A) Be fans, but like with celebrities and politicians, don't develop parasocial relationships with athletes.
B) As far as I can, Republicans widely celebrated Alysa Liu winning gold even though she probably does not like any of them. It shouldn't be that difficult for Democrats to do likewise for the men's hockey team.
At this point, my prior is that any clickbait-inducing content I see on Twitter is from a foreign engagement farmer, unless I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are American. If you want me to believe you're not a robot from India, then I'm gonna need your opinions on what dynasty trades I should be making to avoid coming dead last in fantasy baseball this year.
This is a total misread of the Liu situation. MAGA are not typical figure skating fans so they were unaware of her very clear politics until it was too late and she had already won. They had just spent two weeks frothing at the mouth insisting that the Olympics should be totally apolitical so they backed themselves into a corner. Combine this with the fact that they had made Eileen Gu a massive villain so they set themselves up to say “see, we like this other pretty Asian woman.” GOP/Liu was literally a textbook definition of the exception proves the rule.
In a different comment on this thread, I outlined a lot more about MAGA behavior toward US athletes at the Olympics. It was truly an outrage and a disgrace.
I find ringerism (as opposed to bona fide immigration) generally distasteful, but I have some sympathy for people like, I don't know, Miles Amine (American wrestler who changed to represent San Marino where he has some distant ancestry) who can't quite make a big country's team and so transfer allegiance to a smaller country where they can.
By contrast, intentionally selling out your home nation for money, as Gu has, is just gross.
Hotter take: I'm hoping that, in a return of "sports diplomacy," Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu resolve the PRC/US conflict in a no-holds barred Jello wrestling match.
It's sort of easy not to anyway. You check out her social media and I get that she's only 22, but even among 22-year-olds she's got to be in the top 10 most insufferable.
I don't know any MAGA, but right wing people on Substack are saying she's cute and fun and why should we care about her politics, she's not making a big deal about them.
being around large numbers of people who share my views makes me oddly uncomfortable and part of the joy of attending sporting events is that it is not like that... (``i don't want to be part of any club that will have me as a member'' and all that)
I can’t celebrate a bunch of bros who so think it’s fine to laugh at the women’s team they don’t even feel the need to apologize. Nope. If it were my son and he didn’t publicly apologize, I’d melt his flippin’ medal down and give the money to a third-grade girls’ hockey team. You wear that thing around your neck, son, you represent the best of our country, not a bunch of crotch-scratching locker-room idiots.
I was hoping we could inject politics into the sports arena, as we shouldn't have any part of American society that is an escape. If only we can figure out a way to have partisan grocery stores (yes, I know Whole Foods exists, but still).
The fact that a lot of those people, the women, do not want men playing with them, is dispositive. Do you not understand Title IX? Do you know that's a law? Passed through the government?
I mean maybe. It seems more that people have lost sight of the original point of all our civil rights laws and probably our government system as a whole. Like somewhere along the line people just got completely disconnected from the foundations all of this was built on and why it's actually good.
Sports leagues are not supposed to be in the pocket of the government; they are, in principle, meant to operate independently of politics. Indeed, most international sporting federations will ban member nations that are subject to political interference in sports governance. I mean obviously the IOC isn't going to kill its own golden goose by banning the USA (much as we have, at times, deserved it), but that's hypocrisy, not principle. By the letter of the law, and the precedents set with regard to less wealthy nations, Trump's executive orders should have resulted in the USOPC being banned.
And that's true even if the federation would, acting on its own, come to a similar sports rule as the one the government is attempting to impose by legal fiat.
You cant actually be this incredulous. If you don't understand this topic well enough to know that Title IX exists, what it does, and why it was written into law then you obviously are not well informed enough to have a meaningful opinion on this topic.
I know exactly what Title IX is and does. It's an equal-funding mandate for men's and women's sports in federally-funded schools. It is not some kind of blank-check license to the US government to override the eligibility rules of sporting federations, and if it was, it would flagrantly violate their requirements on political neutrality.
If you care to replace your indignant spluttering with an actual coherent argument, I'll respond to it. More spluttering is just going to result in me blocking you, because this is a waste of my time.
In the US, the majority of youth sports are direct functions of the government in the form of high school sports. The facilities, the equipment, the coaches, the governing authorities are all straight up government activities. They exist because there is legislation mandating them, they are paid for with tax dollars, and are indistinguishable as government activities from transportation departments, social welfare programs, or the public school system in which they reside.
The college level is slightly less directly a government function, but when you say federally funded schools you are pretty much saying all schools, and importantly many, many of those schools are actually again direct government entities in the form of state colleges and universities.
These Cheetos are the same ones I bought in Europe. Just branded as have no artificial flavors or coloring. Sold in a white bag. It would be funny if they were RFK branded if not for all the evil and harms that man is causing.
Two months ago my kid turned 1 and I could finally get him the MMR vaccine. Huge relief. I hate how many times I've thought about measles over the past year.
Harris really could have built a reputation as a pragmatic center-left type that could denounce the worst identiarian impulses of the party and it would have been great politics for her.
Untold LEGIONS of progressive chronic non-voters in Texas are merely awaiting the right candidate to be nominated and will then surge to the polling places, Joseph! [/every progressive leaning site and Twitter account I've seen today posting about the polling showing Crockett leading Talarico]
Not yet. Most real life people I know don't want her to run again. It's just the social justice warriors and chronically online peoplw who want her to run.
It means nothing of the sort. What it means, rather, is that (a) the people who know better are no longer running the show, and (b) many of the people who are running the show (primary voters) possess little or no specialized knowledge about general election competitiveness.
I *know* Harris doesn’t speak for all Democrats. It’s still disappointing. She’s injecting herself into a situation where it’s not necessary, and where it likely will be counterproductive.
We don't let the progressives and far left anarchists speak for all of us. I think too many people are over indexed to the social media popularity contests. There is a reason why serious groups in TX are stumping for Talarico and he is out fundraising Crockett
No no no, it doesn't work that way. You see, I patriotically volunteer, and then The People, in their gratitude for my act of selflessness, choose me by acclamation.
seems like a good test case of how good or bad her political instincts are, since most polls have had crockett ahead, but prediction markets favor talarico by a wide margin.
I thought the leftie outrage over the men's response to the Trump call was really tone-deaf. These guys just won a gold medal, are slamming beers, and who knows what they heard or didn't hear on the phone. Maybe take a deep breath before knives out? Every NHL player I've seen interviewed about the women's teams have been extremely positive and complimentary. Letting Kash Patel in the locker room was dumb though, but I guess who is going to tell him to take a hike?
Even Brady Tkachuk (a MAGA-adjacent player) was pretty outraged that the White House used his likeness in a fake AI video they put out on Twitter after the game.
I think you also have to consider the gulf between a player who says they voted or would vote for Trump, and a Curt Schilling type who thinks Jan 6 was awesome. They aren't the same!
It’s that they didn’t think they needed to walk it back the next day. To say, yeah, we got caught up in the moment and that was pretty shitty. We’re really sorry. And even in the moment, how hard would it be to throw out a “nah, bruh, they should totally come with us” or “dude, that’s cold” You can be a bro and not be a douchebag.
There is no apology that would have ever sufficed. The response would just be “well then if you thought that was bad why are you going to the White House?” And if they don’t go to the White House “well then why don’t you denounce Trump on _____?” Once you admit you have something to apologize for (and to be clear they don’t), the cycle just gets started.
The era of apologizing to journalists or social media is over, everyone now recognizes it never works.
I don’t begrudge them going to the White House. I wouldn’t expect them to make a political statement. Anyway, I don’t condemn people for their political leanings. Sure, take the win, fellas. Have a blast.
I’ve said elsewhere I don’t even judge them for laughing in the moment, but I’m sorry you - and apparently a whole lot of SB guys - don’t see that it was a mistake worthy of a simple apology. Not talking some hair-shirt mea culpa, just a whoops sorry we didn’t see how that came across. Do you think that if the same thing happened but the joke had been about, say, Jordan Stolz - implying his achievement wasn’t as worthy as theirs - would that be cool? Do you see no basic poor sportsmanship here?
FWIW, my rabid professional-hockey-loving, Hughes-bros-adoring, team-managing crazy hockey mom friend was bummed out by them not just manning up and publicly owning their mistake.
