The Best Thing About the Olympics Is What Trump and Vance Can't Stand
Athletes of all backgrounds, including immigrants? Hell yes.
Greetings! I’m back from a brief, overdue, and not-particularly-well-timed vacation, so let me take the opportunity to say that if you like what I do here and would like to support it, consider upgrading to a paid subscription. As of now I still have no premium benefits to offer other than gratitude — I’m committed to allowing all the content to remain free for any who want to read it. But just think of the warm feeling you’ll get knowing that you helped The Cross Section continue! Now let’s talk Olympics.
In my house, we’re suckers for the Olympics, for many reasons. But if you’re someone who doesn’t ordinarily like flag-waving expressions of patriotism and chants of “USA! USA!”, allow me to suggest that the Olympic version of those impulses is in fact profoundly liberal, in the best way. Which may be why so many on the right viewed it, especially this year, with little more than disgust.
That includes Donald Trump and J.D. Vance, who looked at the games that just concluded in Paris and seemed to see nothing worthwhile — nothing inspiring, nothing to celebrate, nothing to praise. Their public comments on the games were largely restricted to two incidents, both of which involved them hearing a false story from fellow conservatives, saying “Excellent, some culture-war rage-bait,” and being either too dumb to know they were spreading lies or too dishonest to care.
First Trump condemned the opening ceremony as “a disgrace” because right-wing morons thought a tableau meant to represent Dionysus, the Greek god of revelry, was actually a mockery of da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” and therefore disrespectful to Jesus. Then both Trump and Vance lied about Algerian boxer Imane Khelif, claiming both that she is a man (she’s not) and that she is transgender (she’s not). That was about all the Republican ticket had to say about the Olympics, other than Trump taking credit for the games coming to Los Angeles in 2028.
In contrast, the Democratic nominee seems like more of a fan:
Although I can’t read their minds, I suspect that the U.S. Olympic team has a little too much diversity for the comfort of people like Trump and Vance, who lead a party so committed to re-whitening America that they printed up signs reading “MASS DEPORTATION NOW” for delegates to wave at their convention. The Olympics are a nearly perfect meritocracy; Republicans can’t complain that Simone Biles or Noah Lyles are “DEI hires” and that if it weren’t for wokeness some more deserving white people would have taken their places. And it isn’t just the variety of ethnic backgrounds on display; the U.S. team is also full of immigrants and the children of immigrants. In other words, it looks like America.
The Olympic team is America at its best
According to the George Mason University Institute for Immigration Research, over one in ten of the members of the 2024 Olympic team was either an immigrant or the child of immigrants. That includes people you know if you followed the games, like gymnasts Suni Lee, whose mother was a Hmong refugee from Laos, and Paul Juda, whose parents immigrated from Poland. It also includes many athletes you might have missed, like distance runner Abdihamid Nur, who emigrated to the U.S. from Somalia as a child.
It’s not at all surprising that so many immigrants and children of immigrants become Olympians. The qualities necessary to achieve that level of athletic excellence — drive, focus, commitment, the ability to recover from setbacks, a strong work ethic — are often found in people willing to pick up from the place of their birth and make a fresh start in a new country.
When you see that Olympic team, which unlike the groups representing most other countries comes in all hues and from all backgrounds, what is your response? I’ll tell you what comes to my mind: That is what America ought to be, right there. Look at what we show the world: all these different kinds of people who came from everywhere, and they all wear “USA” on their shirts. That’s what makes me proud to be an American.
But that’s not how some people react. When J.D. Vance talks about immigrants, it’s not about how they make America better; he sneers with contempt at the very idea. to illustrate the dangers of immigration, Vance often brings up Springfield, Ohio, a struggling town that has been losing population for decades, and received a recent influx of immigrants from Haiti, as a cautionary tale. “Go to Springfield,” he says, “and ask the people there whether they have been ‘enriched’ by 20,000 newcomers.”
I’ve mentioned this before, but a passage in Vance’s convention speech, which he has repeated in other speeches, is extraordinarily revealing of not only his perspective on the country but one he shares with many on the right. After saying that “when we allow newcomers into our American family, we allow them on our terms,” Vance identifies “the source of American greatness” in his family’s ancestral home in Kentucky, specifically in a cemetery plot where five generations of that family are buried. He rejects the notion that America is based on ideals, saying, “Even though the ideas and the principles are great, that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for abstractions, but they will fight for their home.” It’s quite literally a blood-and-soil appeal, one that characterizes immigration as something that should be kept to an absolute minimum, because there is no American greatness to be found there.
And of course, Donald Trump agrees. But they’re wrong. America’s greatness has always come from the fact that we are a magnet for people around the world who have smarts and ambition and a belief that they can build a better future. Why is it that no other nation comes close to our achievements in science and business and culture, that all over the world people watch American movies, listen to American music, play American sports, use American technology, and dream that one day they might be American too? It’s not because of some genetic legacy passed down through generations of J.D. Vance’s ancestors. It’s because of our diversity, our cultural ferment, the constant change and renewal driven by wave after wave of immigration.
So is there a cemetery somewhere in America where five generations of the ancestors of Simone Biles or Katie Ledecky are buried? The answer is we don’t care. They are what America is right now, and they are glorious.
This guy gets it:
What a thoroughly worthwhile and uplifting piece today. Thank you.
Welcome back, Paul!