If you’ve been reading my “week in woke posts you’ll know that a number of American right-wingers rooted against American athletes at the Olympics — because the athletes representing the US were supposedly too “woke” for their own good, more concerned with political correctness than with patriotism.
Some of these right-wingers took it another step, going on to argue that all this “wokeness” was actually causing individual athletes and teams to fail. Donald Trump endorsed this bit of magical thinking in a statement he put out after the American women’s soccer team picked up an uninspiring bronze medal instead of the gold one that had generally been expected.
“Woke means you lose,” Trump declared,
everything that is woke goes bad, and our soccer team certainly has. …
They should replace the wokesters with Patriots and start winning again.
But there are a couple of little problem with this, er, hypothesis: first, it’s utterly illogical, in that “wokeness” has no effect on performance, and second, it’s not true, at least when it comes to the performance of American athletes in the Tokyo Olympics.
True, the “woke” American women’s soccer team did a bit worse than expected, but, as Aaron Blake notes in the Washington Post, most of America’s supposedly too-woke-to-perform athletes actually did fine.
Sure, he points out, early losses by America’s Women’s soccer team and men’s basketball team seemed to provide evidence for the “get woke, go broke” narrative.
The culprit was quickly identified: The athletes were too focused on being “woke” and not focused enough on winning. Maybe if they would just “shut up and dribble,” the United States would win more medals. For most of the Olympics, the United States trailed in gold medals behind China, of all places.
Well, guess what: some of the most-criticized “wokesters” ended up at the top of the podium.
[D]espite their early stumble against France, the men’s basketball team wound up winning gold. Ditto the women’s basketball team, whose players and professional league have been more socially progressive than in any other major American sport.
And even the Women’s soccer team contributed a medal to the Americans’ collection.
If you look at the big picture, Blake points out, America’s team didn’t do too poorly at all. For one thing, they won the medal count.
With the Olympics over, the final results are in. And the argument, to the extent it should have been taken seriously in the first place, isn’t really that compelling.
The U.S. team has won the most medals at every Summer Olympics since 1992, and it did so again in this one, taking home 113. …
It wound up eventually edging out China on gold medals, too, 39 to 38.
As for women’s soccer, the irony is that the team that did win the gold — Canada — was, well, basically more “woke” then the team with the bronze. As Blake notes, the Canadian team
also knelt in support of racial-justice protests, and it was a focal point because one player was the first openly transgender athlete to medal at an Olympics. The team also … wore pro-transgender-rights armbands in scrimmages.
Wokesters 1, “Patriots” 0.
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Tom Daly picked up yet another Gold medal; and he literally knits pride sweaters.
@Alan
*brandishes knitting needles*
One of us! One of us! One of us!
Seriously, he’s been getting a lot of love in my corner of Ravelry.
@ Vicky P
I’m always impressed by how you get the finished result. Like how do you get circles!
I have been chatting a bit about knitting lately. I know nothing about it; but it’s cropped up in a few science discussions.
Like how the ROM for the Apollo Guidance Computer was knitted.
And also why we have 80 column display computers. Because punch cards were first used on looms and they had 80 threads.
My MIL knitted baby layettes (hat, booties & sweaters) in very fine wool for gifts. When she was younger, she knitted socks but couldn’t figure out how to turn a heel. Her 6’4″, 250lb Electrical Engineer husband would knit the heels for her.
O no, imagine 🙂
How do we post pics here at the new(ish) blog, please? I’ve not been here in so long, I’ve forgotten…
Sometimes, it seems more and more like the problem with the phrase “get woke, go broke” is that the implied “and” is really an “or”.
@Snowberry
Well, it could also be “Get woke, go for broke.”
@Mish of the Catlady Ascendancy:
How do we post pics here at the new(ish) blog, please? I’ve not been here in so long, I’ve forgotten…
Copypaste the image or video URL and remove the security S (if present) from the http. (Disclaimer: I post from an iPad, and for reasons I have yet to determine, the above procedure works only some of the time.)
what does any of this have to do with divorce, cheating, using people
financially, sexual abuse, or mistreatment of vulnerable people in relationships?
Nothing.
Incels and MGTOW don’t even care about this stuff
Did an edgelord just enter the chat? An insurgent? I suspect we ‘bout to get schooled, folks!
Insurgency is the name of a FPS military game. That’s it and that’s all. You people are nuts. I’m talking about the manosphere and the antifa neo feminists.
Both groups need to be put in a mental hospital and left there.
IRL nobody cares.
So, um, why do they keep talking about it?
Anyhow,
1) Divorce: Can actually be perfectly friendly! Who knew???
