This hockey story is the perfect illustration of why the mainstream media is so nauseating. This should be nothing but a happy, unifying moment, but the most neurotic, joyless, miserable scolds imaginable have tried to imbue as much negativity into it as possible. Because heaven forbid anybody out there not be as miserable as they are.
100% agree. There was no need to twist this into a hysteria, but hey we can get some clicks out of it, so why not?!?!?!
The perfect example was before the game even happened and this blew up, reporters were constantly trying to get the players to frame the upcoming game in terms of some cultural/political struggle. And the players were doing a great job of saying "no its just a hockey game and there are plenty of motivations and reasons to hate each other without dragging politics into it" or variations of that.
And then the articles and headlines would be like "X player throws fuel on the fire of US/Canada relations." No you lying asshole, he was very clearly doing to opposite of that.
Hilariously r/hockey was totally on board with "OMG these journalists are a bunch of lying assholes" in the days leading up to the game.
And then day following the game when the same journalists are scolding the US players and saying things r/hockey finds flattering (it is crazy liberal like most of reddit), it suddenly LOVES all their takes, and journalists are great/brave.
I realize subreddits are big and it isn't likely the exact same people. But the 180 was striking.
I am struck by how all this relates to the falling esteem/trust of journalism as a profession. Obviously, the death of classifieds is the main thing.
But my sons and their buddies who are hockey fans and very politically neutral or even slightly liberal are ~9-13. Their main takeaway from the Olympics, not with any prompting from me is that journalists are lying negative influences on society. Seems like something journalists should be worried about. Maybe some actual internal policing. They are slowly letting bad actors wearing their badges burn down whatever scant shreds remain of the profession's reputation.
The Athletic is running daily puff pieces on Eileen Gu and hit pieces on the USA men's hockey team. The media's game has become bad faith enragement in lieu of honest journalism. Wading into the comments is like visiting another world. Am I wrong for thinking that China and Russia are running thousands of accounts to post controversial or highly politicized comments on all of the main media platforms? Tin foil hat time, but is the media now unwittingly aligned with the USA's enemies (internal and external)? One posts rage bait and then the other fans the flames with comments, drawing in people from both sides to double down on their political positions. This is not healthy for the country.
Similarly unhealthy are the Mao-style forced fake confessions which have become all the rage. I expect at least one gold medalist to be compelled to offer some kind of phony apology. Ethan mentioned the black square which became a referendum on whether or not someone was "with us or against us." I can't think of a more performative and useless gesture than posting a black square on IG, but there we were. More recently, small businesses were compelled to post their explanations for why they didn't participate in the phony "general strike" a few weeks ago. Small businesses obviously need to stay open to make money so they can pay their staff! And yet they had to kneel before the mob to explain that they support "the cause" (whatever that is) so that they didn't get flamed on socials. In my town, one business stayed open and did a fundraiser for an immigrant charity. That wasn't enough for the chronically online crowd and they demanded that the business post receipts of the donation and even then people still complained. For the long term viability of our society (hyperbolic, I know) this has to stop.
Historically, championship teams visiting the White House has functioned as a civic ritual, not an endorsement. Teams visited during wars, during recessions, during unpopular administrations and during highly popular administrations.
The tradition is designed to honor the office, not validate the occupant.
That said, context matters.
There are moments in history when associating with a government clearly communicates alignment. The more extreme the regime’s actions—suppression of elections, imprisonment of dissidents, overt abandonment of democratic norms—the more symbolic weight a visit carries.
(And while you may scoff at all that, check out homie's approval rating. What's the saying? Ball don't lie?)
Anyway, the line shifts based on three factors, IMO:
1. Severity of the administration’s actions
2. Whether democratic norms are intact
3. Whether the visit is being used explicitly for propaganda
In stable democracies, White House visits are ceremonial. In an administration openly dismantling democratic institutions, public appearances can function as legitimizing signals.
I have no problem with USA's hockey players choosing to go, but I also have no problem with columnists and otherwise taking them to task for doing so. That's how a healthy, free press should work.
What's the opposite of woke cancel culture? Not wanting any consequences for any behaviors or decisions? Seems like Ethan is teetering perilously close to the latter. Wants his cake and to eat it too.
