Ah, the Winter Olympics — a time for snow, sweat, and the inexplicable urge of certain sports writers to invent crises where none exist. This morning, the conventional wisdom in our illustrious sports media has taken a curious form: Eileen Gu, the American-born skier representing China, is apparently an admirable role model, while the USA men’s hockey team — the actual Americans competing for the actual United States — is, in some corners, an international disgrace. Permit me a humble interjection: Eileen Gu is a mercenary sports traitor, who ought to be muttered about darkly, whereas the USA men’s hockey team is chock full of awesome, fun-loving, patriotic champions who deserve every ounce of our admiration.
The criticisms leveled against our hockey heroes are, let’s say, ambitious. First, some observers took offense at the team’s expressions of patriotic delight following their gold medal. Apparently, saying things like “This is all about our country right now,” “I love the USA,” or “Everyone better be wearing red, white, and blue for as long as they can” constitutes a moral failing. Second, a post-game phone call with Donald Trump drew ire because the players did not spontaneously stage a performance of virtue signaling by rebuking the President. Third, the team’s willingness to attend a White House celebration of their historic achievement was denounced as shocking moral turpitude, especially since they seemed excited about it. And fourth, FBI director Kash Patel attended the game in Italy, then shared a few beers in the locker room. According to the press, these actions have “sullied” the team’s victory, forever tarnishing their reputations.
Nonsense. Pure, unadulterated nonsense. This is narrow, monomaniacal, and outlandishly petty thinking. The U.S. men’s team won Olympic gold for the first time in 46 years, and the narrative that emerged was less about achievement than about imagined moral failings. One can only marvel at this level of hair-splitting. I had a low opinion of sports writers before this weekend; now, I feel the need to toss the entire corps into a lake, preferably while they’re still clutching their notebooks.
Recall Margaret Thatcher’s rebuke of the press after the recapture of South Georgia in the Falklands War: “Just rejoice at that news and congratulate our forces and the Marines.” Amen, Maggie. This applies just as well to hockey. Celebrate the team, revel in their victory, and leave the performative moralizing for another day. Not everything must be framed as a campus psychodrama, and not every minor event needs to be an existential critique of American politics or social mores. It’s perfectly fine — even admirable — to simply enjoy the fact that the United States won something spectacular.
Meanwhile, the same journalists who insist on canonizing Gu seem oblivious to the power of actual national heroes right before our eyes. Stop for a moment and ask yourself: if you were to stop 100 random Americans on the street and ask about the hockey team’s gold medal, how many would fixate on jingoism, a White House invitation, or Kash Patel? Two, maybe? The other ninety-eight would be celebrating the triumph itself, reliving the exhilaration of Jack Hughes smashing the puck into the net, hearing Kenny Albert shout in breathless delight, and letting Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” wash over them as the team toasted in the press conference. Hockey, the sport itself, is what captured hearts — not an imagined moral deficit.
This brings us to the philosophical undercurrent of this debate: is loyalty to country a matter of choice, or an unalterable commitment? In one corner, Jack Hughes, an American hockey player, embraced his patriotic reflex with full-throated glee. In the other, Eileen Gu, American-born but representing China, embodies a cosmopolitan ideal that flirts with detachment from nationhood entirely. This distinction — the hockey player’s visceral connection versus the skier’s calculated internationalism — mirrors a broader cultural divide. Loyalty, borders, and identity are at stake. Should America inspire gratitude or suspicion? Must attachment to one’s country be performative or intellectualized? These questions, oddly enough, were dancing in the background of the Olympics, although no one asked them aloud between beer chugs and goal celebrations.
Cosmopolitanism has its pedigree. The term traces back to the Greek “kosmopolites,” meaning “citizen of the world.” Diogenes the Cynic first exemplified this radical idea, rejecting the limitations of city-based citizenship. Enlightenment thinkers expanded the concept in the form of Weltbürger, the world citizen. Literary giants such as Virginia Woolf and Leo Tolstoy criticized patriotism as sentimentally excessive or morally dubious. But here’s the catch: cosmopolitanism, noble in theory, often results in estrangement from one’s immediate culture and history. Paul Gilroy, the British scholar, described this as the “principled cultivation of distance” from one’s own people. That’s fine if your hobby is philosophy or avant-garde poetry — less so when the Olympic Games are on and you want to cheer for actual human achievement.
Most of us are citizens of something tangible. Borders, culture, and shared memory matter. They shape our lives in ways subtle and profound. This is why the U.S. men’s hockey team resonated so powerfully. The bonds they displayed — to one another, to the nation, to the memory of former teammates like Johnny Gaudreau — were neither theoretical nor chosen for philosophical flair. They were authentic, emotional, and deeply human. Conversely, Gu’s allegiance is transactional, mutable, and geographically negotiable. Ask her which countrymen she is proud of, and the question itself becomes muddled. In the practical theater of the Olympics, the visceral pride of a team representing its homeland cannot be mimicked by cosmopolitan neutrality.
And let’s be honest: the Olympics themselves are a celebration of nationhood. Athletes representing their countries compete on the world stage, flags waving, anthems playing, fans screaming. Patriotism is baked into the ritual. To be detached in the name of cosmopolitanism during this spectacle is, at best, a philosophical flourish and, at worst, a denial of context. Watching the U.S. men’s team hoist the gold medal was an exercise in pure, unadulterated national joy — joy that was amplified by the knowledge that they had clawed, skated, and scored their way to a victory 46 years in the making.
Meanwhile, Gu’s feats, however technically impressive, are filtered through the lens of national dislocation. She is a model of personal excellence, yes, but her accomplishments are detached from any real communal attachment. She represents a country other than the one in which she grew up, and thus her success is refracted through geopolitical optics rather than pure national celebration. The comparison is stark: a hockey team, ragged and raw, celebrating their shared national identity, versus a single skier, polished and poised, representing a foreign land.
So yes, let the men in red, white, and blue drink their beers with glee. Let them revel in their friendship, their shared history, and the collective thrill of victory. Let journalists resist the urge to invent controversies and instead cover what truly matters: hockey, human achievement, and the rare joy of a country united in celebration. Stop stretching to canonize a woman who, by definition, cannot be a role model for American national pride, when we have a living embodiment of it right before our eyes.
In the end, the lesson of this Winter Olympics is simple: rejoice. Cheer for the team, remember the goals, savor the triumph, and stop turning the occasion into a laboratory of abstract moral panic. Some athletes choose country, others choose themselves, and some sports writers choose to overthink everything. But when Jack Hughes scores the golden goal, and the boys raise their sticks in unison, all that matters is the exhilarating, simple truth: the United States has won.
