So every couple of years when the Olympics roll around, there is much grumbling about how outmoded they are. Yet large numbers of people always seem to end up watching the Olympics anyway and having a good time.
Why?
Nationalism.
We are constantly lectured by globalist elites that we live in an age of cosmopolitanism in which it is wrong to root for our fellow citizens. How dare we Americans care more about Americans than we do about Eritreans? You’d have to be Hitler to feel that way.
Or, worse, Trump.
Extolling the “ultimate wisdom of a borderless world” has become a fad among establishment icons such as Bill Clinton and John Kerry.
For Americans to have their own country is a flagrant violation of the civil rights of foreigners to move here no questions asked.
And yet the Olympics are organized along nationalist lines, and that’s what makes them watchable.
We live in an era of dwindling cultural diversity in which a handful of sports, most strikingly soccer outside the U.S., increasingly monopolize attention. (In America, the NFL would dominate almost as much as soccer does in South America and Europe if pro football weren’t so physically debilitating that it can’t be played year-round.)
* White American boys have been almost completely purged from the sport via dirty play in pickup games, physical ostracism from the outdoor courts, and an entire AAU structure and coaching system that seeks to reward early maturers over hard-working late bloomers. Interestingly enough, Europe and Australia manage to develop white athletes into very competitive international and NBA players because their systems can’t rely on youth players who are simply bigger and faster than their age-group contemporaries.
I would guess that there are more foreign-born white players in the NBA now than there are American whites.
However, it would be interesting to have an Olympic team of White American Refugees, composed of boys from Duke, Gonzaga, and a few other outliers, and see what toughness, ball skills, and true teamwork could accomplish against dose supa affletes.