Yes, columnists are certainly free to criticize hockey players for accepting an invitation from the president. But such criticism is stupid. Because hockey players are not columnists. They are not paid to have informed opinions. They are paid to play hockey. Their job description does not involve digesting the news day after day and reading the political tea leaves and dissecting whether or not we are in a healthy political climate and weighing whether the current state of political norms meets their pre-existing standard for what is normal.
They practice hockey all the time. Like, all day. And then they play hockey.
When those columnists get an invitation from the president, they are free to determine whether the current administration meets their personal criteria on each of these issues before RSVPing. It makes zero sense to impose the same standard on people for which there should be no expectations to make such judgements in the first place, let alone reach the same conclusion as you.
Well, do you want a complete civic break, or do you want to try and hold the country together?
Your first two sentences are spot on, and then the rest of the comment goes on to invalidate them.
If you view an administration as an extralegal and unprecedented existential threat to the country, then fine, but keep in mind where that necessarily leads: civic fragmentation, unrest, and possibly violence. If the head of state is Literally Hitler, why shouldn’t you use any and all possible means up to and including civil war or Years of Lead to defeat him?
If, however, you want to keep the civic compact and fight things out the way the country is designed to, at the ballot box, maybe don’t view every mundane White House visit as a five alarm fire that should result in expulsion from society.
It would be a great model of American civics for one of the players to have said something like “I’d never vote for him in a million years, but it’s still a great honor to go”. If it were me, I’d say “I still think he should be impeached and convicted, but until that happens he’s President”, but I don’t play hockey.
But to your point, it *is* a shame that it’s now assumed that merely accepting a ceremonial honor from the President means you support everything he says and does. Cancel/Callout Culture has been such a cancer on the American way of life.
It is a cancer, but I wonder if this problem truly is ‘structural’ in the broadest sense? I don’t think it’s confined to politics or to culture warring. Ethan’s parable of the Black Square exemplifies something more general. It takes more than the Floyd killing, e.g., to create this kind of opportunity to force people to show themselves; lots of other ducks need already to be in a row. Meanwhile, the ducks of impersonal public order seem to have scattered to the wind.
Oh, certainly, the culture of Cancel Culture, if you will, built up over many years: I believe 14 years ago, 2012, is when Greg Lukianoff first noticed that campaigns to cancel invited college speakers were coming from the students for the first time; “Racefail 2009” led to vicious demands to unpublish books. Those and others are the tips of the icebergs, and I have to assume a good researcher could continue from there.
I’m also more inclined to believe that Teacher’s Colleges really did have an outsized impact, but that’s more of a sense than definitive (did almost all elementary and high school teachers in the 2000s take their marching orders from these places? Eh…)
This is a brave comment for this comments section. I presume that most here will strongly disagree.
My conservative friends inform me that Trump is either as popular as previous second term presidents, steady in popularity among groups that matter, or gaining in popularity depending on what is most convenient to argue.
I am also often told that all norms were previously broken by Obama and Biden and that Trump is governing in an approximately equivalent manner to them. Whatever runs contrary to this is media unfairness.
From that perspective the hockey team showing up is de-escalatory. They are choosing to represent the will of the people over biased and histrionic media / lefty hivemind. Not showing up would be an endorsement of the media / hivemind which is the true locus of authoritarianism.
Of course their decision to show up probably is due to their support of Trump and they have the right to support Trump and to show up. They should absolutely be able to have and express personal politics as should everyone else.
1. There is a Soviet/Soviet Dissident saying which can be translated to “criticism/dissent by silence” - the idea being that in a society that compels citizens to ritually affirm an ideology by reflexively mouthing ideologically correct slogans (“two legs baaaad…”) saying nothing is dissent.
So your point re the black square is true, but it’s contingent on social norms like those of the Soviets. The question of why certain folks want to create social norms like those in the notoriously free and stable USSR, is for another day (or not, it’s impulsive mouth breathery).
2. Everything is political in the sense of you drinking coke contributes to the “ecocide” of the Amazon or whatever, but so what. This is just word games. Every action has some kind effect, and that almost always can be linked to something political. We agree that we choose to categorize something’s outside of that because the causation isn’t strong enough. The people who try to shrink the apolitical space are annoying and should be sent to work in Cameroonian sand mines.
Unless those in liberal, educated (HA), elite (HAHA) circles get comfortable openly confronting the failure of marxist thought, this train only goes off the tracks.