2) Cheating: Yeah, that sucks. But hey, turns out guys cheat on girls at least as much as the opposite! So… what the fuck has it got to do with anything?
3) Using people financially: Yeah, that’s bad. Does this include rich guys taking advantage of poor women?
4) Sexual abuse: That is also a terrible thing, and yes, the sexual abuse of males by females is grossly underreported and all too easily shrugged off — which considering how easily male abuse of women is shrugged off is pretty appalling. That being said, remind me of the percentages?
5) Mistreatment of vulnerable people in relationships: Again, a genuinely terrible thing. I don’t think you’ll find anyone here in favor of it. In fact, you won’t find anyone here in favor of the mistreatment of vulnerable people even if they aren’t in relationships. It should definitely be stopped.
I’m sorry, I seem to have mislaid your point. What the fuck are you talking about?
Incidentally, when you talk about “the antifa neo feminists” being mentally ill — I know this is a bit of a “So when did you stop beating your wife?” question, are you saying that being against fascism is a sign of mental illness? Because if so, there are a large number of people in Cable Street who would like to have a word with you.
And yes, I confess it — now that Scildfreya is back, all I’m really doing is trying to provoke the troll into saying something that will merit a true Scildfreya response.
Notably, in practical term, insurgency happen, and are a relatively bad answer to problems that people in charge really should have dealt with in better way, but chose to ignore. Any comparison with the current state would clearly be nonsense.
@ Rabbit Rabbit.
When I say both the manosphere and neo feminists are severely mentally ill, it means what I said.
I never mentioned gender.
Neither side wants to hear each other out. Both groups want each other canceled out.
IRL nobody cares and the mainstream sees both sides as severely mentally ill.
Like ain’t that damn complicated.
The Q mess was started by an introvert hermit handicapped person; just like all of the other weird ass Internet mess.
Go outside once a week. It works wonders
I hear insects whining. Should I put out the citronella candles?
I always think it’s weird that people are shocked when China does well at the Olympics. They have the largest population on Earth and a fairly well-developed economy. Of course they’re going to produce a lot of top-tier athletes just by the sheer law of averages.
@Alan
Not so much circles as spirals, which can present their own challenges. Luckily we invent ways to compensate, like the nifty trick at the end of using the stretchy bind-off for a sock:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=abBhe-JYmgI
Plus knitters come up with some really fun things to do with knitted projects.
http://twitter.com/chloe_glow/status/1424883442014056448
I can’t help but wonder if she used Brown Sheep brand yarn for this project.
It’s odd that Trump would pull out the “if you’re woke you lose” thing. He’s always the least woke in any context, and he always loses.
@ Vicky P
That might as well be functional magic for all I understand it! But I do like the use of insouciant.
That animation was pretty amazing though. I can really see a link here between what the knitters are doing and how people used to plot graphics for video games in the days before hi-res graphics. Reminds me of all the Petsci games!
@Nequam
I’m assuming, from the slightly higher literacy, relative lack of jargon, and the phrase “Go outside” that Insurgency is a bored Farmer waiting for the site to go back up.
@Alan
If it’s any consolation, a LOT of knitters (yer humble correspondent included) thought that the SSBO technique was functional magic, though after seeing it demonstrated, most of us thought something along the lines of “Oh, of COURSE. Of COURSE that would work.” Some of us understand the 3-D geometry of knitting and can articulate it. I always have to get some yarn on the needles and follow along with a video demo before I start grokking it.
I’m old enough that I remember a high school project I had where I plotted out a couple of graphics screens on an Apple II (state of the art for secondary education at the time), which required the use of graph paper and noting each and every coordinate that needed to be specified. Years later, I did something similar for a knitting project using a tweaked Excel spreadsheet. The first effort required a lot of typing and troubleshooting afterwards to correct any mistakes. The second effort took an hour or so, and I could see how it was coming out as I worked on it. I remember thinking back and comparing the two approaches, and thinking about how proud High School Me was at working in a tiny bit of animation and music for that project. The kind of tweak that these days a 6-year-old could probably do with more polish and sophistication, depending on the tools available.
@ Threp
I’m too busy with rock climbing, working 50 plus hours a week, PC gaming and etc to be worried about a damn site.
I see that “go outside” remark struck a nerve.
It struck a nerve when I also told the incels and MGTOEs to try going outside.
If you can get both sides to be angry at you, you must be the one who has it right.
This is a proven scientific fact.
I never understand those trolls who say they’re too busy with Important Things to worry about [fill in the blank]. Also, they seem to think they’re the only ones who work, are married, have hobbies that don’t involve the internet….
It is, as the saying goes, to laugh.