USA Men’s Hockey Gold Win Was Apparently Too Much for Sports Writers to Bear | National Review - "The conventional wisdom within our illustrious sports media this morning seems to be that Eileen Gu, who skis for China, is an estimable American role model, whereas the USA men’s hockey team, which plays hockey for America, is an international disgrace... The charge against the men’s team seems to be four-fold. First, that, having won the gold, its members declined to address the “tide of fascism in the United States” and instead said gauche hyper-nationalistic things, such as, “This is all about our country right now,” “I love the USA,” “I’m so proud to be American today,” “This is for every American,” “It’s the greatest country in the world,” and “Everyone better be wearing the red, white, and blue for as long as they can.” Second, that during a post-game phone call with a rollicking President Trump, the players didn’t band together on the spot to push back against his supposedly sexist jokes — or apologize later for their complicity. Third, that the team subsequently agreed to go to the White House to celebrate their victory — and, even worse, that it seems excited by that prospect. Fourth, that the FBI director, Kash Patel, went over to Italy to watch the game and then chugged beer with the team in the locker room. Together, the sporting press is keen to inform us, these decisions have “sullied” the USA’s victory and ruined the reputations of its architects for all time. What nonsense this all is. What narrow, monomaniacal, outlandish, freakish guff. I had a low opinion of sports writers before the last 48 hours, but good grief do I now want to throw the entire corps into a lake. The USA men’s team wins the gold for the first time in 46 years, and the news cycle following that achievement is stocked with fringe, politicized crap. I am reminded in this moment of Margaret Thatcher, berating the press after the recapture of South Georgia during the Falklands War. “Just rejoice at that news,” Thatcher said, “and congratulate our forces and the Marines.” Amen, Maggie. Just rejoice, and congratulate our team. I promise you’ll live through the ordeal. Not everything has to be a campus psychodrama. Not all stories need to “surface the nuances of” this or that. Not every incident that tangentially involves Donald Trump requires his elevation to the star of the tale. It’s okay to be happy that the United States won something, without finding 100 other reasons to be sad, angry, indignant, or confused. There really is no need to stretch to canonize a woman who represents another country when we have our own heroes before our very eyes. Rejoice! Journalists are not politicians, and there is no need for them to be perfectly representative of the nation. But it might be a good thing for our culture if they weren’t all massive weirdos. If you were to stop 100 people on the street at random and ask them about the USA’s victory on Sunday, how many do you think would fixate on the supposed jingoism of the team, or on President Trump’s phone call and White House invitation, or on Kash bloody Patel?"
USA Men’s Hockey Gold Win Was Apparently Too Much for Sports Writers … : r/NewsWorthPayingFor - "They sure are upset over at r/hockey
https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/1rdc6px/jack_hughes_addresses_the_pateltrump_phone_call/
Related: "r/hockey stands with LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, and AAPI."
Should I point out that this is offensive to Canadians? They prefer "2SLGBTQI" (see: https://www.canada.ca/en/women-gender-equality/free-to-be-me/2slgbtqi-plus-glossary.html)
SOTU Update late 2/24:
Trump introduced the team and announced that Connor Hellebuyck will receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Naturally r/hockey lost its collective mind.
https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/1re0uve/president_trump_introduces_the_mens_team_usa/"
"Sports "journalists" are, as a rule, as Ameriphobic and as commie as their colleagues in the Left stream Media are. Of course, this is their take on an amazing game."
Melissa Chen on X - "Is the NYT ok? They're making it sound like the US ice hockey team shouldn't have accepted an invite to meet Hitler after winning the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Very strange that this attitude about how "this isn't a neutral climate," doesn't apply to Eileen Gu. They could've just as easily written: "This isn't a neutral climate. This isn't a neutral country. And in a world this polarized, the proximity to China carries weight whether Eileen Gu is being intentional or merely naive." But no. They write this about the gold-winning US hockey team taking a congratulatory call from President Trump and accepting the invitation to appear at Trump's State of the Union instead. I understand how hating America is virtually a job requirement for being a journalist these days, but even a sports journo? C'mon man!"