Trump being an awful President has literally nothing to do with Marxism being a world class dumb idea.
Trump was elected because the left's ideas are literally that bad. That is how this happened. The idea that him also sucking is somehow a validation of those ideas is just maddening.
I feel like I was watching someone who had a simple broken leg and one doctor was saying "lets cut it off", and the other doctor is saying "drink some bleach".
And the public is like "I will probably just puke up the bleach" chooses the doctor who told them to drink bleach and it obviously goes HORRIBLY.
But the original doctor is like "see my leg cutting off program was amazing you idiots!", and thinks he has somehow won a victory.
Here's the thing though. Things are more apolitical offline, at least compared to Trump 1.0, but online everyone is continuing this charade because they feel like they have to.
No one is talking about this US Hockey team interaction offline, positively or negatively. But the charade continues online because to give up this imaginary piece of territory to the enemy, is conceding a tangible win to that same enemy. I would argue the same with the Bad Bunny SB performance, there was more anger voiced online for that scheduled performance than actualized anger in real life.
Offline, everyone has grown tired of this heightened manufactured rage on every single talking point, but feels compelled to continue on with business as usual online.
It's deeper than, "Why does everything remain so political now?" It's "Why does everyone feel the need to continue pretending that everything remains political?"
Another aspect of this that I find interesting that has hardly been discussed is the difference between how the men and women have been conducting themselves in interviews/press conferences post-victory. I understand this isn’t a community primarily of hockey fans (apologies for being a diehard), but compare Jack’s tear-filled address of the fans in NJ in which he expresses gratitude to the fans for all the love and support (https://x.com/njdevils/status/2026812146059805139?s=46) to this comment from Alex Carpenter where she explains that she’s looking forward to celebrating in Vegas like she “deserves” (https://x.com/kyle_cush/status/2026809850848485705?s=46).
I don’t mean to be overly critical of Alex here bc her comments are sort of the norm when it comes to women’s sports recently, but I find the sort of moral inversion of what values we choose to celebrate as a culture fairly interesting here. Idk please be kind just a thought that was bouncing in around my head I love both of these teams! Go USA hockey!
It’s especially tricky because there’s a meta level/endless regress aspect to it: speaker already knows (to some extent) what speech will and will not be “celebrated”, hearers know that speaker knows, and so on. The “moral inversion” that we detect from a Birds Eye view might just be an artifact of this entrainment (with or without “oversocialization”).
How does it all get started? Speculating recklessly, I would guess that “deserves” gets started in the perception (or projection) that someone somewhere thinks you don’t deserve something; similarly gratitude and the perception/projection that someone thinks (or, gasp, might think) you are not grateful.
The “moral inversion”, if that’s what we’re seeing, means that one of these perceptions/projections is more widely held than the other.
I think that’s right, but I’ll add the over socialization component is significant here. Part of what’s weird about this whole thing is I still believe the normie is going to prefer Jack and his message to Alex’s. But perhaps I’m out of touch and this normie is simple a figment of my imagination.
The problem is that there is no way to depoliticize anything once any group gives it any political valence. I have a conservative relative who was almost apoplectic to discover that I buy almond milk. Her tribe has adopted whole milk as a sacred cause and the only reason anyone could buy plant milk is to deliberately offend them. So now milk is political and there is nothing I can do about it.
Ive never heard of whole milk being associated with white supremacy. Seems like a right wing parody of leftists. What about breastfeeding? How are people still on social media? Seems like checking yourself into a voluntary insane asylum
The whole milk thing bugs me from a different angle. Raised on it, specialist doctors recommended it for my condition, and to this day I still drink it, but one day not too long ago it was associated with “White Supremacy”.
My dietary habits from my youth, strongly recommended by doctors, became a social political signal that I had no control over.
But I do have control, I’m still going to consume it and – in the nicest way possible- I really don’t fucking care what you think I should drink nor what you* drink.
I think the appropriate reaction to someone questioning your drinking of whole milk due to White Supremacy is to give them the “OK” symbol in response.
People, these guys are hockey players! Ethan Strauss was expected to have an opinion because he's a person paid to have opinions and write about them. It was stupid, yes, that people demanded he have an opinion about an issue that was not in his area of expertise, but at least there was a semblance of a connection. The idea that a HOCKEY PLAYER is supposed to be informed and savvy enough to diagnose whether "norms are being violated" before accepting an invite from the president is... retarded. Sorry.