PS Did you see SNL last night? You can watch the Hughes brothers acknowledge right there on the stage that what happened was in fact apology-worthy. And the women’s team acknowledging it was crappy AND that they’re still friends, nobody needs to be canceled. I love that they did that, but I don’t love that it took SNL to make them do it.
Yes I saw them on stage for the SNL monologue, just like I saw them in the stands during the women’s games, because I actually cared enough to watch both teams before the gold medal games. They’ve done way more to support the women than anyone disappointed they didn’t act out their own personal psychodrama with the president on speakerphone ever has. It doesn’t matter what apology would suit *you*, as soon as you let media and social media drag you into that tarpit, you will never escape.
They are not responsible for whatever mildly inappropriate joke the president makes. The actual women on the team seem to understand it, I’m not sure why so many other people don’t.
Also read this to see how good the men who took responsibility for their mistake come across (understandable, justifiable mistake but a mistake no less). They’re the guys women want to date. Grown ass men with intact egos. (gratitude to ML for the link)
I haven’t seen any social media on this. Someone sent me the video. That’s it. I was flippin’ thrilled about the game and then so disappointed. I expected them to say something afterward. Put it right to bed. When they didn’t and, just like you, blamed the internet instead of their own accidental tone-deafness, I was confused and crushed. And *that’s* when it became about them and not just about Trump.
And guys like you doubling down on the idea that it’s just a bunch of over sensitive feminazi snowflake liberals making a big hairy deal out of nothing, you’re the ones keeping it alive. Pro tip: Real men apologize when they screw up. Children insist it’s not my fault.
Btw, funny you bringing the women into this as if it bolsters your argument when they were not happy about it. Maybe you didn’t pay attention to that part. Have they forgiven and moved on? Yeah.
I think so. Does that mean the men didn’t do anything wrong? Yeah, I don’t think so.
I don't think they were being douchebags. If Obama called and said the same thing, I don't think we'd even be talking about this. But because Trump is a vile sex pest who thinks very little of women, we are applying a different filter. Also, maybe they were a little starstruck and couldn't rapidly jump into SJW mode with the president and his goon right there?
I think the policing of the team’s behavior is off-putting to the median American. Especially since the players themselves have said nothing but positive things about the women's team, and it detracts from what was truly a fantastic accomplishment.
If you accidentally insult a friend, you don’t apologize? You be like “stop policing my behavior?” I think you ought to check your lens.
PS Obama wouldn’t have said it so your counterfactual is functionally meaningless. Anyway, if he HAD said it, you best believe he’d have apologized. Class act, that man.
This is so great, not just because I love that some of them did apologize and acknowledge (makes my heart so happy), but because now y’all can see what I mean: how a real grown up man can take responsibility for something he did even when he didn’t mean to do it. I respect this so much. Bravo, guys! (Withholding bravos from the guys who still refuse, tho.:)
Let's not forget the most shocking part - if you had to guess a month ago who in the Trump administration would leave his post to slam some beers in Milan with the boys, you would have definitely said Hegseth, right?
Ever since someone said he was Tom Haverford, I can't get it out of my head. I didn't find him a believable character in the show, but now he's out there in real life!
Great post, Halina. I do think it omits some key context of why liberals were genuinely annoyed and even surprised at the Trump/Patel stuff even if they shouldn’t have been given the data.
Online MAGA discourse throughout the Olympics was almost maniacally focused on highlighting left-coded political rhetoric from individual athletes and attempting to destroy them by labelling them anti-American traitors, demanding they be “fired” from the Olympic team, and — because MAGA is very stupid — insisting that their non-taxpayer-funded flights home be cancelled and the athletes stranded so precious MAGA tax dollars wouldn’t have to “support” them.
These online types universally rooted for these athletes to lose their events, celebrated when they underperformed, and in several cases explicitly wished these athletes would be severely injured or even killed in the more dangerous events.
The supposed “principle” at stake here was that Olympic athletes should be strictly 100% neutral in their statements and actions while representing the country abroad.
Given the prior hypocrisy of the “shut up and sing” and “shut up and dribble” movements, we knew this was bullshit. But seeing the total MAGA revelry in this nasty, fuck you display after all that was legitimately infuriating and shocking in a way that goes far beyond unawareness of NHL demographics.
As ever, the right-wing view of free speech is that their speech is special and protected and can never even be criticized, much less censored, and also, simultaneously, that it is illegal to disagree with them.
That's their view of everything, not just free speech. Just like how they blamed Alex Pretti's death on Pretti for carrying a gun. We get to bear arms and you don't.
Arch-conservatism at its root opposes the whole concept of the rule of law or human rights. What is right is derived from authority, not from principles, and we owe loyalty to our community/people/race/volk/whatever, not to pieces of paper. What matters is us vs. them - we get to win, they get to lose, and the end justifies the means.
As far as I can tell, 95% of UFC fighters are faaaar right. Like, wannabe/future brownshirts levels of far right. They either love Trump or Bolsonaro, depending on which country they're from. (Or Putin I guess).
Fanbase is actually a bit more left-leaning than you'd think though
I would say "how much you accept that violence exists, and respect it". I find that a lot of liberal/progressives simply can't fathom it and find the idea of ever being in a physical confrontation nauseating and immoral on its face.
You’re not merely accepting that violence exists when you choose to participate in it. I mean fighting sports are fine because everyone’s consenting. But violence isn’t something that “exists” out there in the ether like cancer; it’s completely manmade. And certainly I think that someone starting violence against someone else who is non-consenting, innocent, and weaker is the most immoral thing a person could do.
You are proving the point. Violence is an innate part of life. Hawk needs food; hawk kills mouse. Bear needs food; bear attacks elk; elk wants to live; elk gores bear. Bear wants sex; bear fights other bear for mating rights. Chimps need territory; they kill other chimps. Chimps don't like their leader; leader is killed and eaten. Hairless apes don't like their leader; leader dies during a hunt, killed by 3 mysterious spear wounds.
In society, especially modern society, it's controlled. Shackled. Outsourced. Violence has rules, enforced by the rest of society. Man puts a tent on your lawn; man is arrested if he doesn't leave; force-violence-is used if the man resists. Neighbor's dog keeps shitting on your lawn and charging at you when you're walking out your door; neighbor receives citation for loose and/or aggressive dog; if neighbor refuses to abide by judge's dictates, neighbor goes to jail. Man attacks me with a knife; I shoot him in the chest.
The reason why so many of us find you painfully obtuse is your obsession with not seeing this. You post about how great Singapore is, ignoring how corporal and capital punishment-violence-enforce their social harmony. You have repeatedly defended the CCP, which engages in literal genocide against the Uyghurs and threatens the sovereignty of Taiwan, because all of the violence happens where Nikuruga isn't forced to see it. You excuse Hamas and judge Israel, because despite no understanding of violence or war, you still have the fucking audacity to evaluate the war based on standards you have pulled, fresh and steaming, out of your ass. That's why you get so much heat in these comments.
There's a model of violence scaling I keep meaning to write about. What it amounts to is most people have a level of coercion/violence they are comfortable working at. Things like social pressures, adrenaline, and moral superiority can push someone into a higher level, but that shift isn't stable. The far left tends to shift up when they feel empowered, but shift back the moment they start losing and the adrenaline starts to subside. Which, to all of us watching, looks more or less like DARVO.
Some of them, I think it’s more a correlation though. You’re likely to find pacifists like Quakers very overrepresented on the far-left. There are also pacifists on the right like the Amish but they are rarer.
I don't want the world to descend into a dog-eat-dog dystopia, but if I knew I was in the top 0.01 percentile of ability to beat people up, I can see how that could change my opinion. It's just rational self-interest.
This just looks to me like "what % of this league's players are Black?"
I'd be interested to see the breakdown on the White minority in the NFL vs the NBA. My guess is that white NBA players are woker than white NFL players but I could be totally wrong.
Also where do Latino MLB players or Slavic NHL players come down on things?
Professional athletes are probably the most Republican group of Black voters in America. Almost certain that Anthony Edwards would've been an Obama-Trump voter if he was old enough to vote in 2012.
But yes, they are people whose wealth far exceeds their education (this is a huge Trump group), and by definition the ones in the surveyed leagues other than WNBA are men. Compared to their non-pro athlete brothers or cousins they are probably more Republican
Most American NBA players attend college because that's the main talent development league. But it would not be surprising to learn they're different than other college students due to their dream job not requiring a degree.
