Graham Dockery
is an Irish journalist, commentator, and writer at RT. Previously based in Amsterdam, he wrote for DutchNews and a scatter of local and national newspapers.
is an Irish journalist, commentator, and writer at RT. Previously based in Amsterdam, he wrote for DutchNews and a scatter of local and national newspapers.
Young, left-wing college students don’t want to root for Team USA in the Olympics. Before right wingers seethe over their lack of patriotism, maybe they should take a moment to ask whether Team USA deserves their respect either.
With the Olympic opening ceremony set to begin on Friday, Campus Reform, a conservative student organization, asked America’s undergrads whether they’ll be cheering on the country’s athletes in Tokyo. They won’t, is the answer. Students told Campus Reform that they “don’t like being American,” that “patriotism shouldn’t be strong,” and that they’ll only cheer for “individual athletes” if pushed.
College students hating on America is nothing new, and just a few years ago a video like this would have provoked howls of derision from the right. Donald Trump may even have tweeted about it, and promised to jail the flag-burners and seditionists on campus.
But times have changed, and patriotic Americans should think twice before criticizing these students for their lack of patriotism. While Trump’s supporters have slated athletes at home for their woke politics (think Colin Kaepernick taking a knee before his games), Team USA doesn’t automatically deserve their support abroad, just because America’s athletes compete under the red, white and blue.
Should patriotic Americans support the transgender cyclist who has vowed to burn an American flag on the podium if she wins a medal? Should they cheer for the hammer thrower who considers hearing the national anthem a personal insult? Or root for the soccer star who thinks they’re “white supremacists?”
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They shouldn’t, and they likely won’t. After all, these athletes may wear the American flag, but they do not compete for the Republic that conservatives adore. They compete for the polity that has replaced it of late: the entity President Joe Biden and his Democratic allies call “Our Democracy,” and Revolver News founder Darren Beatty terms the “Globalist American Empire.”
To the GAE, patriotism in the conservative sense is equivalent to “domestic terrorism,” the “equity” promised by Critical Race Theory has replaced the “equality” afforded by the Constitution, and the flags of the Black Lives Matter and LGBT movements are held in higher regard than Old Glory, with severe penalties applied to anyone who dares tarnish them.
Who then should patriotic Americans turn to? Which flag-waving leaders and institutions actually deserve their respect?
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The military? Young, poor, white conservatives may fill its ranks and die in its wars, but the US military rewards them by elevating leaders like Gen. Mark Milley, who views them as Nazis and fantasizes about shooting them in the street. The right owes the military as an institution no loyalty when it subjects conservative troops to ideological purges and spends their tax dollars turning men into women. Sir! No sir!
What about America’s world-leading corporations? Even the rare companies that don’t bend the knee to BLM and LGBT play them for suckers. Take Black Rifle Coffee Company, a veteran-owned business that slaps flags and guns on its packaging and markets its insipid brew directly to conservatives and Trump supporters. The company may talk tough, but its owner granted The New York Times an extensive interview last week in which he disavowed his own customers as “racists.”
How about the Republican Party? Sure, the GOP may position itself as a bulwark against woke insanity and ‘cancel culture,’ and its politicians may wave the Star-Spangled Banner while they promise to put “America First,” but as long as they care more about the freedom of Cuban dissidents in Havana than Americans jailed and beaten in Washington, DC for protesting, they don’t deserve conservative votes.
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I am not an American, and perhaps I underestimate the emotions that hearing the anthem and seeing the flag inspire in millions of patriotic Americans. After all, the Trump supporters still rotting in solitary confinement six months after the riot on Capitol Hill sing the national anthem every evening to keep their spirits up. It’s a moving sound, and even though they’ve been jailed on patently political grounds and persecuted by the federal government, these detainees clearly feel that there’s some good left in the idea of America, and some power left in its icons.
But by and large, conservatives, inasmuch as there’s anything of their worldview left to conserve, are on their own. The flag they love is waved by people who hate them, and the institutions they once respected work in service of ideologies utterly alien to their own.
If anyone on the Right is still moved to reflexively cheer for Team USA or defend the country from any and all criticism by instinct, they should perhaps pause and ask themselves if the country they love so dearly even exists any more.
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The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.