What’s ironic is that this despair for losing simple, deeply American ideas like “It’s a free country” enrages me so much I want to send an update of the classic ‘70s Cleveland Brown’s “Some asshole is writing things in your name. Just thought you’d like to know.” letter to each and every one of these reporters.
All the Current Things? Can’t be bothered. Publicly telling “it’s all political” nimrods to shove it? Man the barricades!
I’ve long held that the only way out of this idiocy is to shame/bully people who are mindlessly using their phones in public spaces. “Hey Tik-tard, how’s the slop today?!” Could do it while holding a book or a yo-yo as a subtle alternative, like that anti-smoking gum salesman in “Clerks.” People will never stop feeding the histrionics economy unless they feel some measure of self-awareness and embarrassment for doing it, and the only real way to fight it is to make slop-scrolling and rage-farming into low-status activities. What’s the worst that could happen? Some indignant liberal on the subway shouts out, “I’ll have you know, I’m reading a VERY important ‘Atlantic’ article,” or some sort of “They Live” fight over suggesting someone shouldn’t be scrolling Eileen Gu’s OnlyFans in the dentist waiting room? Ghey.
The flaw in this tactic, I think, is that it creates an esprit de corps among the diehards, who subsequently become an even bigger pain in the ass despite being smaller in number. Shaming will fix most people but it further breaks a few of them, and now you’ve forged a more formidable enemy in your own crucible: a resistant strain, so to speak.
Anecdotally, I feel like this is exactly what has happened with smoking, but I can’t be sure.
Well, I’d assume that not all US Hockey players voted or voted for Trump. But, they won and everyone should celebrate. Pro franchises take money from everyone. Ticket buyers and taxpayers who fund stadiums and police for victory parades. I didn’t vote for Obama or Biden, but if I was on a sports team that won a championship I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to go to the White House and meet the president, whomever it is. Political fundamentalism seems like a boring way to live to me. Klosterman said one of the great things about the 90’s is you could meet people with different ideas and you might wind up being friends. It’s sad to me that that day is past.
I thought Ethan was going for the Trotsky quote but he doesn’t play it up in the column. The players might not be interested in politics but the writers certainly are they’re going to make sure politics is interested in the players.
It’s absurd and it requires an layers upon layers of kabuki theater like ensuring Eileen Gu isn’t asked questions about China or that the women’s team already made clear they didn’t like Trump (which is their right!).
Of course I wish he called them anyway and invited them first along with Alysa Liu and the other gold medal winners but his shortcomings have nothing to do with the men’s players who did nothing wrong other than an apparently awkward laugh while chanting “two for two” and “absolutely.”
It does seem that there is general retreat from the public (internet) square across all party affiliations. Group chats are replacing social media, and even the social media platforms themselves are dividing users along partisan lines. Additionally, as the realignment continues to demographically cement itself along class and family formation lines, I can easily imagine that (at least for my generation), more of our lives will take place in non-politicized spaces, while our lives will take up less public space overall (at least compared to the heady .com days of yore).
I am really struck by how my children having friends are wildly more conservative than mostly my wife's childless 40-something terminally online culture warrior friends.
Lots of 42 year old women with no kids, maybe married maybe not, who know what is best for everyone else.
This hockey story is the perfect illustration of why the mainstream media is so nauseating. This should be nothing but a happy, unifying moment, but the most neurotic, joyless, miserable scolds imaginable have tried to imbue as much negativity into it as possible. Because heaven forbid anybody out there not be as miserable as they are.
You really can't hate the media enough.
100% agree. There was no need to twist this into a hysteria, but hey we can get some clicks out of it, so why not?!?!?!
The perfect example was before the game even happened and this blew up, reporters were constantly trying to get the players to frame the upcoming game in terms of some cultural/political struggle. And the players were doing a great job of saying "no its just a hockey game and there are plenty of motivations and reasons to hate each other without dragging politics into it" or variations of that.
And then the articles and headlines would be like "X player throws fuel on the fire of US/Canada relations." No you lying asshole, he was very clearly doing to opposite of that.