A lot of Russians cited Russian law when not participating in Pride night. These guys are even higher profile back home then they are here, they have legitimate concerns about never getting sideways with a regime that routinely openly murders people inside and outside of the country
He's more outspoken in his pro-Putinism than other Russian NHL-ers though. The main mitigating fact about Ovechkin isn't that he has family in Russia (they all do), it's the fact that on any topic outside of hockey he's kind of a dope.
Pretty sure that most Slavic Americans are Republicans. Which is a shame considering most of them are funny as hell, too. I love the Russian sense of humor
Latino MLB players are difficult to gauge because a lot of them aren’t citizens and beyond that, few really get into politics. Mariano Rivera’s really conservative and outspoken about it, but there aren’t many more beyond that. If I had to guess, most Puerto Ricans are Democrats, most Cubans, Dominicans, and Venezuelans are Republicans, and Mexicans/Central Americans fall somewhere in the middle.
As a Yankee fan, I think Rivera is mostly conservative because he is a hardcore Christian socially and Trump awarded him the Presidential medal of freedom. Plus apparently they've been friends since the 90s.
Why so many conservative Christians seem to have no issue with people they personally know who break all the rules of their religion, vs people they don't even know, I honestly don't know... But it does track what I've seen anecdotally from a number of people in minority groups (including my own family), if it wasn't for sometimes the blatant inequality and racism more POC would probably vote Republican. POC communities are more religious on average than white people.
Basically, most jocks are conservative. It doesn't matter if they're white, black, or Latino, what sport they play, or what country they come from.
Now, in America, most black people are Democrats even if they are conservative, for reasons that I think are easily understandable. But if you listen to enough interviews of black NBA players, it becomes pretty clear that they tend to be attitudinally pretty conservative about a lot of issues - about gender, about LGBT issues, about when physical violence is acceptable, about openness to new cultural experiences, about looking out for the weak and unfortunate, or about whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about being able to cooperate with strangers who are different from us. This is simply how the modal jock thinks in every society and culture.
I do think NBA players are noticeably less conservative than black NFL players, which I would theorize is because the former are more individually famous and have more free time, and thus hobnob a lot more with celebrities and other cosmopolitan people.
I hope that it all works out. Sincerely. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad and so is nuclear proliferation.
Years ago, there was a deal in place — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had a lot of downsides from the standpoint of Iran’s regional adversaries but which did a good job of ensuring a non-nuclear Iran. A set of hawks in the United States did not like JCPOA, criticized it at the time, worked to undermine its implementation, and then in Trump’s first term tore it up in a way that made renewed diplomacy under Biden essentially impossible.
During these debates, the pro-JCPOA side always maintained that the other option was war.
The opponents could have said, “that’s true, the likely alternative to JCPOA is war.” That would have been an interesting debate. But they did not say that. In fact, they loudly denied it. They would get extremely angry if you suggested their real alternative was not a better deal but war. I witnessed these arguments. I participated in them. They were vicious and they continued for years.
War is an inherently uncertain thing. Civilian outsiders are not privy to everything that is going on. The known unknowns are everywhere. Political leaders are asking their citizens to trust them, to trust that they are acting on good information and using sound judgment.
In this case, the arc of the past decade+ of arguing about Iran and JCPOA is either that the hawks have displayed terrible judgment about the real alternatives to JCPOA or else that they have been lying to us all along and trying to manipulate the situation to this end. Most likely, it is some of both.
I hope that it all works out. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad. Nuclear proliferation is bad. But war is an uncertain enterprise and I am not comfortable being led into war by a group of people who specifically assured us — over a period of over ten years — that their approach to Iran was not going to lead to lead to war when their opponents on the other side saw this much more clearly.
In general, I wish that people on both the right- and left-wing sides of debates about the Middle East paid more genuine attention to global humanitarian issues. We donate 10% of our Slow Boring revenue to GiveWell’s curated list of highly effective global public health charities and lead an annual Give Directly fundraiser that drives hundreds of thousands of dollars to desperately poor people in Africa. It is very possible to do things to help people in the world that do not involve military force or trying to tackle the least-tractable geopolitical conflicts in the world.
It would be nice to see American foreign policy made by people with integrity and a solid track record of accurate statements and epistemic humility. We do not have that and I fear for the worst, but hope it will work out despite the obvious problems."
I think matt's take it good, and much better than what most left of center peeps are saying right now.
On a related topic (since we might not get a thread or a mailbag anytime soon), here is an amusing hypothetical:
If you were a long serving Iranian foreign minister and you wanted to engineer regime change in your own country, how would you have gone about doing that?
My views probably align with the median reader of slow boring (as far as I can tell) and I've never been more cynical about the state of USA affairs than I am under Trump 47. The amount of genuinely disturbing violation of rights and bold embrace of cruelty and abuse of power has me really down. All of that is why it was extra disappointing to me when it seemed like the most visceral reaction I've seen in media/social media - particularly by the run-of-the-mill feminist influencer circle, was about the "failure of the men in the US men's hockey room to push back against the sexism of Trump and their teammates".
With everything else going on - it was pretty appalling to me that this topic is what seemed to be getting more engagement than anything else, especially given what was being claimed. The fact that some of the men in the room supposedly weren't OK with the joke but "allowing it to happen is what perpetuates sexism". Awkwardly laughing at something that makes you uncomfortable is literally the most natural human reaction to that situation when you aren't really the center of attention. What do these feminist influencers expect men in that situation to do? Start an argument with the president in front of the entire locker room?
I mean, you're right, but in defense of the feminists who got upset about this, Trump has a long and depressing history of hideously sexist words and actions. So I understand that people got upset, it's not that this incident in and of itself is a big deal, it's just another brick in the fugly wall of Everything Trump Touches Turns to Shit. (Personally, I was much more upset about Trump saying, "Quiet, piggy" to a female reporter who asked him a question he didn't like.)
I doubt very much a typical NHL locker room is very conservative. Canadians make up the largest percentage of NHL players and they hold much more moderate political positions given where they come from. There are also a lot of European players hailing from countries with a much more liberal political cultures.
Canadian players do love playing in Florida though. The tax advantages they enjoy by living and playing in Florida are considerable. Four of the last six Stanley Cup winning teams are from Florida and a chock-full of Canadians.
What percent of White Canadian men are Conservative Party voters? It must be near 50% if not a bit over, even if you don't account for any specific traits about hockey players in either direction.
I doubt it would be that high. Although Canadian players often come from rural or suburban areas you will likely get a mix of political backgrounds. Ontario is the largest province and it has always had a much more moderate political culture historically.
This is a pre-election poll that was close to the final result.
The Conservative Party earned 39% among all 18-34s and 40% among men. They don't ask about race, but based on this, I'd think 45%+ among White men 18-34.
Certainly the Canadian hockey players would be unlikely to be a left-wing force, except compared to the heavily right-wing American hockey players.
By the way, the Conservatives earned 44% last election in Ontario, so among White men in Ontario they were probably at a majority.
The Conservatives did well among young men in the last election, but that was a bit of an outlier historically. The federal Conservative leader deliberately ran a populist campaign that targeted young men of all racial backgrounds. However, normally, the Conservative party federally does not do as well with that age cohort.
The Ontario example is slightly misleading as the Ontario Liberal Party (the Tories main rival) has been plagued recently by poor leadership. The Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford (brother of the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford) has a folksy type of populism that isn't race specific that works well in a large diverse province like Ontario.
Ford is a populist but he does not engage in the type of racially divisive rhetoric the way Trump does. Ontario is so ethically diverse doing so would be political suicide.
Eh I think once you get out of the cities the attitude is extremely libertarian. In the states my Canadian friends are extremely socially liberal but they also all own guns. It’s like the mountain west. Temperamentally small c conservative.
Most Canadian NHL players left home at age 16 or 17 to play junior hockey, mostly in small towns in rural areas. The culture in those locker rooms is prehistoric, or at least 1950's-esque, very conformist and hierarchical, still lots of hazing, etc., and that culture informs the culture of the entire NHL. Not the aspect of Canadian culture that I'm most proud of.
You can be conservative without caring about politics. A very large number of 25-year-olds don't care about politics. They still have conservative or liberal attitudes, and you can usually tell where they'll end up on the political spectrum if/when they ever become politically engaged (as many though not all will when they get older).
Aaargh, this is terrible journalism on Halina's part. In a piece that has as its headline and thesis that NHL players are Republican citing this fact in support is just terrible.
