Next to the dictionary definition of “poetic justice” should be a picture of Megan Rapinoe’s humiliated little face after whiffing a penalty kick that helped seal the fate of the U.S. women’s soccer team.
In a shootout that ended the game 5-4, Sweden defeated the U.S. Women’s National Team (USWNT), sending them packing from the World Cup. Of course, the blue-and-yellow-clad fans and players were ecstatic. But the next most excited observers were actually Americans — specifically the ones who, you know, like America.
Rapinoe’s fan club — which includes corporate media, LGBT advocates, and the stans in the White House, among others — has been busy heaping praise on the team and pointing the finger at those unpatriotic conservatives who aren’t devastated by the loss and took things “a step too far.” But here’s the thing: If you don’t claim allegiance to America when you win, don’t expect Americans to give a hoot when you lose.
Save for the few patriotic players who will hopefully rebuild the USWNT’s legacy and define its attitude in the future, the women’s team is a proud collection of ingrates who have been defined by their disdain for the very country that emblazons their jerseys. Their lack of patriotism is so overt it’s become a theme throughout this World Cup. When the anthems of other countries play, the opposing teams zealously belt out the words in unmistakable allegiance. Each time the “Star-Spangled Banner” plays before match-ups, most of the U.S. athletes follow the lead of their blue-haired ring leader and refuse to sing along or place their hands over their hearts in quiet defiance of the country that gave them everything.
Less quiet has been Megan “Walking Protest” Rapinoe’s years-long and outspoken hatred of America and its values. In 2019, she declared, “I’ll probably never put my hand over my heart. “I’ll probably never sing the national anthem again.” Stunning and brave.
Not only was she one of the first athletes to embrace anthem kneeling alongside Colin Kaepernick, but she also is a loud LGBT activist and proponent of letting men who claim to be women dominate female sports. Real female leaders find ways to boost the girls that follow in their footsteps, but not Rapinoe. She’d rather throw them to the testosterone-jacked wolves.
It’s easier to welcome men into women’s spaces, I suppose, when you’ve already got your trophies and millions and have one foot out the door. Rapinoe’s fairer-sex forbears blazed an epic trail for their American female progeny to walk. But the soccer star’s legacy? Doing her darndest to turn every future women’s World Cup into a battle of the bulge.
Not everyone is into soccer — or Olympic ice dancing or synchronized swimming or BMX biking — but you’d best believe that when U.S. athletes are representing the greatest country on Earth on the world stage, every good American pulls for a “W” or a gold. It shouldn’t be pleasurable for spectators to watch the USWNT make a historically early exit.
But as Fox and Friends co-host Will Cain tweeted, “[T]his team came to be defined by arrogant celebrity activists who went out of their way to exhibit shame in the US, begin the process of destroying their own sport (advocating for men to play women’s sports) and curry victimization with false narratives about equal pay. Nobody made it harder to root for them than the USWNT.”
The U.S. Women’s National Team has only two jobs: Score goals to win games, and proudly represent the great US of A. They haven’t been delivering on the latter, and they just blew the former. So yeah, not having to endure another anti-American anthem schtick from a losing team is something to clap about.
USWNT diehards and dedicated leftists can spin all day to make conservatives the bad guys here, but Rapinoe’s detractors didn’t fire the first shot in this dumb culture war. That’s on her and her self-satisfied teammates. Perhaps this pathetic display in front of the whole freaking world will be a lesson to the up-and-comers who think emulating petty social justice warriors is a good idea.
Play stupid political games, win stupid political prizes.