Hilariously r/hockey was totally on board with "OMG these journalists are a bunch of lying assholes" in the days leading up to the game.
And then day following the game when the same journalists are scolding the US players and saying things r/hockey finds flattering (it is crazy liberal like most of reddit), it suddenly LOVES all their takes, and journalists are great/brave.
I realize subreddits are big and it isn't likely the exact same people. But the 180 was striking.
I am struck by how all this relates to the falling esteem/trust of journalism as a profession. Obviously, the death of classifieds is the main thing.
But my sons and their buddies who are hockey fans and very politically neutral or even slightly liberal are ~9-13. Their main takeaway from the Olympics, not with any prompting from me is that journalists are lying negative influences on society. Seems like something journalists should be worried about. Maybe some actual internal policing. They are slowly letting bad actors wearing their badges burn down whatever scant shreds remain of the profession's reputation.
Anything that results in more people (especially young people) realizing that journalists are lying negative influences on society is a good thing.
The Athletic is running daily puff pieces on Eileen Gu and hit pieces on the USA men's hockey team. The media's game has become bad faith enragement in lieu of honest journalism. Wading into the comments is like visiting another world. Am I wrong for thinking that China and Russia are running thousands of accounts to post controversial or highly politicized comments on all of the main media platforms? Tin foil hat time, but is the media now unwittingly aligned with the USA's enemies (internal and external)? One posts rage bait and then the other fans the flames with comments, drawing in people from both sides to double down on their political positions. This is not healthy for the country.
Similarly unhealthy are the Mao-style forced fake confessions which have become all the rage. I expect at least one gold medalist to be compelled to offer some kind of phony apology. Ethan mentioned the black square which became a referendum on whether or not someone was "with us or against us." I can't think of a more performative and useless gesture than posting a black square on IG, but there we were. More recently, small businesses were compelled to post their explanations for why they didn't participate in the phony "general strike" a few weeks ago. Small businesses obviously need to stay open to make money so they can pay their staff! And yet they had to kneel before the mob to explain that they support "the cause" (whatever that is) so that they didn't get flamed on socials. In my town, one business stayed open and did a fundraiser for an immigrant charity. That wasn't enough for the chronically online crowd and they demanded that the business post receipts of the donation and even then people still complained. For the long term viability of our society (hyperbolic, I know) this has to stop.
The Eileen Gu vs men’s hockey media treatment has me losing my mind
Historically, championship teams visiting the White House has functioned as a civic ritual, not an endorsement. Teams visited during wars, during recessions, during unpopular administrations and during highly popular administrations.
The tradition is designed to honor the office, not validate the occupant.
That said, context matters.
There are moments in history when associating with a government clearly communicates alignment. The more extreme the regime’s actions—suppression of elections, imprisonment of dissidents, overt abandonment of democratic norms—the more symbolic weight a visit carries.
(And while you may scoff at all that, check out homie's approval rating. What's the saying? Ball don't lie?)
Anyway, the line shifts based on three factors, IMO:
1. Severity of the administration’s actions
2. Whether democratic norms are intact
3. Whether the visit is being used explicitly for propaganda
In stable democracies, White House visits are ceremonial. In an administration openly dismantling democratic institutions, public appearances can function as legitimizing signals.
I have no problem with USA's hockey players choosing to go, but I also have no problem with columnists and otherwise taking them to task for doing so. That's how a healthy, free press should work.
What's the opposite of woke cancel culture? Not wanting any consequences for any behaviors or decisions? Seems like Ethan is teetering perilously close to the latter. Wants his cake and to eat it too.
Yes, columnists are certainly free to criticize hockey players for accepting an invitation from the president. But such criticism is stupid. Because hockey players are not columnists. They are not paid to have informed opinions. They are paid to play hockey. Their job description does not involve digesting the news day after day and reading the political tea leaves and dissecting whether or not we are in a healthy political climate and weighing whether the current state of political norms meets their pre-existing standard for what is normal.
They practice hockey all the time. Like, all day. And then they play hockey.
When those columnists get an invitation from the president, they are free to determine whether the current administration meets their personal criteria on each of these issues before RSVPing. It makes zero sense to impose the same standard on people for which there should be no expectations to make such judgements in the first place, let alone reach the same conclusion as you.
Well, do you want a complete civic break, or do you want to try and hold the country together?
