actually, if waving the Stars and Stripes or chanting “USA!” after an Olympic victory turns you off, then you should consider either 1) moving to a country you can be proud of – shall we say, China? – or 2) not politicizing everything, like watching the Olympics.
In any case, Torres began by reminding Huffpost’s Democrat readers that they should be miserable and discontented living in a dystopian dictatorship whose “deportation agenda separates families, and federal agents detain 5-year-olds and kill unarmed civilians.” In her fevered mind, this nightmarish worldview – Left-wing lie though it is – made it difficult for her to fully celebrate American athletes winning medals at the Olympics, and so she commiserated with her readers over the “cognitive dissonance of rooting for U.S. sports while hating the U.S. government.”
Torres quotes Los Angeles-based licensed clinical social worker Aimee Monterrosa, who observed that this dissonance is so common among her Progressive clients that “it continues to be one of the main topics I hold space for in therapy. As we continue to witness national and global atrocities in real time…it can trigger feelings of guilt, despair, shame, anger.”
Similarly, Nevada-based clinical psychologist Tanisha Ranger told Torres that it’s typical for people wrestling with this cognitive dissonance to feel a “weird mix of excitement and discomfort at the same time” that might feel like “a tightening in your chest or stomach when you realize you’re cheering and cringing simultaneously.” Pathetic.
I’m no psychologist, thank God, but I feel comfortable asserting that simultaneously opposing a political administration and loving your country does not constitute cognitive dissonance. It’s really not that difficult a concept, unless you’re an overwrought Progressive suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome: you can disagree, even vehemently, with a given administration and still love your country. The government is not America – conservatives understand this instinctively, but the Left wrestles with the distinction. Also, the Left quite simply does not love this country as we know it. They love only the vision they hold of a future America, one that has been transformed from the Land of the Free to a collectivist, social justice utopia, and that vision can be achieved only by first razing the flawed America they hate to the ground.
As one conservative X user commented about the purported “cognitive dissonance”: “If you can’t separate things, you need to work on your adulting skills.” Sound advice.
Oklahoma Republican Sen. Markwayne Mullin responded on X to the Huffpost piece: “If you can’t be excited about winning gold at the Olympics— including in OT vs Canada, you don’t have a pulse. Some people will pick victimhood and being miserable over having an ounce of patriotism. Good luck.”
The response to the article from Congressman Randy Fine, a Florida Republican, was a little more blunt: “Get the hell out of my country. USA! USA! USA!”
Washington Times columnist Tim Murtaugh’s response was even more blunt: “lol get bent.”
Misery loves company, and the Left loves wallowing together in their mutually joyless hell on earth. Meanwhile, elated conservatives are still basking in the glow of our great country’s gold-medal triumph on the ice.
Follow Mark Tapson at Culture Warrior.
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