"When the N.H.L. wanted to recognize Pride Month to try and broaden its fan base, Pride jerseys became Pride tape due to player complaints"
The players who complained were three Canadians and four Russians.
As anyone could’ve predicted, Republican-controlled US government is the biggest threat to AI alignment. All the technical debates about alignment are totally useless if the government can just force you to make it evil—the main focus of AI alignment should be how to keep Republicans out of power (which could mean defeating them in elections, as long as Democrats are more benevolent, or weakening the power of the US government generally). Unfortunately they still have a lot of power, at least financially. AI labs are now kind of in a race to develop their own financially sustainable models (or benevolent AGI that just takes over) the government uses its financial power to force them to make malevolent AGI. Interesting times ahead but it seems the only way through is full-speed ahead…
One of my biggest critiques of effective altruists is I think they’re politically naive. Most supported Harris, but I got the sense they didn’t see beating Trump in 2024 as being *that* big of a deal, certainly not a major cause area.
I support “keep republicans out of power” as the prime “make paper clips” directive of all the AIs. Would even give them Skynet/Wargames levels of military authorization for such an important goal
Most of it made sense to me, but the one that really surprised me at the time was WWE--although perhaps nowadays Jesse Ewiak would enlighten us on why that's not surprising.
Remember one of the major villains in WWE is Vince McMahon himself, representing corporate bosses everywhere. There at least was an anti-authoritarian streak to the plot of WWE. I say this mostly because of this video: https://youtu.be/rnvSs3HEz2o - as a high voter turnout person I haven't watched very much WWE.
As a WWE fan, I might also be able to enlighten you. It's way more international now, with many wrestlers from europe, mexico, canada and japan so that changes the Hulk Hogan type of WWE. It should also be said that Jesse Ventura existed and while not a Democrat, always struck me as quite progressive(he got kicked out of the WWF for trying to unionize the wrestlers and it was Hulk Hogan who ratted him out to management). The current World Champion(C.M. Punk) himself is quite progressive. Jon Stewart is a big WWE fan. It has always had a somewhat progressive fanbase(at least as a large minority to somewhat smaller majority) because it's also more entertainment/hollywood adjacent as many have as used their WWE fame to get to Hollywood(The Rock, John Cena and Dave Bautista, who endorsed Harris and made fun of Trump on Jimmy Kimmel). A lot of the stereotypes come from the McMahons(who no longer own the company) but when you get to lower levels, it's actually quite a bit democratic among fans and many of the wrestlers.
i don't have any graphs to show, but I'm pretty sure that european soccer in europe is much more right-coded. Also, distinctly remember going to a rodeo in small New Mexico town and getting annoyed that the announcer wouldn't stop talking sh*t about Obama.
As other people said, a big reason for this is a disproportionate of the fandom is African-American and Hispanic and generally somewhat lower income - when Eddy Guerrero and Rey Jr. were main eventers in the mid-00's, Smackdown on UPN was at times, among the top rated shows among Hispanics.
Plus, there is also a healthy chunk of younger fans who are very liberal - for instance there was a Fuck ICE chant at an AEW (WWE competitor) show a couple of weeks ago. Hogan got openly booked in his last WWE appearance after appearing at the RNC convention. There are of course, MAGA wrestlers, but as long as they aren't super political about it, they can still get cheered. Like, The Undertaker is a guy in his 60s from Texas who ride motorcycles all the times - his politics are not a mystery, but he doesn't talk about it all that much and isn't openly racist like Hogan was.
I think the biggest truth that this hasn't changed much is despite how WWE and UFC are now owned by the same people, the companies act very different. UFC fighters and Dana White are open on the show about basically being MAGA and Trump is there every single week, while basically, WWE acts like politics is a thing that doesn't exist, despite Trump being a WWE HOFer, Linda McMahon being a Cabinet member, etc. Ironically, they were more political (Rock speaking at the RNC, McCain, Obama, and HIllary all doing video messages during the '08 primaries, the Smackdown Your Vote! program, etc.) when a time when politics was a less major thing in society.
Plus ironically, WWE has also been aiming at a higher dollar advertising for decades now and just recently have been successful at doing so, and those are now Democratic viewers.
An interesting thing and this might be a 'liberals read, conservatives watch TV' is basically almost all smart fans, including people I've known or interacted with on the Internet on message boards and then listening to various podcasts since the mid-to-late 90s are at most non-partisan centrists all the way to annoying Bluesky types. Even most prominent YT creators are less toxic than your median YTer talking about video games.
I don't know the age of the chart (presumably post-2002, due to "WWE" instead of "WWF"), but if it's 10+ years old, I would be curious as to how it's changed. I'd expect all the racing and combat sports to have moved to the right.
2008/2009 looking at some sources online (1). Here's a completely different poll from 2023 (2). UFC's drifted right slightly but the biggest change seems to be the WNBA, which is now split between conservative and liberal viewers.
I will +1 phil and Ciaran's responses -- it's not that Democrats became tennis fans, it's that the sort of person who is a tennis fan is turning into a Democrat.
I assume because educated upper middle class people used to be predominantly Republicans and now are predominantly Democrats.
Doctors used to overwhelmingly lean Republican and now are roughly 50:50 (with younger doctors now leaning strongly Democratic). Lawyers are ~70% Democrats now. So it's less that the demographics of tennis changed and more that tennis has always been an educated elite sport but educated elites moved from R to D.
there are city courts (usually near parks) in the `poor' places I've lived in the us. If you want to play on grass or sand then maybe you have to go to a club, but not for most us surfaces.
I'm a lifelong tennis fan and also a lifelong Democrat. I learned to play at the Y.
So one thing is that the WTA has many big names over the decades who are out lesbians (Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Daria Kasatkina). While the ATP doesn't, they do play many tournaments with the WTA, so the sport is coded as gay-friendly for the audience. Also, the fact that the WTA and ATP often play the same tournaments means that every tennis fan I know watches both. While it's separate, it's not as separate as the other gendered leagues come across. However, the involvement of Saudi Arabia lately is working against that image.
Navratilova is a Democrat, and it appears John McEnroe and Andy Roddick vote that way as well. They're commentators.
The biggest current American star is Coco Gauff, who is outspoken and liberal. The current American ATP roster mostly codes Republican though.
A) Be fans, but like with celebrities and politicians, don't develop parasocial relationships with athletes.
B) As far as I can, Republicans widely celebrated Alysa Liu winning gold even though she probably does not like any of them. It shouldn't be that difficult for Democrats to do likewise for the men's hockey team.
I don't know, I saw a lot of really at best backhanded praise and often quasi-racist takes on Liu from rightwing Twitter accounts.
Are rightwing Twitter accounts representative of Republicans in general?
Aren't most of them Indian engagement farmers, that somehow people fall for despite being bad at seeming American?
At this point, my prior is that any clickbait-inducing content I see on Twitter is from a foreign engagement farmer, unless I can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that they are American. If you want me to believe you're not a robot from India, then I'm gonna need your opinions on what dynasty trades I should be making to avoid coming dead last in fantasy baseball this year.
I think they’re just generally highly ideological weirdos, no matter what country they’re from
I think for a lot it is just a job.
These days? More than a decade ago.
Agreed
I don't know anymore. They seem fairly representative of Republican politicians though.
I think the gap is probably biggest on questions like this
This is a total misread of the Liu situation. MAGA are not typical figure skating fans so they were unaware of her very clear politics until it was too late and she had already won. They had just spent two weeks frothing at the mouth insisting that the Olympics should be totally apolitical so they backed themselves into a corner. Combine this with the fact that they had made Eileen Gu a massive villain so they set themselves up to say “see, we like this other pretty Asian woman.” GOP/Liu was literally a textbook definition of the exception proves the rule.
In a different comment on this thread, I outlined a lot more about MAGA behavior toward US athletes at the Olympics. It was truly an outrage and a disgrace.
Hot take: We shouldn't celebrate Eileen Gu
I find ringerism (as opposed to bona fide immigration) generally distasteful, but I have some sympathy for people like, I don't know, Miles Amine (American wrestler who changed to represent San Marino where he has some distant ancestry) who can't quite make a big country's team and so transfer allegiance to a smaller country where they can.
By contrast, intentionally selling out your home nation for money, as Gu has, is just gross.
Yeah, nobody is mad at the Americans and Canadians playing hockey for Italy because they aren't good enough to play for the former.
Hotter take: I'm hoping that, in a return of "sports diplomacy," Eileen Gu and Alysa Liu resolve the PRC/US conflict in a no-holds barred Jello wrestling match.