Your first two sentences are spot on, and then the rest of the comment goes on to invalidate them.
If you view an administration as an extralegal and unprecedented existential threat to the country, then fine, but keep in mind where that necessarily leads: civic fragmentation, unrest, and possibly violence. If the head of state is Literally Hitler, why shouldn’t you use any and all possible means up to and including civil war or Years of Lead to defeat him?
If, however, you want to keep the civic compact and fight things out the way the country is designed to, at the ballot box, maybe don’t view every mundane White House visit as a five alarm fire that should result in expulsion from society.
It would be a great model of American civics for one of the players to have said something like “I’d never vote for him in a million years, but it’s still a great honor to go”. If it were me, I’d say “I still think he should be impeached and convicted, but until that happens he’s President”, but I don’t play hockey.
maybe provide a list of presidents athletes should publicly refute to make ❄️ happy...
I'll make sure all champions thru 2028 are informed
Lol, not what I was trying to convey! :-)
But to your point, it *is* a shame that it’s now assumed that merely accepting a ceremonial honor from the President means you support everything he says and does. Cancel/Callout Culture has been such a cancer on the American way of life.
It is a cancer, but I wonder if this problem truly is ‘structural’ in the broadest sense? I don’t think it’s confined to politics or to culture warring. Ethan’s parable of the Black Square exemplifies something more general. It takes more than the Floyd killing, e.g., to create this kind of opportunity to force people to show themselves; lots of other ducks need already to be in a row. Meanwhile, the ducks of impersonal public order seem to have scattered to the wind.
Oh, certainly, the culture of Cancel Culture, if you will, built up over many years: I believe 14 years ago, 2012, is when Greg Lukianoff first noticed that campaigns to cancel invited college speakers were coming from the students for the first time; “Racefail 2009” led to vicious demands to unpublish books. Those and others are the tips of the icebergs, and I have to assume a good researcher could continue from there.
I’m also more inclined to believe that Teacher’s Colleges really did have an outsized impact, but that’s more of a sense than definitive (did almost all elementary and high school teachers in the 2000s take their marching orders from these places? Eh…)
Wholecloth ChatGPT + a few finger-pecked sentences stitched throughout.
(Civic fragmentation/unrest/violence is already here; they brought it.)
I have never and will never use ChatGPT, I refuse to accept this slander.
The comment you responded to.
Using AI to write a comment, fucking yourself with a rubber cock - seconds of pleasure, hours of shame.
I have never used AI in my life you dumb fuck, in fact I’d like AI to be destroyed utterly.
Dumb fuck, was referring to the original comment you responded to...
This is a brave comment for this comments section. I presume that most here will strongly disagree.
My conservative friends inform me that Trump is either as popular as previous second term presidents, steady in popularity among groups that matter, or gaining in popularity depending on what is most convenient to argue.
I am also often told that all norms were previously broken by Obama and Biden and that Trump is governing in an approximately equivalent manner to them. Whatever runs contrary to this is media unfairness.
From that perspective the hockey team showing up is de-escalatory. They are choosing to represent the will of the people over biased and histrionic media / lefty hivemind. Not showing up would be an endorsement of the media / hivemind which is the true locus of authoritarianism.
Of course their decision to show up probably is due to their support of Trump and they have the right to support Trump and to show up. They should absolutely be able to have and express personal politics as should everyone else.
a healthy "sharp as a tack" free press - k buddy 🤣
seems you possess the objectivity of a dodo bird
1. There is a Soviet/Soviet Dissident saying which can be translated to “criticism/dissent by silence” - the idea being that in a society that compels citizens to ritually affirm an ideology by reflexively mouthing ideologically correct slogans (“two legs baaaad…”) saying nothing is dissent.
So your point re the black square is true, but it’s contingent on social norms like those of the Soviets. The question of why certain folks want to create social norms like those in the notoriously free and stable USSR, is for another day (or not, it’s impulsive mouth breathery).
2. Everything is political in the sense of you drinking coke contributes to the “ecocide” of the Amazon or whatever, but so what. This is just word games. Every action has some kind effect, and that almost always can be linked to something political. We agree that we choose to categorize something’s outside of that because the causation isn’t strong enough. The people who try to shrink the apolitical space are annoying and should be sent to work in Cameroonian sand mines.
