Posts Tagged → soccer
Happy USA 250th at National Mall big success
Spending two days in the DC-area 102 degree summer heat is not usually something I choose to do, but I gladly did it this week. And I am here to report back two facts: 1) The USA 250th Birthday National State Fair Semiquincentennial Celebration on the National Mall was a big success, and 2) Everyone I met there at the National Mall, and then yesterday at Mount Vernon, was a conservative patriot. This I consider to be not a success, but a failure by the political Left in America. More on this in a moment.
First, let me report on the USA 250th Birthday National State Fair Semiquincentennial Celebration on the National Mall. It was a lot of fun and I am glad I went. They had an active rodeo ring and horse riding competition, with hundreds of active fans cheering from around the fence at any given time. They had a huge Ferris wheel, which we rode in, and got a unique view from and of the DC skyline. There was a long line to get onto this ride at all times, and the two young ladies we rode up with said it was their second or third trip on it.
The FIFA or Fifi or FAFO whatever whatever huge screen soccer watching area was jam packed with thousands of fans, most of whom wore American flag shirts, pants, hats, or draped a flag over their shoulders. America was playing Bosnia when I was there, and the fans were cheering lustily. The line to get in went around the block.
The empty part of the National Mall that people try to show as evidence that this event is not popular is empty because there is nothing happening there. The state booths and the activities are almost all down-the-way, or back the other way. Everywhere else I went there were lots of Americans showing lots of interest in the events and music and exhibits etc etc. The live music was constant, fascinating, and performed by really talented people. No matter where we went, live music was being played.
The Princess of Patience was able to find one frozen ice cream treat out of all the food being marketed. And as far as I could see, the food vendors were struggling to keep up with the constant demand. A lot of food booths had staff promising that the next food delivery was due at any moment, and the hot, sweaty visitors were lined up and waiting. Gotta say, “artichoke dip-stuffed jumbo pretzel” and “bacon-and-cheese stuffed jumbo pretzel” sounds like a lot of work to make, cook, and then deliver ready to serve.
How about selling just ye olde regular big salty soft pretzel, with lots of yellow mustard? Strangely, I looked and never saw just regular old burgers and hotdogs being offered. The food was all creative and fancy, semi-gourmet. That would put a kink in your cowgirl rope, if you were trying to serve up fresh food to a constant stream of hungry fair-goers.
The state booths were fascinating and informative. I stopped in at Guam and had a long, fascinating talk with the friendly reps there, both of them Native, one of whom helped the Princess of Patience charge her phone. I learned about the 80-year American military presence on Guam (still a necessity, due to Chinese imperialism in the Pacific Ocean), and how the Natives are developing their own identity and tourist trade. Similar to Hawaii.
Pennsylvania’s booth seems clouded in controversy, but you would not know that when visiting it. PA’s booth was the best of all that I visited, because it had so much interesting information, and because the fascinating exhibits linked our glorious history to our excellent present. Lots of framed historic American and Pennsylvania flags, antiques, a life-size copy of the Liberty Bell… who the heck scrambled hard at the last second to put all of that together into a coherent exhibit? Thank you very much to US senators John Fetterman (D) and Dave McCormick (R), and to the many corporate sponsors who under-wrote the costs.
It is disappointing that my own governor, Josh Shapiro, did not participate. This big event, our nation’s 250th, should be a bi-partisan celebration. A person’s hate for someone in politics should not outweigh your patriotism for America or your pride in the state you represent. It is tough not to see this as a childish tantrum, but then again, I have yet to have any Democrat friend or family member explain this phenomenon to me without them going immediately from zero to a hundred on the Angry Meter. And it is hard not to see that as a childish tantrum.
Support for America should not be partisan, or even politically questionable. Especially on our 250th birthday.
Which brings us back to the attendees. What on earth is happening in America that people’s personal hatred of a president is so corrosive that they will vandalize national monuments that he has had cleaned up, and that they will boycott a fun, informative, unifying “national state fair” on the National Mall, on America’s 250th birthday?
Every single person I met and chatted with (dozens) there at the National Mall was a conservative patriot. The attendees had a great pride in celebrating America’s 250th Birthday, and made real showings of that pride in their choice of clothing, hats, and words of happy encouragement with one another. That there was no one Leftist (who I saw) just there out of love for America or pride in America says a lot of bad stuff about the political Left in America.
Ditto for yesterday’s day spent at Mount Vernon, the home of George Washington. The place was LOADED with American tourists, Boy Scout groups, all wearing patriotic colors and clothing. We all stood in lines to see just about anything, and despite the 102* blazing heat, everyone was just as friendly, happy, and good natured as the audience had been the day before at the National Mall. How refreshing.
