When it comes to Team USA at the Olympics in Italy, there’s one thing that is plain to see and hear from and about them: They are American, through and through. They wear the colors of their country. They’ve busted their humps to work and to train and to refine their athletic skills to represent themselves, their families, their country. And one other thing: They speak their minds like Americans.
But … and it’s a big ol’ but … there sure is a lot of complaining back home from non-athletes, people who view themselves as true patriots, mumbling and grumbling about certain American athletes who have complaints — or reservations — about what’s happening in the United States. Namely, the divisions, the severe policies, the disregard for the Constitution, the inhumane treatment of targeted individuals and families, the authoritarianism being created and utilized by current political figures, put upon citizens and immigrants here.
As those athletes are unafraid to comment on some or all of it, critics are bashing them for doing so.
And the irony in that is thick.
I’m not going to complain about anyone’s complaining because that would make the irony even thicker. But nothing wrong with stating facts, and extrapolating from them, and one of those facts is that it’s a tenet of the American way of life — something about it written in the First Amendment — that U.S. citizens are free to speak what is true to them. They need no government approval, or any kind of OK from those who see themselves as the purist of patriots, those who somehow find favor with what’s currently happening in this country, to say what they think and feel.
Many of said athletes aren’t really complaining, they’re voicing their heartfelt feelings about the state of affairs in the United States. The critics, though, are complaining about the athletes speaking out about wanting to compete for their family, their friends, their supporters. Most of them want to compete for their country, too, but they, some of them, are acknowledging problems that have left them unsettled.
They’re being truthful about those problems, not shying away from their truth.
Meanwhile, flag-waving critics are, in so many words, saying those athletes should be proud of America, should salute the red, white and blue, should shut up and ski or skate or slide. Should put a show on for the world that shouts to all corners that the United States is all good.
It is good, but it’s not all good. And athletes not being afraid to mildly speak their minds about that is about the most American thing any of them, or anyone anywhere in the United States, can or could do.
First Amendment rights need not be put away just because American athletes are competing in an international sports event, and certain folks back home want them to go along to get along, to act as though everything is A-OK in a country that is suffering within itself and also has become a spectacle for much of the rest of the world.
The very people who are criticizing athletes who don’t just tuck all that away, swallow it whole, and smile for the rest of the globe, are asking Americans not to be Americans, asking them to squelch their rights, just because those critics of the critics think it a privilege for those who have mastered their sporting disciplines to rep the United States.
And that’s rich.
The critics never stop to think and understand that certain athletes, those who are double-clutching when asked about their representation of the United States, feel the way they do because they love their country and are worried about it.
Instead, they are called entitled and ungrateful and unpatriotic.
In reality, they are the opposite of those things.
Some of the accusers say there’s a proper time and place for dissent, even mild dissent, and the Olympics are neither of those. Just wave the flag, stay to the party line, and feel privileged, they say. Keep politics out of sports, they say. But by athletes closing their mouths and saying nothing is, in its own way, a political statement, a sign of compliance. Especially when they are asked directly about their thoughts and they utter not one peep.
Complain about the complaining, if you must. That, too, is every or any American’s right. But to self-righteously assign disparagement or disloyalty or disrespect to those athletes who have deep concerns about what’s currently happening in the United States and are strong enough to say it, even as they work and sweat and compete, as they wear the red, white and blue, is to misunderstand and misrepresent, at least in part, what it means to be American.