This week, most Americans found a moment of rare unity in our pride over the performance of our athletes in the Winter Olympics.
After years of rage politics, there was a brief respite as we joined in cheering our team in representing the United States in Milan and Cortina.
Well, most of us. Some in the media found the entire demonstration of patriotism to be intolerable and triggering.
What is striking is how this aversion to our flag and country was so openly expressed in major media.
This week, the nightmare continued for some on the left who were traumatized by seeing the American flag and open displays of patriotism.
Jack Hughes, one of the heroes of the gold medal hockey game, returned to New Jersey to play and was met with cheers of “USA, USA” and a sea of American flags. Hughes immediately called his Olympic teammate Tage Thompson of the visiting Buffalo Sabres to the ice to join him. The two skated arm in arm as the crowd celebrated them and our country.
It was another unifying moment for the country. The fans joined arm in arm to relish this moment for the nation.
These scenes are clearly having a different impact on some on the left.
The HuffPost even published an article with therapeutic advice for liberals triggered by seeing so many American flags. The liberal publication ran an article titled “There’s a Name for the Discomfort You’re Feeling Watching the Olympics Right Now.” It then published it a second time before the gold-medal hockey game with Canada — presumably to prepare its readers for the nightmare of the United States actually winning.
The subheading read, “If waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you’re not alone.”
Senior writer Monica Torres began the article with this line: “While President Donald Trump’s deportation agenda separates families, and federal agents detain 5-year-olds and kill unarmed civilians, American athletes are winning medals on behalf of the nation at the Olympics right now.”
Torres goes on to interview three therapists for this “story” about how the celebration of the United States team has forced many liberals into therapy over their trauma and “the cognitive dissonance of rooting for U.S. sports.”
Los Angeles-based licensed clinical social worker Aimee Monterrosa explained that the “atrocities” of the United States can trigger feelings of guilt, despair, shame, anger” in seeing the country celebrate these sports victories.
Expert Lauren Appio echoed how “waving the American flag or chanting, ‘USA!’ [can make] us feel grossed out or ashamed.”
Over at Vox, Senior correspondent (and former Atlantic writer) Alex Abad-Santos wrote an article on the winners and losers of the Olympics. The column perfectly summed up the pathological opposition of some to this country’s symbols and celebrations.
Abad-Santos declared the men’s hockey team one of the biggest “losers” of the games. He blamed that team for alienating citizens by their patriotic statements: “The conversation surrounding the win quickly shifted into how the team celebrated and who it celebrated with.” He expressed outrage over the team accepting the celebratory call from the President of the United States.
In the meantime, the “winner,” according to Abad-Santos, was . . . wait for it . . . Eileen Gu, the American who reportedly took millions from the repressive Chinese regime to ski for China.
Gu used the games to criticize the United States while saying nothing of how China arrests anyone who speaks out against that country.
Abad-Santos gushes:
“Gu symbolizes the reality that athletes don’t need the US’s backing or support to be commercially successful. That makes some Americans like Vance uneasy. She also embodies the very American idea of relentlessly pursuing success and maximizing it, no matter what it takes. Gu represents the American dream and the startling concept that America isn’t necessary for it.”
The last line is particularly telling. Abad-Santos is celebrating the idea that you can live the American dream without America.
Others joined in lionizing Gu. Charlotte Harpur, writing for The New York Times’ (NYT) The Athletic, virtually declared her a new deity: “You would be forgiven if you thought Gu was a quasi-human robot expertly created by artificial intelligence, so eloquent are her responses to the media.”
The next day, the Times then slammed Men’s Hockey Team in an article titled “The U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team won gold — and then lost the room.” The Athletic‘s Jerry Brewer acknowledged that speaking with the U.S. president after such a win is “an obligatory celebration.” However, he declared that these are not “normal times”: “This isn’t a neutral climate. This isn’t a neutral president. And in a nation this polarized, the proximity carries weight whether the players are being intentional or merely naive.”
These columns on sites like HuffPost and Vox stripped away the pretense of past pieces and laid bare the antagonism for the United States by some on the left. The open celebration of the country was too much for many rage addicts today.
Fortunately, these writers are largely writing for each other. The public long ago left these sites. They now write for a minority of Americans who are triggered by the appearance of American flags or traumatized by expressions of patriotism.
What these writers find repulsive is rousing for the rest of us. Watching Hughes and Thompson skate together last night was everything that is great about this country, as those Jersey fans went wild. Hughes said that he was struggling not to get emotional at that moment. He was not alone.
Jonathan Turley is a law professor and the author of the New York Times bestselling “Rage and the Republic: The Unfinished Story of the American Revolution.”
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