Mount Vernon has incredible updated displays and exhibits, with a significant emphasis on the roles and daily lives of African slaves there, and presumably also across the South, until 1866, when the Republicans took away the Democrats’ slaves.
The George Washington Grist Mill and Distillery was closed, I guess due to the high heat, but come on, people. On July 4th week? On the week of America’s 250th birthday? Something there stank of sabotage….NPS staff who cannot bring themselves to work for a president they disagree with. That was not professional behavior or being devoted to America, if not to the man who temporarily runs it.
I fear for an America that is once again divided into halves. One half, my half, is proud of America, happy to be an American, will work with anyone to advance our great nation forward. The other half (or third) is angry about America, at war with America as we were founded, constantly faulting America, trying to set us back, trying to subvert us, and is actively boycotting our great nation’s 250th birthday celebration.
One guy I spoke with on a train was headed out of DC for the weekend. He is a Democrat lobbyist, an attorney, wearing a fabulous Swiss watch, and more or less said that DC was being inundated with knuckle dragging backwoods types, people like me, I guess, for the 250th celebration, and he had to get out of Dodge in order to enjoy the holiday weekend.
It is curious to me that the political left cannot enjoy sharing America with others. Either the political Left has absolute and totalitarian control of America, or they are miserable boycotters.
Kind of like 1860, a LOT like 1860….which America lived through, and came through stronger, after everything got sorted out.
On the other hand, I and the millions of Americans like me wish you a Happy Independence Day and a Happy 250th Birthday, America!
I took all of the photos below. Any reproduction requires attribution, please.
President George Washington’s face, made from a clay mask while he was alive. In 1776 he lead America to freedom
George Washington’s grist mill and distillery, which made him more money than anything else he did. Washington made rye whisky, which is now coming back into vogue, and which I can occasionally enjoy
General George Washington crossing the Delaware River imposed on the Washington Monument on the National Mall
The Washington Monument, the National State Fair Ferris wheel, and the “Arc d’Trump”
The Arc d’Trump, the big Ferris wheel, and the Washington Monument at dusk, a once-in-several lifetimes view. Smithsonian Institution on the left
Washington Monument lit up in celebration of America’s 250th birthday, with a temporary “national state fair” building in front
American soccer player Malik on the JumboTron on the National Mall, with the US Capitol in the background. Pretty unique view
Earliest known depiction of Uncle Sam, on an 1876 Centennial celebration flag, welcoming “all nations.” Legally, not as an invasion force
My view from the Ferris wheel, looking at the so-named “Arc d’Trump” and the US Capitol in the distance. The soccer game JumboTron is visible in the distance.
People from around America inscribed their best wishes for America’s 250th Birthday
Your faithful author and the Princess of Patience
Two friendly all-American federal police provided me with a grand entrance onto the National Mall
Yours truly, visiting the Truth booth. Truth Social is the official voice of President Trump, because former Twitter couldn’t stand the truth
So-called “Arc d’Trump” has great symbolism, especially with the Ferris wheel and the Washington Monument in the background
Pennsylvania’s booth had the most amazing exhibits, including this old flag from my home turf
Copy of the Liberty Bell at the PA booth
Soccer…nope
With the FiFi or FAFO or FIFA or whatever the hell soccer thing it is that is happening right now in America, Americans are being offered a front seat view of a sport that never caught on here. Soccer is big everywhere else around the world, because you just need an inflated ball, and bingo, you have a game.
Well, please allow me to set straight the wondrously gawking European guests here right now about our sports choices here in America: We like blood and guts and body armor.
Football (which soccer is not and never will be) is America’s official sport even more than baseball. Because our football involves military level strategy, tactics, gear, and military level hand to hand combat, it best captures the imagination of high testosterone men. Had the NFL not politically and culturally abandoned high T men, and patriotic men, and self respecting straight men, it would still be broadly popular.
But even in its deliberately weakened state, American football remains far more manly and exciting to watch than a bunch of too-skinny guys, who wear skinny jeans when not running in circles for pay, run up and down up and down up and down and around the damned field over and over. In soccer, whenever there is any manly contact, the referee starts effeminately tossing rainbow colored flags all over, the guys all stand around bitching and whining and gesticulating, and then it’s over. People start running in circles again.
Soccer is incredibly boring. I feel bad for those cultures that believe soccer is exciting. Watching paint dry must be one of their other national sports. In American football, men settle disputes in manly ways: People get dragged, carted, or helped off the field, such is the damage. That is true manly combat and contest, it is cool, it is exciting, and it is far superior to soccer.