This seems like the least hot take ever. Am I in a bubble? I'd think this is an 80-20 issue.
https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/7063817/2026/02/23/eileen-gu-inside-the-mind/
Lukewarm take but I am in agreement. Here in China many claim them both anyway, just dont bring up why one of their families left.
i think liu's career is one of those ``only living in america would you ever think that could possibly work out'' kind of things.
I concur, but my Chinese colleagues would highly disagree.
It’s disturbing that Eileen Gu won’t talk about her citizenship situation.
Why? It seems odd to expect her to talk about it given it is probably mildly embarrassing.
Was her plan to continue to hang out in the US? Seems like she was expecting way too warm an ongoing reception.
That was certainly the plan. From what I can find she has not really ever 'lived' in China for more than a summer growing up.
It's sort of easy not to anyway. You check out her social media and I get that she's only 22, but even among 22-year-olds she's got to be in the top 10 most insufferable.
"I can't have this conversation again" - Tony Soprano
I agree, we shouldn’t!
I watched the biathlon and skeleton... Can't comment.
I don't know any MAGA, but right wing people on Substack are saying she's cute and fun and why should we care about her politics, she's not making a big deal about them.
And she didn’t laugh at other winning skaters. Just sayin'
I think there's a growing exhaustion with culture-war-of-the-day feeling really forced when there are significant issues on the table already.
With respect, this is just confirmation of my comment.
being around large numbers of people who share my views makes me oddly uncomfortable and part of the joy of attending sporting events is that it is not like that... (``i don't want to be part of any club that will have me as a member'' and all that)
A) NO. In my head, Hillary Rodham Clinton and I are BESTIES.
At least form a parasocial relationship with a politician who might like you back
I 𝘬𝘯𝘰𝘸 Hillary would love me.
I can’t celebrate a bunch of bros who so think it’s fine to laugh at the women’s team they don’t even feel the need to apologize. Nope. If it were my son and he didn’t publicly apologize, I’d melt his flippin’ medal down and give the money to a third-grade girls’ hockey team. You wear that thing around your neck, son, you represent the best of our country, not a bunch of crotch-scratching locker-room idiots.
I'm a libertarian; in future I'll be rooting against US hockey unless they're playing a shit hole like Saudi Arabia or Belarus...
The more i find out about liu's story, the crazier it sounds.
I was hoping we could inject politics into the sports arena, as we shouldn't have any part of American society that is an escape. If only we can figure out a way to have partisan grocery stores (yes, I know Whole Foods exists, but still).
I mean... this ship sailed years ago? Decades, even.
The government is literally regulating who can play women’s sports lol, that ship has sailed.
The ship sailed when people tried to inject men into women's sports, not when people objected to that.
Politics is about what the government does. It is not political for people to play sports with others who are willing to pay with them.
The fact that a lot of those people, the women, do not want men playing with them, is dispositive. Do you not understand Title IX? Do you know that's a law? Passed through the government?
The government regulates the existence of women's sports in the first place lol.
3rd wave was a mistake.
I mean maybe. It seems more that people have lost sight of the original point of all our civil rights laws and probably our government system as a whole. Like somewhere along the line people just got completely disconnected from the foundations all of this was built on and why it's actually good.
This friend speaks my mind.
Say what now?
Sports leagues are not supposed to be in the pocket of the government; they are, in principle, meant to operate independently of politics. Indeed, most international sporting federations will ban member nations that are subject to political interference in sports governance. I mean obviously the IOC isn't going to kill its own golden goose by banning the USA (much as we have, at times, deserved it), but that's hypocrisy, not principle. By the letter of the law, and the precedents set with regard to less wealthy nations, Trump's executive orders should have resulted in the USOPC being banned.
And that's true even if the federation would, acting on its own, come to a similar sports rule as the one the government is attempting to impose by legal fiat.
You cant actually be this incredulous. If you don't understand this topic well enough to know that Title IX exists, what it does, and why it was written into law then you obviously are not well informed enough to have a meaningful opinion on this topic.
I know exactly what Title IX is and does. It's an equal-funding mandate for men's and women's sports in federally-funded schools. It is not some kind of blank-check license to the US government to override the eligibility rules of sporting federations, and if it was, it would flagrantly violate their requirements on political neutrality.
If you care to replace your indignant spluttering with an actual coherent argument, I'll respond to it. More spluttering is just going to result in me blocking you, because this is a waste of my time.
What do you mean by sporting federations?
In the US, the majority of youth sports are direct functions of the government in the form of high school sports. The facilities, the equipment, the coaches, the governing authorities are all straight up government activities. They exist because there is legislation mandating them, they are paid for with tax dollars, and are indistinguishable as government activities from transportation departments, social welfare programs, or the public school system in which they reside.
The college level is slightly less directly a government function, but when you say federally funded schools you are pretty much saying all schools, and importantly many, many of those schools are actually again direct government entities in the form of state colleges and universities.
POLITICS!! POLITICS!!
If you think Whole Foods is Democrat-coded, wait ‘till I tell you about the founder.
Well, there's also Mamdani's public grocery store idea that has people all fired up.
Death to Communist grocery stores!
Seed to Table is a Southwest Florida institution (said derogatorily).
Is "Whole Foods" RFK jr coded?
I feel it is part of partisanship becoming stronger but also not making much ideological sense.
Cheetos now has an RFK branded product. They are good. I also now have measles.
ok that last sentence made me lol for real
These Cheetos are the same ones I bought in Europe. Just branded as have no artificial flavors or coloring. Sold in a white bag. It would be funny if they were RFK branded if not for all the evil and harms that man is causing.
Two months ago my kid turned 1 and I could finally get him the MMR vaccine. Huge relief. I hate how many times I've thought about measles over the past year.
I thought you were saying they literally had RFK Jr. on the bag, like in place of Chester Cheetah.
They kinda resemble one another
Can someone please tell me whether Whole Foods is MAHA or liberal coded before 9 am tomorrow? I need to go grocery shopping.
Depends on which aisle you are in.
I shop at WinCo, Kroger, and Trader Joe's like any normal person.
Whole Foods, owned by Amazon, is no longer anything coded.
True Libs shop at Bristol Farms or Gelsons or Mothers, the local farmers' market on Sunday mornings.
It kinda started that way in Austin as an origin story. Whether it’s clientele knew that I’m not sure.
The founder of Whole Foods is also an odd fellow in this regard.
...you forgot partisan food delivery. Or is all food delivery Woke? 😏
Kamala Harris backs Jasmine Crockett in bitter Texas Democratic Senate primary
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/02/27/kamala-harris-jasmine-crockett-texas-senate-00805189
It's like Democrats don't even want to 𝙘𝙤𝙢𝙥𝙚𝙩𝙚 in Texas.
Harris really could have built a reputation as a pragmatic center-left type that could denounce the worst identiarian impulses of the party and it would have been great politics for her.
Instead, she does this crap!
[That Ben, he's good people. I like Ben.]
Untold LEGIONS of progressive chronic non-voters in Texas are merely awaiting the right candidate to be nominated and will then surge to the polling places, Joseph! [/every progressive leaning site and Twitter account I've seen today posting about the polling showing Crockett leading Talarico]
PLAY THAT SAME SONG, LOUDER!!
I mean, the fact that Harris has a decent chance of being the 2028 presidential nominee means Democrats don't want to compete nationally either.
She had her chance. She lost. She's dead to me.
Not yet. Most real life people I know don't want her to run again. It's just the social justice warriors and chronically online peoplw who want her to run.
There are a lots of people who want to pretend Biden and company didn’t make any mistakes.
Are those the only people responding to polls?
There’s a strong Kamala Harris was a good candidate revisionist movement in the Democratic party.
I know. It's crazy
It means nothing of the sort. What it means, rather, is that (a) the people who know better are no longer running the show, and (b) many of the people who are running the show (primary voters) possess little or no specialized knowledge about general election competitiveness.
This is worse than a crime, this is a mistake. There’s no reason for Kamala Harris to get involved in a race her candidate will probably lose.
I can think of one reason
Most Dems I know seem to want Talarico to win the primary and win... I don't think Harris speaks for all Dems, especially those in TX.
I *know* Harris doesn’t speak for all Democrats. It’s still disappointing. She’s injecting herself into a situation where it’s not necessary, and where it likely will be counterproductive.