Alise Mills on X - "Let me say this about the @globeandmail 's decision to run this lede. What the editors at The Globe and Mail chose to print wasn’t edgy. It wasn’t clever. It wasn’t even sharp. It was lazy, inflammatory, and grotesquely irresponsible. To describe the “state of the union as a zoo” and the U.S. men’s hockey team as “the monkeys” is not satire, it is dehumanization. Full stop. “Monkey” has a long, ugly history as a racialized slur. It has been weaponized to demean, to belittle, and to strip people of their humanity. Any newsroom with even a passing familiarity with language, history, or basic decency knows this. This is not obscure. It is not subtle. It is not debatable. And this wasn’t some rogue tweet fired off at 1am. It was edited. Approved. Published. That means multiple "adults" in a professional newsroom looked at that wording and thought, “Yes, that’s fine.” That failure is institutional. If the paper intended metaphor, they failed. If they intended provocation, they succeeded but at the cost of their own credibility. If they intended humour, they should consider a different line of work. A national newspaper carries influence. It sets tone. It signals standards. When it chooses language that echoes dehumanizing tropes, it lowers the bar not just for itself, but for public discourse more broadly. And at a time when media organizations constantly lecture the public about civility, standards, and responsible speech, the hypocrisy is glaring. Criticism of American politics? Absolutely. But equating human beings with animals — especially in a context loaded with historical baggage is beyond the pale. An apology would be the minimum. A serious internal reckoning about editorial judgment would be wiser. Because if this is what passes for commentary at one of Canada’s flagship publications, then the real circus isn’t on the ice."
This won't stop left wingers claiming they are centre-right
Dehumanising white men is good
Geoff Russ: There is nothing morally superior about a silver medal at the Olympics - "Too many Canadians are comfortable with second place, even to the point of celebrating it. In the final showdown of the men’s ice hockey tournament at the Milano-Cortina Olympics, the United States beat Canada in overtime to take the gold medal... A normal, mature country would recognize the game as a painful defeat, a source of short-term anger, possibly long-term bitterness, and a cause for self-reflection. Some Canadians did that, but others tried to pretend that a silver medal was some sort of moral victory for the country. “I’d rather be a Canadian with a silver than an American with a gold,” a quote that Bruce Croxon, a former CBC presenter, approvingly posted on X, as he tried to turn second place into a sort of deranged sacrament. Let us be serious. Taking pride in being the runner-up is reserved for underdogs. As a wintry nation that led the gold medal count at the 2010 Winter Olympics, we are not meeting the expectations we set for ourselves 16 years ago... Our public culture has a terrible habit of thinking that second place can be a personality trait. Sentimentalizing resignation to defeat is certainly not an instinct for our athletes, but it is for many of those who fancy themselves as the stewards of our official narratives. This losing energy infects our politics, our economy, and the most intimate decisions of middle-class life. One Canadian who does not exemplify this is Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player who ever lived, and a winner in every sense of the word. Now he is booed because he will not condemn U.S. President Donald Trump with the same vitriol as bitter men like Globe and Mail columnist Doug Saunders. Upon learning that some rabid Canadians had booed Gretzky at a sporting event, Saunders sneered that it was “ a small win ” on X. It hurts petty people to be reminded that Gretzky exemplifies true excellence of the sort that scares those who pathologise mediocrity... Gretzky will provoke their rage for the rest of his life, because our cult of second place cannot tolerate the presence of a man whose entire public identity was built around winning. If you are psychologically invested in settling, excellence is anathema. This same instinct is applied to our economy, especially in Western Canada. For too long, the risk-taking, entrepreneurial West has been treated like a fiscal sponge and cast as morally suspect. Alberta is the country’s top financial lifeline, with a productive culture of enterprise, yet it is constantly villainized as being too “ American ” when they try to reform healthcare to allow private-sector participation, for example. If people want to stick it to the U.S., this is not the way. Competitors are not defeated by kneecapping the productive and demonising winners. We can silence critics by building and celebrating our own without punishing them out of a sense of paranoia masquerading as patriotism. Being satisfied with less is a mental disease. For example, in a country rife with unaffordable housing, Canadians are now urged to rationalize becoming lifelong renters. One writer even urged Canadians to celebrate eternal renting and to disregard the “ cult ” of home ownership... Canadian anti-American energy often manifests in the worst ways, such as spitefully attacking national heroes, scapegoating fellow citizens, and morally posturing about coming in second. We should strive to outdo other countries, in sports and living standards. I certainly do, and am fatigued by my fellow Canadians seeking superiority by symbolism instead of performance."
