Olympic patriotism isn’t fun in Trump’s USA

We had a schtick here at SB Nation circa 2014 with the Sochi Winter Olympics, or more aptly, a social media strategy that led us to posting endless, tongue-in-cheek, jingoistic patriotism during the games. There were the traditional medal counts and tracking the achievements of U.S. athletes that were earnest, but also intentionally cringy images of Ronald Regan riding a velociraptor, a muscled George Washington covered in bandoleers, and Abe Lincoln smoking cigars.

It’s horrifically clichéd now, but it wasn’t back then. The intention was to juxtapose the honest, legitimate pride we had in the U.S. Olympians, with an online voice of supreme egotism and bombast — complete with North Korea-esque propaganda art.

Everything is different 12 years later. The joke propaganda art is now merchandise of the president. The isolationist attitude, once spoken of in jest, is now official foreign policy. It hits different to front a “rah, rah, rah USA” persona when concentration camps are being constructed, foreign governments are being toppled, and influential alleged pedophiles are being protected at the behest of a justice department in lockstep with the executive branch.

It’s just not fun to be patriotic with these games. It’s something athletes are struggling with too, as Rich Ruohonen of Team USA Curling said this week.

I’m proud to be here to represent Team USA, and to represent out country — be’d be remiss if we didn’t at least mention what’s going on in Minnesota. […] I am a lawyer, as you know, and we have a constitution… and what’s happening in Minnesota is wrong. There’s no shades of gray. It’s clear.”

Freestyle skier Hunter Hess echoed a similar statement.

“Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

Snowboarding phenom Chloe Kim was also asked about the sociopolitical climate in the USA, and discussed how she felt as the child of immigrants, and how she wants the nation to lead with compassion, rather than its current path.

NBC is grappling with this dichotomy as a broadcaster as well. During the gold medal game in mixed curling on Tuesday, one member of the athletes’ family was seen wearing a hat with the United States’ flag and the words “ANTI-TRUMP” on it. Not long after, three more family members were seen with similar hats. NBC’s solution was to avoid showing the family after the first end, instead cutting away to reaction shots of more palatable, traditional patriotism from fans in the cheap seats.

This eerily echoed the decision of NBC to edit out the vociferous boos Vice President J.D. Vance received at the opening ceremony, which aired live, but were diligently removed for the ceremony’s re-broadcast in prime time. It serves as an effort to portray a happy, sanitized vision of a unified America, devoid of the horrors being perpetrated on immigrants, the erosion of our relationship with the international community, and a media landscape that has become far too comfortable with censoring anything which might draw the ire of the president to the point where he’ll jump on Truth Social and single them out.

We’re left with an uncomfortable, complicated reality where we can either cheer for individual athletes and their stories, or put blinders on and still simply root for the USA like nothing else is happening in our nation. It’s a bad feeling either way. Normally it’s fun to cheer for the flag and our athletes representing it, with the only thing being U.S. excellence on our minds — but not right now. The sheen is gone from these games, and we’re left to navigate the messiness as best we can.

We were great. Not anymore.