Yeah, Europe has its rugby, which is manly, and bloody, grant you that. But it is also an ill-disciplined anarchic gang fight blur, which American cities have daily, for no charge. It impresses us Americans a little bit more than soccer, which will never catch on here.
Welcome to America, European cousins! Don’t forget to branch out your interests while you are here, beyond accepting that our American football is THE football. Shoot some guns, eat some red meat, enjoy your freedom, then take some manly toughness and defiance back home with you. God knows, ever-more autocratic Europe needs a huge dose of manliness, testosterone, and American style football-and-six shooter-style frontier justice from its people right now.
Glad you guys came here for the soccer, and left with your own must-have list of guns. Don’t forget to buy a Stetson cowboy hat on your way out, too. You want the EU bureaucrat people back home to know you mean business.
Ms. Rapinoe, America built that soccer cup win, not you
Miss Megan Rapinoe is captain of the US Women’s soccer team, which had a win recently, and which as a result has been in the news.
That is… the United States women’s soccer team.
That is, These United States for those failing to catch a big part of the what makes up the girls’ soccer team and its win: The USA.
This ladies’ soccer team was born, built and sustained in and by the United States of America, as representative of and for the benefit of the United States of America. That is, of and by and for all of us citizens.
Right in front of the USA logo that Rapinoe makes her living from, Rapinoe then kneels in her contemptuous disrespect and unappreciation
So when that ladies soccer team goes on to win some cup (is this term “cup” a secretly sexist reference to a man’s protective cup? Which raises the related question: Is it sexist to mock the use of a protective cup by a trans-man? After all, the cup is ergonomically designed to fit over certain male-only genitalia that the trans-man does not actually have…but we digress here…and why not, this entire subject and the people in it is and are all foolishness and digression from reality from beginning to end) some place (sorry, the meaning and attractiveness of soccer elude me), Miss Rapinoe is suddenly thrust into the limelight. Because she now represents us, America.
From that limelight Miss Rapinoe then says a lot of typically boorish and hypocritical things, and so, she just needs to be reminded of a few things, to hold her to account, to speak truth to her power, to provide balance to her selfishness and arrogance.
First, you didn’t build that cup win, Megan. No, no you did not. As a matter of fact, all of us Americans built it for you. We created the opportunity for you, we gave you your pay and your freebies and room and board and your travel expenses and and and…I could go on, but you get the point. You, Megan, you just showed up at publicly funded stadiums to kick around a little ball, and then subsequently preen and pose for the cameras, as if you are a hero or something.
Megan, you did not build those stadiums. You didn’t even make the soccer balls! Or even stitch the uniforms together.
No, all you did was show up, better fed and better cared for than your foreign competitors, because you are an American and a beneficiary of all the great things that a capitalist America offers to people like you, like abundant, affordable, clean and nutritious food. And capitalist sporting goods endorsements.
Except that you then blatantly disrespected all of us good Americans who made this possible for you. You spoke down about America, you falsely criticized America for both imagined injustices and for some from many, many decades ago. You even managed to falsely criticize the current president for holding beliefs that he actually does not hold, but which his predecessor did hold, and about which you were silent. While wearing the USA logo on your clothing.
So, second, no, Megan, you are no hero. You did not suffer or sacrifice for your beliefs, or for your kick ball hobby. In fact, you have actually been very well paid for kicking around a little ball on publicly funded and maintained and secured fields. Speaking of pay, women soccer players get 13% of the gross of their $73 million annual product, whereas men soccer players only get 9% of theirs. Again, if there is an imbalance, it is that men are short changed yet again, and yet again, some nitwit complains the opposite is true. The nitwit of this particular moment is Megan Rapinoe.
You did not build what you have now, Megan. You simply showed up and did what you have been doing all your life, which you have been able to to do because America awards people with all kinds of opportunities that few other nations can provide, and volunteers give their time so kids can play on public fields. And instead of showing your appreciation, you attacked America and her citizens. You refused to show respect for our flag or our anthem, as if you are so much better than all of us, the us who made the you possible in the first place.
Megan, you owe back America its money. Everything you have is because America gave so much to you, and yet you act as if you went out and created it all on your own. You are a hypocritical fraud, Megan. Give us our public tax money back, or give us the soccer cup thingy, because people like me, we built that and made it possible, not you. And while we are on the subject of you asking to benefit from increased capitalism on your behalf, you should be aware that your request for Americans to buy more soccer jerseys and buy more soccer tickets and donate more money has fallen on deaf ears here. To hell with that, Megan.
You screwed me, Megan Rapinoe, and you screwed America; so screw you, too.
Megan Rapinoe saying “Screw you, America!”