Auston Matthews booed in Toronto when Leafs announced him as a gold medallist for Team USA
Being a sore loser is good when it pushes the left wing agenda
Meme - Steve Byrne @stevebyrnelive: "We live in a country where you can win Gold for China and end up on the cover of Time magazine but win Gold for US and have your own press turn on you."
"President Donald Trump and the USA hockey team dust up explained"
"Eileen Gu"
Hans Mahncke on X - "I think almost everything that can be said about Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu has already been said, but when I step back and look at the full picture, I keep getting blown away by how reality handed us a script far more perfect than anything fiction could invent. On one side, you have the cold, elitist “I’m the most decorated” athlete, raised in one of the wealthiest and most exclusive neighborhoods in the country, Sea Cliff, who gladly sold out the country that gave her everything in order to became the PR face of a brutal dictatorship in exchange for a few suitcases of cash. On the other side, you have the happy-go-lucky, “That’s what I’m fucking talking about” girl from working-class Richmond, coerced by Communist Party operatives, refusing to bow to them, and proudly representing the United States. And that does not even begin to touch on the tortuous path Alysa’s father had in getting to the United States, compared with the easy route taken by Eileen’s mother, or the many other layers of this story. And then, perfectly, one wins both her competitions and the other loses both. If anyone tried to make a movie out of this story, no one would believe it."
Meme - *Alysa Liu Nazi salute vs Elon Musk Nazi salute*
Oilfield Rando on X - "You see one refugee became a good figure skater so now we have to import 5 million Congolese DoorDash drivers"
Meme - PoliMath @politicalmath: "It's so weird to see the narrative shift from "MAGA wouldn't love Alysa Liu if they knew her politics" to "We hate the American hockey team for no reason whatsoever except that our political enemies like them""
The Athletic @TheAthletic: "It's nice to be feted as a winner, as the U.S. men's Olympic hockey team has been. But who's celebrating you - and why they're doing it - matters more. Athletes would be wise to recognize that, in this climate, celebration is easily repurposed into political capital."
Meme - Griffin Maxwell Brooks @Griffi...: "So confused by right wing accounts trying to claim her as if she isn't clearly a woke bisexual zoomer"
MAGA Voice: "l am in tears. Alysa Liu just did another beautiful skate at the Olympics. No political agenda, just having fun representing America going for GOLD. I LOVE THIS"
Jacob M. Wright: "If this is true then I have even more respect for her because she didn’t make the Olympics a soapbox to virtue signal her ideologies and bash America on the world stage like a brainwashed leftist cult member but instead checked them at the door and proudly represented America and let all of America root for her. The left thinks that an athlete has to belong to a specific ideological side before we can root for them to win for America. We love Alysa because regardless of whatever she believes, she loves America and is proud to represent it. She held the American flag with immense pride. Her story is uniquely American. A father fleeing a Communist regime to find a haven in the freedom America offers and raising her daughter to love and proudly represent the country. She is allowed to be young and dumb in whatever beliefs she will likely grow out of, but she doesn’t make it her entire identity to the point of needing to rant about it on the world stage. A side doesn’t claim her. America claims her."
Of course, left wingers were claiming (without proof as usual) that MAGA hated her
Bizlet on X - "The thing is ‘right wing’ or ‘left wing’ is simply vibes at this point. It’s not about a coherent ideology. Everyone knows despite being a California liberal this girl represents the ‘right wing’ from her fun non bitchy demeanor and refusal to be ashamed to be an American."
Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Leftoids can't understand why conservatives cheer a girl like Alysia Liu because their worldview demands total ideological conformity and purity. Mildly disagree on one issue, and you're not just wrong, you're subhuman, unworthy of any admiration or basic respect, someone whose life must be utterly and completely destroyed. Conservatives can disagree with someone's politics yet still celebrate her talent, especially when she wins gold for Team USA, drapes herself in the flag, and openly expresses her love for America. One side hates everyone to their right across the board, the other can celebrate a cute American figure skater even when she doesn't check every box. The divide between left and right in America is between people who hate America and want to destroy it vs. those who love America and want to preserve it. It's that simple."
Of course, left wingers are claiming, without proof as usual, that MAGA hates her
The Alysa Liu discourse perfectly captures what’s wrong with modern progressivism : r/TrueUnpopularOpinion - "For anyone who didn’t know, Alysa Liu won gold in U.S. figure skating. She has received overwhelming praise from virtually everyone for her skating. On X (Twitter) a lot of right-leaning people and pages have also praised her for being the archetypal immigrant success story (since her dad came here from China and became a lawyer, and now she’s a world champion athlete) - as well as just generally being happy that an American won gold and feeling patriotic about it. This has been met with scathing mockery from a lot of progressives who are quick to point out that she is progressive and “woke” and likely hates most of the conservatives who are praising her. This is the problem with progressives. People on the right are happy to see her succeed. They’re happy that her dad came here through the legal immigration process, has contributed and been successful, and now she’s done the same thing in turn. They overwhelmingly don’t care about her politics especially because she hasn’t used the Olympics as a megaphone to broadcast her political beliefs. She’s just done what she was there to do. Obviously, if the situations were reversed, you’d have a completely different reaction. If it came to light that she was a MAGA supporter, progressives would relentlessly bash and shame her, they wouldn’t praise or promote her performance, and they’d largely only care about her political views. Anyone with common sense who has been alive for the last decade knows this is true because we’ve seen it happen over and over again. This is why so many people can’t stand modern progressivism. No matter what you do or achieve or what kind of person you are overall, the wrong political views are a completely overriding nonstarter. This is not the case for conservatives which is why progressives are confused and think it’s a gotcha to point out that she’s a progressive. It’s not. None of them care. Watching this play out in real time has been fascinating. It really encapsulates the problem with modern progressivism."
American-born skier competing for China says she feels like a punching bag after JD Vance’s comments - "People might be more reserved in their criticism if Gu refrained from discussing politics altogether. But she doesn’t. She opines on abortion and Black Lives Matter and President Donald Trump while instantly shutting up when questioned on China’s human rights abuses. Not to mention the fact that China is one of the United States’ primary geopolitical rivals... Americans are entitled to their opinions, yes. Opinions are more harshly regulated in countries like China, which Gu has represented since 2019."