You must know some sensible Democrats. 🙂
We don't let the progressives and far left anarchists speak for all of us. I think too many people are over indexed to the social media popularity contests. There is a reason why serious groups in TX are stumping for Talarico and he is out fundraising Crockett
That does actually disappoint me. I think Talarico could run for president one day.
He can't.
I've already patriotically volunteered.
Hehe. You can run too! I ain't stopping you.
No no no, it doesn't work that way. You see, I patriotically volunteer, and then The People, in their gratitude for my act of selflessness, choose me by acclamation.
Sorry, I already pledged my vote to Vermin Supreme. I want a pony!
seems like a good test case of how good or bad her political instincts are, since most polls have had crockett ahead, but prediction markets favor talarico by a wide margin.
I hadn’t heard that about predictions markets. That gives me some hope. Not that they’re always correct, but a lot of the time they are.
It is genuinely hard to know what Dems would do differently if they were trying to lose the senate race.
I thought the leftie outrage over the men's response to the Trump call was really tone-deaf. These guys just won a gold medal, are slamming beers, and who knows what they heard or didn't hear on the phone. Maybe take a deep breath before knives out? Every NHL player I've seen interviewed about the women's teams have been extremely positive and complimentary. Letting Kash Patel in the locker room was dumb though, but I guess who is going to tell him to take a hike?
Even Brady Tkachuk (a MAGA-adjacent player) was pretty outraged that the White House used his likeness in a fake AI video they put out on Twitter after the game.
I think you also have to consider the gulf between a player who says they voted or would vote for Trump, and a Curt Schilling type who thinks Jan 6 was awesome. They aren't the same!
It’s that they didn’t think they needed to walk it back the next day. To say, yeah, we got caught up in the moment and that was pretty shitty. We’re really sorry. And even in the moment, how hard would it be to throw out a “nah, bruh, they should totally come with us” or “dude, that’s cold” You can be a bro and not be a douchebag.
There is no apology that would have ever sufficed. The response would just be “well then if you thought that was bad why are you going to the White House?” And if they don’t go to the White House “well then why don’t you denounce Trump on _____?” Once you admit you have something to apologize for (and to be clear they don’t), the cycle just gets started.
The era of apologizing to journalists or social media is over, everyone now recognizes it never works.
I don’t begrudge them going to the White House. I wouldn’t expect them to make a political statement. Anyway, I don’t condemn people for their political leanings. Sure, take the win, fellas. Have a blast.
I’ve said elsewhere I don’t even judge them for laughing in the moment, but I’m sorry you - and apparently a whole lot of SB guys - don’t see that it was a mistake worthy of a simple apology. Not talking some hair-shirt mea culpa, just a whoops sorry we didn’t see how that came across. Do you think that if the same thing happened but the joke had been about, say, Jordan Stolz - implying his achievement wasn’t as worthy as theirs - would that be cool? Do you see no basic poor sportsmanship here?
FWIW, my rabid professional-hockey-loving, Hughes-bros-adoring, team-managing crazy hockey mom friend was bummed out by them not just manning up and publicly owning their mistake.
PS Did you see SNL last night? You can watch the Hughes brothers acknowledge right there on the stage that what happened was in fact apology-worthy. And the women’s team acknowledging it was crappy AND that they’re still friends, nobody needs to be canceled. I love that they did that, but I don’t love that it took SNL to make them do it.
Yes I saw them on stage for the SNL monologue, just like I saw them in the stands during the women’s games, because I actually cared enough to watch both teams before the gold medal games. They’ve done way more to support the women than anyone disappointed they didn’t act out their own personal psychodrama with the president on speakerphone ever has. It doesn’t matter what apology would suit *you*, as soon as you let media and social media drag you into that tarpit, you will never escape.
They are not responsible for whatever mildly inappropriate joke the president makes. The actual women on the team seem to understand it, I’m not sure why so many other people don’t.
Also read this to see how good the men who took responsibility for their mistake come across (understandable, justifiable mistake but a mistake no less). They’re the guys women want to date. Grown ass men with intact egos. (gratitude to ML for the link)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-mens-hockey-players-regret-locker-room-laughter-trumps-joke-womens-rcna260825
I haven’t seen any social media on this. Someone sent me the video. That’s it. I was flippin’ thrilled about the game and then so disappointed. I expected them to say something afterward. Put it right to bed. When they didn’t and, just like you, blamed the internet instead of their own accidental tone-deafness, I was confused and crushed. And *that’s* when it became about them and not just about Trump.
And guys like you doubling down on the idea that it’s just a bunch of over sensitive feminazi snowflake liberals making a big hairy deal out of nothing, you’re the ones keeping it alive. Pro tip: Real men apologize when they screw up. Children insist it’s not my fault.
Btw, funny you bringing the women into this as if it bolsters your argument when they were not happy about it. Maybe you didn’t pay attention to that part. Have they forgiven and moved on? Yeah.
I think so. Does that mean the men didn’t do anything wrong? Yeah, I don’t think so.
I don't think they were being douchebags. If Obama called and said the same thing, I don't think we'd even be talking about this. But because Trump is a vile sex pest who thinks very little of women, we are applying a different filter. Also, maybe they were a little starstruck and couldn't rapidly jump into SJW mode with the president and his goon right there?
I think the policing of the team’s behavior is off-putting to the median American. Especially since the players themselves have said nothing but positive things about the women's team, and it detracts from what was truly a fantastic accomplishment.
If you accidentally insult a friend, you don’t apologize? You be like “stop policing my behavior?” I think you ought to check your lens.
PS Obama wouldn’t have said it so your counterfactual is functionally meaningless. Anyway, if he HAD said it, you best believe he’d have apologized. Class act, that man.
Ooh, look what ML posted! https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-mens-hockey-players-regret-locker-room-laughter-trumps-joke-womens-rcna260825
This is so great, not just because I love that some of them did apologize and acknowledge (makes my heart so happy), but because now y’all can see what I mean: how a real grown up man can take responsibility for something he did even when he didn’t mean to do it. I respect this so much. Bravo, guys! (Withholding bravos from the guys who still refuse, tho.:)
Edit Were you looking for something like this? https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/us-mens-hockey-players-regret-locker-room-laughter-trumps-joke-womens-rcna260825
What would they walk back and who would walk it back? What exactly did any player say that they should unsay?
Woot! Yes! Thank you! I asked some folks before to tell me if I’d missed something. This makes me so happy. Good on them.
Let's not forget the most shocking part - if you had to guess a month ago who in the Trump administration would leave his post to slam some beers in Milan with the boys, you would have definitely said Hegseth, right?
Kash Patel is the biggest poseur in the administration (except for maybe Noem).
His slackerness does make the FBI less threatening than it could be. "Mostly harmless" if you will.
Ever since someone said he was Tom Haverford, I can't get it out of my head. I didn't find him a believable character in the show, but now he's out there in real life!
Uncancel Aziz Ansari! Start filming!
Season 1 and 2 certainly... Not after the clothing store arc.
For hockey? Patel hands down. He’s basically Canadian.
You haven't seen hockey until you've watched Hockey Night In Punjabi.
Exactly, maybe just because I know a ton of South Asian ethnicity guys from Toronto he was the guy I was least surprised to see.
Great post, Halina. I do think it omits some key context of why liberals were genuinely annoyed and even surprised at the Trump/Patel stuff even if they shouldn’t have been given the data.
Online MAGA discourse throughout the Olympics was almost maniacally focused on highlighting left-coded political rhetoric from individual athletes and attempting to destroy them by labelling them anti-American traitors, demanding they be “fired” from the Olympic team, and — because MAGA is very stupid — insisting that their non-taxpayer-funded flights home be cancelled and the athletes stranded so precious MAGA tax dollars wouldn’t have to “support” them.
These online types universally rooted for these athletes to lose their events, celebrated when they underperformed, and in several cases explicitly wished these athletes would be severely injured or even killed in the more dangerous events.
The supposed “principle” at stake here was that Olympic athletes should be strictly 100% neutral in their statements and actions while representing the country abroad.
Given the prior hypocrisy of the “shut up and sing” and “shut up and dribble” movements, we knew this was bullshit. But seeing the total MAGA revelry in this nasty, fuck you display after all that was legitimately infuriating and shocking in a way that goes far beyond unawareness of NHL demographics.
As ever, the right-wing view of free speech is that their speech is special and protected and can never even be criticized, much less censored, and also, simultaneously, that it is illegal to disagree with them.