Unless those in liberal, educated (HA), elite (HAHA) circles get comfortable openly confronting the failure of marxist thought, this train only goes off the tracks.
Check the polling numbers. A deeply unpopular man, a deeply unpopular administration--both losing support by the day.
Trump being an awful President has literally nothing to do with Marxism being a world class dumb idea.
Trump was elected because the left's ideas are literally that bad. That is how this happened. The idea that him also sucking is somehow a validation of those ideas is just maddening.
I feel like I was watching someone who had a simple broken leg and one doctor was saying "lets cut it off", and the other doctor is saying "drink some bleach".
And the public is like "I will probably just puke up the bleach" chooses the doctor who told them to drink bleach and it obviously goes HORRIBLY.
But the original doctor is like "see my leg cutting off program was amazing you idiots!", and thinks he has somehow won a victory.
Check the past 125 years of history. A deeply unpopular ideology, a deeply unpopular people--both losing support by the day.
Here's the thing though. Things are more apolitical offline, at least compared to Trump 1.0, but online everyone is continuing this charade because they feel like they have to.
No one is talking about this US Hockey team interaction offline, positively or negatively. But the charade continues online because to give up this imaginary piece of territory to the enemy, is conceding a tangible win to that same enemy. I would argue the same with the Bad Bunny SB performance, there was more anger voiced online for that scheduled performance than actualized anger in real life.
Offline, everyone has grown tired of this heightened manufactured rage on every single talking point, but feels compelled to continue on with business as usual online.
It's deeper than, "Why does everything remain so political now?" It's "Why does everyone feel the need to continue pretending that everything remains political?"
Well said. I've noticed this too. The most underrated divide in this country is between people who are Extremely Online and those who are not.
Another aspect of this that I find interesting that has hardly been discussed is the difference between how the men and women have been conducting themselves in interviews/press conferences post-victory. I understand this isn’t a community primarily of hockey fans (apologies for being a diehard), but compare Jack’s tear-filled address of the fans in NJ in which he expresses gratitude to the fans for all the love and support (https://x.com/njdevils/status/2026812146059805139?s=46) to this comment from Alex Carpenter where she explains that she’s looking forward to celebrating in Vegas like she “deserves” (https://x.com/kyle_cush/status/2026809850848485705?s=46).
I don’t mean to be overly critical of Alex here bc her comments are sort of the norm when it comes to women’s sports recently, but I find the sort of moral inversion of what values we choose to celebrate as a culture fairly interesting here. Idk please be kind just a thought that was bouncing in around my head I love both of these teams! Go USA hockey!
It’s especially tricky because there’s a meta level/endless regress aspect to it: speaker already knows (to some extent) what speech will and will not be “celebrated”, hearers know that speaker knows, and so on. The “moral inversion” that we detect from a Birds Eye view might just be an artifact of this entrainment (with or without “oversocialization”).
How does it all get started? Speculating recklessly, I would guess that “deserves” gets started in the perception (or projection) that someone somewhere thinks you don’t deserve something; similarly gratitude and the perception/projection that someone thinks (or, gasp, might think) you are not grateful.
The “moral inversion”, if that’s what we’re seeing, means that one of these perceptions/projections is more widely held than the other.
I think that’s right, but I’ll add the over socialization component is significant here. Part of what’s weird about this whole thing is I still believe the normie is going to prefer Jack and his message to Alex’s. But perhaps I’m out of touch and this normie is simple a figment of my imagination.
The problem is that there is no way to depoliticize anything once any group gives it any political valence. I have a conservative relative who was almost apoplectic to discover that I buy almond milk. Her tribe has adopted whole milk as a sacred cause and the only reason anyone could buy plant milk is to deliberately offend them. So now milk is political and there is nothing I can do about it.
Ive never heard of whole milk being associated with white supremacy. Seems like a right wing parody of leftists. What about breastfeeding? How are people still on social media? Seems like checking yourself into a voluntary insane asylum
It was this whole (minor) thing years back. But that’s the thing all these minor nonsense things stack up, apolitical space just evaporates.
The whole milk thing bugs me from a different angle. Raised on it, specialist doctors recommended it for my condition, and to this day I still drink it, but one day not too long ago it was associated with “White Supremacy”.
My dietary habits from my youth, strongly recommended by doctors, became a social political signal that I had no control over.