Meme - "Tyler 31
Casual sex is dead. I just want to feed you, support you emotionally, do cute shit, and make out a lot. Anti-racist. Anti-fascist. Pro-Crunchberies. Unashamed superliker. Life's to short to feign disinterest. RACK, GGG. ACAB. Dissent in the streets, consent in the sheets. He/him/his. Vaccinated as fuck. Get ready for some OVER SHARING ABOUT MENTAL HEALTH"
The Inverse Rule of Civilization - "the more prosperous and advanced a civilization becomes, the more likely it is to destroy itself. I have long argued that progressivism is a disease born of prosperity because prosperity distances people from the hard realities of life... members of a prosperous society slowly forget what it takes to maintain the health and operation of their culture. They think less about how they arrived where they are and what must be done to sustain it. Instead, they fixate on perceived deficiencies in a system they have always known and assume the underlying foundation will simply always be there because it is the only baseline they have ever experienced. The longer a civilization remains prosperous, and the more insulated it becomes from hardship, the greater the detachment from reality it begins to accept as normal... We have stopped rearing children with any rational perspective of hardship, of what survival requires, and of how fragile complex systems truly are when, like our complex socioeconomic system, they are often subject to single points of failure. We caught a glimpse of civilizational strain during the COVID panicdemic. Supply chains faltered, social cohesion fractured, and fear replaced confidence. When it came time to absorb the lesson, however, we failed the test and chose not to reflect on what those uncomfortable months really represented. Instead, we doubled down on comfort and distraction and as a result, we ceded power to a generation of soft, sophomoric adult children unable to comprehend real pain or delayed gratification. These adult babies are idealistic and ideological yet bereft of knowledge about natural law, economic reality, or the requirements of living in a productive society, and they are living in an illusion of reality, not reality itself. Daniel J. Boorstin was right when he said that “We risk being the first people in history to have been able to make their illusions so vivid, so persuasive, so ‘realistic’ that they can live in them.” History records many civilizations that fell through revolution or war, but rarely does it record one that had not already rotted from within. Decay precedes collapse. When cultures pause to enjoy extended affluence, they often produce generations of ne’er-do-wells, foppish and self-indulgent classes who mistake comfort for permanence. Societies begin navel-gazing, self-recrimination, and endless moral posturing. Forward motion stops, and weak links form in the chain of progress. Leaders who appease those weak links as indulgent parents once did often accelerate the decline. Don’t get me wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with affluence. Success is not the problem; however, danger arises when prosperity is not paired with a deeply rooted, society-wide drive to achieve, improve, and compete. Capitalistic, free societies function as engines of progress precisely because they are externally focused and growth oriented. They understand that achievement is temporary and must be renewed. America, by contrast, has become internally focused. Significant portions of our academic culture wallow in self-loathing, dwelling on national mistakes as if there is nothing to learn from America’s unparalleled success."
Michelle Yeoh Avoids U.S. Politics Question in Berlin, Focusing on Cinema - "Michelle Yeoh declined to speak about U.S. politics during a press conference at Berlin Film Festival, saying it’s “best not to talk about something I don’t know about.” When asked by a reporter if she had any comment as an international actress on the current state of the U.S. — likely meaning Trump’s ongoing ICE raids, though that was not specified — Yeoh said: “I don’t think I am in the position to really talk about the political situation in the U.S., and also I cannot presume to say I understand how it is. So, best not to talk about something I don’t know about.” Yeoh, who is Malaysian and primarily lives in Switzerland, added that she wanted to “concentrate on what is important for us, which is cinema.” “We hear, ‘Oh, cinema is not going to survive because there’s so many other things happening, the attention span is getting shorter.’ But I truly don’t believe that,” she said. “Because I believe when we go to the cinema, that is time for you. You know, you switch off your phones and you’ve chosen to watch something that you want. And that is the time when you can open your heart and free your mind and have time to yourself. Cinema is a place where we all come together and laugh and cry, we celebrate, but it’s always important to keep that tradition alive. And I hope that is what we are here to do.”"