That's their view of everything, not just free speech. Just like how they blamed Alex Pretti's death on Pretti for carrying a gun. We get to bear arms and you don't.
Arch-conservatism at its root opposes the whole concept of the rule of law or human rights. What is right is derived from authority, not from principles, and we owe loyalty to our community/people/race/volk/whatever, not to pieces of paper. What matters is us vs. them - we get to win, they get to lose, and the end justifies the means.
As far as I can tell, 95% of UFC fighters are faaaar right. Like, wannabe/future brownshirts levels of far right. They either love Trump or Bolsonaro, depending on which country they're from. (Or Putin I guess).
Fanbase is actually a bit more left-leaning than you'd think though
How much you like violence seems to be a pretty big dividing line between right and left these days, probably a big reason for the gender gap even…
I would say "how much you accept that violence exists, and respect it". I find that a lot of liberal/progressives simply can't fathom it and find the idea of ever being in a physical confrontation nauseating and immoral on its face.
You’re not merely accepting that violence exists when you choose to participate in it. I mean fighting sports are fine because everyone’s consenting. But violence isn’t something that “exists” out there in the ether like cancer; it’s completely manmade. And certainly I think that someone starting violence against someone else who is non-consenting, innocent, and weaker is the most immoral thing a person could do.
So there's no violence between animals?
You are proving the point. Violence is an innate part of life. Hawk needs food; hawk kills mouse. Bear needs food; bear attacks elk; elk wants to live; elk gores bear. Bear wants sex; bear fights other bear for mating rights. Chimps need territory; they kill other chimps. Chimps don't like their leader; leader is killed and eaten. Hairless apes don't like their leader; leader dies during a hunt, killed by 3 mysterious spear wounds.
In society, especially modern society, it's controlled. Shackled. Outsourced. Violence has rules, enforced by the rest of society. Man puts a tent on your lawn; man is arrested if he doesn't leave; force-violence-is used if the man resists. Neighbor's dog keeps shitting on your lawn and charging at you when you're walking out your door; neighbor receives citation for loose and/or aggressive dog; if neighbor refuses to abide by judge's dictates, neighbor goes to jail. Man attacks me with a knife; I shoot him in the chest.
The reason why so many of us find you painfully obtuse is your obsession with not seeing this. You post about how great Singapore is, ignoring how corporal and capital punishment-violence-enforce their social harmony. You have repeatedly defended the CCP, which engages in literal genocide against the Uyghurs and threatens the sovereignty of Taiwan, because all of the violence happens where Nikuruga isn't forced to see it. You excuse Hamas and judge Israel, because despite no understanding of violence or war, you still have the fucking audacity to evaluate the war based on standards you have pulled, fresh and steaming, out of your ass. That's why you get so much heat in these comments.
Sure, but that doesn't explain why MLB is so right-leaning. Baseball's a pretty soft sport
They’re mostly all white suburban men who didn’t go to college. It’s be surprising if they were democrats.
Baseball is spending long hours with just the boys.
It’s still a sport where if you show someone up you might get drilled with a 100mph fastball to the ear hole. Not exactly chess.
In fairness the far left is a fan of violence, but that's just horseshoe theory, isn't it?
There's a model of violence scaling I keep meaning to write about. What it amounts to is most people have a level of coercion/violence they are comfortable working at. Things like social pressures, adrenaline, and moral superiority can push someone into a higher level, but that shift isn't stable. The far left tends to shift up when they feel empowered, but shift back the moment they start losing and the adrenaline starts to subside. Which, to all of us watching, looks more or less like DARVO.
Some of them, I think it’s more a correlation though. You’re likely to find pacifists like Quakers very overrepresented on the far-left. There are also pacifists on the right like the Amish but they are rarer.
I don't want the world to descend into a dog-eat-dog dystopia, but if I knew I was in the top 0.01 percentile of ability to beat people up, I can see how that could change my opinion. It's just rational self-interest.
This just looks to me like "what % of this league's players are Black?"
I'd be interested to see the breakdown on the White minority in the NFL vs the NBA. My guess is that white NBA players are woker than white NFL players but I could be totally wrong.
Also where do Latino MLB players or Slavic NHL players come down on things?
Professional athletes are probably the most Republican group of Black voters in America. Almost certain that Anthony Edwards would've been an Obama-Trump voter if he was old enough to vote in 2012.
They're still quite Dem though.
But yes, they are people whose wealth far exceeds their education (this is a huge Trump group), and by definition the ones in the surveyed leagues other than WNBA are men. Compared to their non-pro athlete brothers or cousins they are probably more Republican
Most American NBA players attend college because that's the main talent development league. But it would not be surprising to learn they're different than other college students due to their dream job not requiring a degree.
I think Black NFL players are probably to the right of Black NBA players.
I also think upwards of 20% of Black cops vote R.
Which is still an insane statement when you pull the lens outward.
Black cops vote like gay men
I wonder how gay Black cops vote. Maybe 90/10? And what is the life of that 10% guy like?
He spends a lot of time playing Kwazy Kupcakes.
Don't think Holt was a Republican.
Having met both gay cops and black cops, probably Republican.
Black cops have to deal with criminals all day. I get it.
*𝘳𝘢𝘪𝘴𝘦𝘥 𝘦𝘺𝘦𝘣𝘳𝘰𝘸*
Yeah the NFL breakdown is kinda wild when you realize how Black the league is
Also I got to see Ant on Tuesday. It was awesome. He had some Kobe-esque moved.
And how ‘bout the acting chops he showed off in those Merry Sprite-mas commercials!
His acting in that Adam Sandler movie was hilarious.
Asking Slavs about politics can be rather risky especially if they are ex-Yugoslavs.
Alexander Ovechkin is openly pro-Putin 🤷
He is a Russian with family in Russia, I don't think he has a huge amount of choice.
A lot of Russians cited Russian law when not participating in Pride night. These guys are even higher profile back home then they are here, they have legitimate concerns about never getting sideways with a regime that routinely openly murders people inside and outside of the country
He's more outspoken in his pro-Putinism than other Russian NHL-ers though. The main mitigating fact about Ovechkin isn't that he has family in Russia (they all do), it's the fact that on any topic outside of hockey he's kind of a dope.
If you're a famous national sports hero, you have more room to get away with stuff than a normal person does. See e.g. https://www.reddit.com/r/hockey/comments/t4udj9/panarin_stood_up_never_forget/. Panarin did get threatened by the regime, but ultimately nothing happened to him.
Fair
Agreed. Now, what’s Roy Jones, Jr.’s excuse?
Pretty sure that most Slavic Americans are Republicans. Which is a shame considering most of them are funny as hell, too. I love the Russian sense of humor
Latino MLB players are difficult to gauge because a lot of them aren’t citizens and beyond that, few really get into politics. Mariano Rivera’s really conservative and outspoken about it, but there aren’t many more beyond that. If I had to guess, most Puerto Ricans are Democrats, most Cubans, Dominicans, and Venezuelans are Republicans, and Mexicans/Central Americans fall somewhere in the middle.
As a Yankee fan, I think Rivera is mostly conservative because he is a hardcore Christian socially and Trump awarded him the Presidential medal of freedom. Plus apparently they've been friends since the 90s.
Why so many conservative Christians seem to have no issue with people they personally know who break all the rules of their religion, vs people they don't even know, I honestly don't know... But it does track what I've seen anecdotally from a number of people in minority groups (including my own family), if it wasn't for sometimes the blatant inequality and racism more POC would probably vote Republican. POC communities are more religious on average than white people.
Personalism is a very powerful political force.
For what it’s worth, I’m pretty sure that Rod Carew (the other Panamanian Hall of Famer) is a Democrat, so it probably cancels out in the aggregate
I would have quibbled with you about Dominicans a few years ago, but they flipped bigly in 2024. No clue where they're coming down now.
I knew about Mariano Rivera. I think you're right that in general, many either aren't citizens, or are just not very political.
Basically, most jocks are conservative. It doesn't matter if they're white, black, or Latino, what sport they play, or what country they come from.
Now, in America, most black people are Democrats even if they are conservative, for reasons that I think are easily understandable. But if you listen to enough interviews of black NBA players, it becomes pretty clear that they tend to be attitudinally pretty conservative about a lot of issues - about gender, about LGBT issues, about when physical violence is acceptable, about openness to new cultural experiences, about looking out for the weak and unfortunate, or about whether we should be optimistic or pessimistic about being able to cooperate with strangers who are different from us. This is simply how the modal jock thinks in every society and culture.
