Apparently, there’s some conservative rage at Simone Biles this week because she has dropped out of Olympic competition. The fact that it is conservatives angry at her is telling. Basically, she’s not feeling well, and doesn’t feel like it is safe for her to be engaging in the extremely dangerous stunts she is famous for — that’s my understanding. It’s the same reasoning behind why we tell people not to handle guns if they have been drinking. No one in the world besides her is more of an expert on whether Simone Biles should compete in the Olympics because no one has ever performed at her level before.
Why do we do the Olympics? For athletes, this is obviously an opportunity to compete at the very highest level and potentially gain enough notoriety that they can get some money to help them transition to their post-sport lives. But for the rest of the world, what is the function of the Olympics?
- Entertainment: The Olympics exist as part of the “circuses” part of “bread and circuses”. All grand entertainments like this are designed to pacify the population, and sport is extremely important for that purpose.
- Non-destructive Proxy War: The Olympics represent a non-destructive proxy war between nations that allows nationalists to compete with one another without disrupting capitalism or the elites in general. Capitalists ultimately do not care about nations; they are constantly looking for ways to subvert the power of the nation state so they can avoid things like taxes and regulations. They see the Olympics as a way to quell international tensions.
- Propaganda: The Olympic website has all sorts of flowery description about why the Olympics exist, but fails to really explain why the competition is divided into national teams. Certainly, part of that is the fact that most people take nations for granted and so it seems like a natural way to divide people up, even though it is not. However, it’s really about allowing different nations with nationalist tendencies to compete with one another, and it is perfect for that because each nation can pretend it “won” the Olympics even it only wins in one event. Those who are more aggressively nationalist will make a medal count tally to determine what nation is winning the Olympics. Nations will make excuses regarding why another nation’s medals don’t count. In the end, it is all about propaganda.
In short, between the entertainment, the proxy war, and the propaganda, the Olympics makes almost everyone quite pleased.
Conservatives care about the Olympics — and about Simone Biles, in particular — because they are rabid nationalists. They want to win, and the Olympics are a way to do that. They also don’t want to have to put forth any effort, though, so they want someone else to win for them. Their fascism demands that people like Biles be brave and die for their country, and her failure to do that is essentially treason (even though most conservatives don’t want to die for their country because they are narcissistic cowards). Conservatives also want to be entertained; they feel like they are owed entertainment from certain classes of people, including athletes, actors, and restaurant staff (again, because they are narcissists). If someone doesn’t want to entertain them, they see that as a rebellion against the traditional, sacred order.
In short, Simone Biles’s refusal to compete in the Olympics — far from being a wise decision that is entirely her private business — is an act of treason and rebellion against all that is good and right from the perspective of conservatives. Conservatives will even root against their own side if they believe certain athletes are not patriotic enough.
Related: THE RIGHT IS NOW ROOTING AGAINST AMERICA’S OLYMPIC ATHLETES (Vanity Fair)