But I do have control, I’m still going to consume it and – in the nicest way possible- I really don’t fucking care what you think I should drink nor what you* drink.
*royal you
I think the appropriate reaction to someone questioning your drinking of whole milk due to White Supremacy is to give them the “OK” symbol in response.
It only became a social political signal to people you don't really want in your life anyway.
True, for both sides.
People, these guys are hockey players! Ethan Strauss was expected to have an opinion because he's a person paid to have opinions and write about them. It was stupid, yes, that people demanded he have an opinion about an issue that was not in his area of expertise, but at least there was a semblance of a connection. The idea that a HOCKEY PLAYER is supposed to be informed and savvy enough to diagnose whether "norms are being violated" before accepting an invite from the president is... retarded. Sorry.
What’s ironic is that this despair for losing simple, deeply American ideas like “It’s a free country” enrages me so much I want to send an update of the classic ‘70s Cleveland Brown’s “Some asshole is writing things in your name. Just thought you’d like to know.” letter to each and every one of these reporters.
All the Current Things? Can’t be bothered. Publicly telling “it’s all political” nimrods to shove it? Man the barricades!
I’ve long held that the only way out of this idiocy is to shame/bully people who are mindlessly using their phones in public spaces. “Hey Tik-tard, how’s the slop today?!” Could do it while holding a book or a yo-yo as a subtle alternative, like that anti-smoking gum salesman in “Clerks.” People will never stop feeding the histrionics economy unless they feel some measure of self-awareness and embarrassment for doing it, and the only real way to fight it is to make slop-scrolling and rage-farming into low-status activities. What’s the worst that could happen? Some indignant liberal on the subway shouts out, “I’ll have you know, I’m reading a VERY important ‘Atlantic’ article,” or some sort of “They Live” fight over suggesting someone shouldn’t be scrolling Eileen Gu’s OnlyFans in the dentist waiting room? Ghey.
This is a top 5 all time HoS comment! And I'm heading out to buy a yo-yo.
The flaw in this tactic, I think, is that it creates an esprit de corps among the diehards, who subsequently become an even bigger pain in the ass despite being smaller in number. Shaming will fix most people but it further breaks a few of them, and now you’ve forged a more formidable enemy in your own crucible: a resistant strain, so to speak.
Anecdotally, I feel like this is exactly what has happened with smoking, but I can’t be sure.
Well, I’d assume that not all US Hockey players voted or voted for Trump. But, they won and everyone should celebrate. Pro franchises take money from everyone. Ticket buyers and taxpayers who fund stadiums and police for victory parades. I didn’t vote for Obama or Biden, but if I was on a sports team that won a championship I’d be disappointed if I didn’t get to go to the White House and meet the president, whomever it is. Political fundamentalism seems like a boring way to live to me. Klosterman said one of the great things about the 90’s is you could meet people with different ideas and you might wind up being friends. It’s sad to me that that day is past.
It’s what I miss most about yesteryear
I thought Ethan was going for the Trotsky quote but he doesn’t play it up in the column. The players might not be interested in politics but the writers certainly are they’re going to make sure politics is interested in the players.
It’s absurd and it requires an layers upon layers of kabuki theater like ensuring Eileen Gu isn’t asked questions about China or that the women’s team already made clear they didn’t like Trump (which is their right!).
Of course I wish he called them anyway and invited them first along with Alysa Liu and the other gold medal winners but his shortcomings have nothing to do with the men’s players who did nothing wrong other than an apparently awkward laugh while chanting “two for two” and “absolutely.”
It does seem that there is general retreat from the public (internet) square across all party affiliations. Group chats are replacing social media, and even the social media platforms themselves are dividing users along partisan lines. Additionally, as the realignment continues to demographically cement itself along class and family formation lines, I can easily imagine that (at least for my generation), more of our lives will take place in non-politicized spaces, while our lives will take up less public space overall (at least compared to the heady .com days of yore).
I am really struck by how my children having friends are wildly more conservative than mostly my wife's childless 40-something terminally online culture warrior friends.
Lots of 42 year old women with no kids, maybe married maybe not, who know what is best for everyone else.
Even women who aren't mothers need to mother!
Was that lakoff or searle
"Politics finds you"
No, specific people with moral agency thrust politics on you.