OLYMPIC TRIBALISM
I’ve discovered that I have the Peacock streaming app and that I can watch the Olympics, or at least much of it.
Many of the sports are sports that I never watch, or watch at most every 4 years, such as gymnastics and have no interest in in between. I watched Simone Biles do a vault that was so complicated and so fantastic that even watching it at half speed I couldn’t tell what was going on as she twirled in the air. Yet there were other gymnasts who were doing vaults that were almost as fantastic, one from Brazil, Rebeca Andrade. But I didn’t see her vaults. I realized that this was because Simone Biles is an American and she won the gold medal and it was Ameircans like me watching Peacock, and American centered Olympics.
There was a list of medals won, the most by Americans, the second most by France, the host country, with China third. The point being made was that the United States is the leading medal winner and this should make me proud.
I watched a soccer game between American women and Japanese women. The teams were evenly matched, either team could have won, but when Trinity Rodman managed the single winning goal in overtime I was shown the Americans in the stands draped in red, white and blue screaming in ecstasy. I realize that I was supposed to feel ecstatic because I was an American.
This tribalism made me wonder. It was after all just a game with arbitrary rules, I knew nothing about the players on either side, whether I would like to sit with one of them and have a cup of coffee.
Why was I supposed to be ecstatic. Yet in the coverage of the Olympics all the spectators are almost crazy with enthusiasm for their team. How does this happen? I was just in France. The French people I met were just as friendly as Americans are, just as much fun to drink a cup of coffee with. Why am I screaming for one side and why are the French children screaming for their team?
I know these are dumb questions. I know no one expects every one in the stands to say quietly that this player or that seemed to be an interesting person, or that much of what was happening was happening by chance and that it really didn’t matter who won because they all deserved to win and it was only a game or that a player on either side seemed to be a considerate and thoughtful person who wouldn’t take advantage of others.
Thinking like that at a soccer game seems a little bizarre. Screaming blindly for your team because you feel as if you belong to the same tribe seems perfectly natural. But sitting alone in Swannanoa I was a little mystified.
BILLYBABA’S WANDERING 