It would be a copout for me to blame only the environment that they must navigate, to rant about how everything is poisonously political now, to lament the impossibility of sustained joy in a culture that incubates outrage. These are all factors, but let’s not infantilize this team. These are men who thrilled a nation and rocked the world, and as adults, they need to be more savvy.
That goes for every prominent team in sports. It’s nice, even expected, to be feted as a winner. But who’s celebrating you – and why they’re doing it and how they’re doing it – matters more. Trump, perhaps more than most modern presidents, understands the optics of standing next to winners. It normalizes him. It softens his cruel instincts and crude jokes, recasting them as locker-room banter. It washes his reputation and reduces the impact of polls that indicate a significant majority of Americans disapprove of his second term.
These champions have agency. In the afterglow of triumph, they have more agency than they ever will. They should be wary of giving it away so casually.
No one can take that gold medal, or how it made all of us feel, away from Team USA. For a fleeting moment, those players quieted our noisy room and made it less toxic. And they’ve already lost some of the room.
It’s not because they set out to divide it. It’s just that, in America right now, proximity to power distorts the meaning of everything around it.
They misread the moment. In our current state, there is no such thing as incidental symbolism. The images and associations matter. They’re almost as powerful as the accomplishment that led to them. Within 48 hours, their celebration drifted into a partisan orbit, and the unity thinned.
Shared moments are precious now. The men’s hockey team conjured some inspiration for an afternoon. That was the trophy to go with their medals. Then they dropped it.
The lesson isn’t that athletes should avoid recognition by political figures or avoid politics altogether. It’s about understanding The Game. When lawmakers bask in their championship glow, they gain more than the winners do. Power loves being in the vicinity of victory. It absorbs the thrill and the innocence – the easy patriotism – and redistributes it in a propagandized manner.
While the players are celebrating, the leaders are calculating. Dominant national teams don’t just represent greatness. They provide consensus, or at least the possibility of it. Since Sunday, the gold medal hasn’t come to mean less. But everything around it has shifted.
Team USA’s visibility in Washington functions as an endorsement, whether the players intend it to be or not. That may be why a handful of players have decided to stay away. However, the bulk of the team is expected to stand together. In sports, that’s called being a good teammate. In this arena, they will look like pawns.
It’s a costly image. What they’ve lost won’t appear in a record book, and in a few years, the appearance will be a faint memory to most. But during a time in which every action seems consequential, they handed over the power of unity. Their triumph is now attached to Trump. His track record suggests it won’t be used to celebrate everyone. It is more likely to be framed as dominance than shared aspiration.
[jerry brewer, the athletic]
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