The Play's the Thing - "An interesting aspect of the AWFUL culture — including the male Karens — is the heavy involvement of people who are affluent, college-educated, and living in safe suburban environments, yet possess absolutely zero commonality or lived connection with the groups they aggressively champion. They are not merely sympathetic observers. They become rabid foot soldiers, sometimes even risking arrest or physical harm, to demonstrate how much they “care.” This phenomenon is not new. Many of the white activists of the late 1960s came from wealthy or professionally prominent families. Their parents were often community leaders, executives, professors, or political figures. Yet these young activists aligned themselves with revolutionary Marxists, violent radicals, or black nationalist groups whose goals — and frequently whose stated hatred — did not include them. The connection was emotional and symbolic, not experiential. What I’ve come to understand is that modern Americans who are anti-ICE, pro-Palestine, or pro-ANTIFA — and who are not illegal migrants, Gazans, or members of those groups themselves — are not actually supporting those causes in the literal sense. They are recontextualizing them. They are repurposing them as instruments for their own social positioning, turning the output of these movements into moral currency. The activist does not gain material benefit, but they gain status: moral superiority, belonging, and identity. In a society where traditional markers of meaning — religion, community obligation, and civic responsibility — have weakened, political activism fills the vacuum. It becomes a performance of virtue. The cause itself matters less than the signaling attached to it. In this way they resemble an army of modern Don Quixotes, charging into battle against enemies that largely exist in narrative form. The windmills must be giant dragons because the activist requires epic battles against giant dragons. Without dragons, the urgent moral drama collapses. Quixotic politics has become the stock-in-trade of the American left during the Trump era. Trump is not without flaws — far from it — but his opponents have elevated him from a political adversary into a mythological villain. The Trump presidency has been rhetorically transformed into Custer’s Last Stand, the Stonewall riots, the killing of George Floyd, and Auschwitz all rolled into one continuous moral emergency because once politics becomes existential theater, proportion disappears. Every policy disagreement becomes oppression, every enforcement action becomes fascism, and every election becomes the last election. Trump is planning to cancel the 2028 election and simply stay in the White House. Blacks will be returned to slavery, women will live the Handmaid’s Tale, and January 6th will be successful this time. The narrative demands consequences of not acting so disastrous that compromise becomes betrayal, ordinary civic disagreement becomes immoral. One is either with the movement or against the movement, there can be no middle ground. Trump himself has been converted into a symbolic tyrant — a straw-man Nicolae Ceaușescu, the Romanian dictator who ruled from 1965 until his execution in 1989. The comparison is historically absurd, but emotionally useful. If the villain is a dictator, then any resistance becomes justified. Why, by definition, opposition is positively heroic. As Hamlet said, “The play’s the thing wherein I’ll catch the conscience of the king.” These activists are not reacting to reality; they are constructing a moral stage on which they can play the role of liberator, the causes they attach themselves to function as props. Immigration enforcement becomes apartheid. Foreign conflict becomes personal guilt. Law enforcement becomes occupation. The facts are secondary to the utility of the narrative. The suburban protester shouting revolutionary slogans is not expressing solidarity so much as seeking meaning and because there is no rational basis for their opposition, it explains why debate or persuasion rarely, if ever, works. Their activism is not about solving a problem; it is about sustaining their identity. If the problem were solved, the identity would disappear with it. Since one cannot fact-check a psychological reward system, the windmills must become dragons, and the dragons must remain.Contemporary activists do not want victory in the traditional sense, largely because they can’t define what victory looks like and even worse, success ends the crusade. Instead, they need perpetual crisis, because crisis provides purpose and satisfies their vanity. This mentality has resulted in the “Omnicause”, their use of intersectionality to seamlessly slip from one “cause” to the next, an Alinsky outlined process of discarding one cause when it becomes a drag and adopting another that stokes the fires once again. Quixotic AWFULS and male Karens will keep charging, convinced they are saving the world when they are primarily saving themselves from the terrifying possibility that their lives might otherwise be wasted or ordinary. To me, it seems as if this is the culturally approved version of having an extramarital affair – it’s all the thrill without the downside of getting caught.heroi"
Nigel Farage urges US to oppose UK on free speech laws - "Nigel Farage has urged US politicians and businesses to tell the British government "you've simply got this wrong" on freedom of speech rules, as he compared the UK to North Korea... Citing the cases of writer Graham Linehan and a woman who was jailed over a racist tweet, Farage spoke about what he called "the really awful authoritarian situation that the UK has sunk into". During the session he was heavily criticised by some Democratic members of Congress, including Jamie Raskin who labelled him a "Putin-loving free speech impostor". Responding to Farage's appearance at the committee, Labour's Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: "Jetting off to another country and hyping up the prospect of the UK's trade with our closest allies being hit is about as anti-British as you can get." Earlier in the day Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer accused Farage of having "flown to America to badmouth and talk down our country""
Weird. Left wingers used to tell us that criticising your own country is patriotic. Of course, they only love free speech when it can be weaponised to destroy the West