I do think NBA players are noticeably less conservative than black NFL players, which I would theorize is because the former are more individually famous and have more free time, and thus hobnob a lot more with celebrities and other cosmopolitan people.
NFL also draws more from the South while the NBA draws from cities across the country.
Since it looks like we won't get a Saturday thread, here is Matt's take from this morning: https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/2027729412116947156
"War with Iran, a thoughtful and substantive take
I hope that it all works out. Sincerely. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad and so is nuclear proliferation.
Years ago, there was a deal in place — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had a lot of downsides from the standpoint of Iran’s regional adversaries but which did a good job of ensuring a non-nuclear Iran. A set of hawks in the United States did not like JCPOA, criticized it at the time, worked to undermine its implementation, and then in Trump’s first term tore it up in a way that made renewed diplomacy under Biden essentially impossible.
During these debates, the pro-JCPOA side always maintained that the other option was war.
The opponents could have said, “that’s true, the likely alternative to JCPOA is war.” That would have been an interesting debate. But they did not say that. In fact, they loudly denied it. They would get extremely angry if you suggested their real alternative was not a better deal but war. I witnessed these arguments. I participated in them. They were vicious and they continued for years.
War is an inherently uncertain thing. Civilian outsiders are not privy to everything that is going on. The known unknowns are everywhere. Political leaders are asking their citizens to trust them, to trust that they are acting on good information and using sound judgment.
In this case, the arc of the past decade+ of arguing about Iran and JCPOA is either that the hawks have displayed terrible judgment about the real alternatives to JCPOA or else that they have been lying to us all along and trying to manipulate the situation to this end. Most likely, it is some of both.
I hope that it all works out. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad. Nuclear proliferation is bad. But war is an uncertain enterprise and I am not comfortable being led into war by a group of people who specifically assured us — over a period of over ten years — that their approach to Iran was not going to lead to lead to war when their opponents on the other side saw this much more clearly.
In general, I wish that people on both the right- and left-wing sides of debates about the Middle East paid more genuine attention to global humanitarian issues. We donate 10% of our Slow Boring revenue to GiveWell’s curated list of highly effective global public health charities and lead an annual Give Directly fundraiser that drives hundreds of thousands of dollars to desperately poor people in Africa. It is very possible to do things to help people in the world that do not involve military force or trying to tackle the least-tractable geopolitical conflicts in the world.
It would be nice to see American foreign policy made by people with integrity and a solid track record of accurate statements and epistemic humility. We do not have that and I fear for the worst, but hope it will work out despite the obvious problems."
First, is this war?
Second, I think the plan of the hawks was always regime collapse through a combination of sanctions, internal division, and targeted military action.
He failed to name names.
Do you wonder why?
I think matt's take it good, and much better than what most left of center peeps are saying right now.
On a related topic (since we might not get a thread or a mailbag anytime soon), here is an amusing hypothetical:
If you were a long serving Iranian foreign minister and you wanted to engineer regime change in your own country, how would you have gone about doing that?
Provide my CIA handler the address for the Ayatollah's residence.
"...my CIA handler..."
Sure. CIA.
Ha, yeah probably Mossad.
Some people enjoy a good fight to the death and feel like their lives are missing something without one. It goes deep into the lizard brain.
Kind of an unfortunate Saturday to not have a Saturday thread.
Yeah, I was out all afternoon and when I got home I thought, "Oh boy, let's check the Saturday thread!"
My views probably align with the median reader of slow boring (as far as I can tell) and I've never been more cynical about the state of USA affairs than I am under Trump 47. The amount of genuinely disturbing violation of rights and bold embrace of cruelty and abuse of power has me really down. All of that is why it was extra disappointing to me when it seemed like the most visceral reaction I've seen in media/social media - particularly by the run-of-the-mill feminist influencer circle, was about the "failure of the men in the US men's hockey room to push back against the sexism of Trump and their teammates".
With everything else going on - it was pretty appalling to me that this topic is what seemed to be getting more engagement than anything else, especially given what was being claimed. The fact that some of the men in the room supposedly weren't OK with the joke but "allowing it to happen is what perpetuates sexism". Awkwardly laughing at something that makes you uncomfortable is literally the most natural human reaction to that situation when you aren't really the center of attention. What do these feminist influencers expect men in that situation to do? Start an argument with the president in front of the entire locker room?
I mean, you're right, but in defense of the feminists who got upset about this, Trump has a long and depressing history of hideously sexist words and actions. So I understand that people got upset, it's not that this incident in and of itself is a big deal, it's just another brick in the fugly wall of Everything Trump Touches Turns to Shit. (Personally, I was much more upset about Trump saying, "Quiet, piggy" to a female reporter who asked him a question he didn't like.)
I doubt very much a typical NHL locker room is very conservative. Canadians make up the largest percentage of NHL players and they hold much more moderate political positions given where they come from. There are also a lot of European players hailing from countries with a much more liberal political cultures.
Canadian players do love playing in Florida though. The tax advantages they enjoy by living and playing in Florida are considerable. Four of the last six Stanley Cup winning teams are from Florida and a chock-full of Canadians.
What percent of White Canadian men are Conservative Party voters? It must be near 50% if not a bit over, even if you don't account for any specific traits about hockey players in either direction.
I doubt it would be that high. Although Canadian players often come from rural or suburban areas you will likely get a mix of political backgrounds. Ontario is the largest province and it has always had a much more moderate political culture historically.
https://leger360.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Leger-CAN_voting_intentions_April_16th_National_Postmedia-2.pdf
This is a pre-election poll that was close to the final result.
The Conservative Party earned 39% among all 18-34s and 40% among men. They don't ask about race, but based on this, I'd think 45%+ among White men 18-34.
Certainly the Canadian hockey players would be unlikely to be a left-wing force, except compared to the heavily right-wing American hockey players.
By the way, the Conservatives earned 44% last election in Ontario, so among White men in Ontario they were probably at a majority.
Leger is a good pollster.
The Conservatives did well among young men in the last election, but that was a bit of an outlier historically. The federal Conservative leader deliberately ran a populist campaign that targeted young men of all racial backgrounds. However, normally, the Conservative party federally does not do as well with that age cohort.
The Ontario example is slightly misleading as the Ontario Liberal Party (the Tories main rival) has been plagued recently by poor leadership. The Ontario Conservative leader Doug Ford (brother of the late Toronto mayor Rob Ford) has a folksy type of populism that isn't race specific that works well in a large diverse province like Ontario.
Doug Ford has won three elections in a row in Ontario and by vibes alone he seems the most Trumpy figure imaginable.
Ford is a populist but he does not engage in the type of racially divisive rhetoric the way Trump does. Ontario is so ethically diverse doing so would be political suicide.
He is regularly accused of racism.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ofl-doug-ford-racist-comments-203200994.html
https://ici.radio-canada.ca/rci/en/news/2173791/doug-ford-says-he-treats-first-nations-like-gold-but-they-keep-coming-hat-in-hand
He is not regularly accused of racism. The OFL thinks everyone is racist. The First Nations comment is more complex that just claiming it was racist
Eh I think once you get out of the cities the attitude is extremely libertarian. In the states my Canadian friends are extremely socially liberal but they also all own guns. It’s like the mountain west. Temperamentally small c conservative.
There are libertarian aspects to the political culture in BC and Alberta. But as you move east that rapidly decreases even in rural areas.
Most Canadian NHL players left home at age 16 or 17 to play junior hockey, mostly in small towns in rural areas. The culture in those locker rooms is prehistoric, or at least 1950's-esque, very conformist and hierarchical, still lots of hazing, etc., and that culture informs the culture of the entire NHL. Not the aspect of Canadian culture that I'm most proud of.
Yes, that is the culture. But that does not necessarily translate into right wing politics. Most NHL players could care less about politics.
You can be conservative without caring about politics. A very large number of 25-year-olds don't care about politics. They still have conservative or liberal attitudes, and you can usually tell where they'll end up on the political spectrum if/when they ever become politically engaged (as many though not all will when they get older).
Sure but the claim was a lot of NHL locker rooms are very conservative politically. But there isn't any evidence to make that claim.
Aaargh, this is terrible journalism on Halina's part. In a piece that has as its headline and thesis that NHL players are Republican citing this fact in support is just terrible.
"When the N.H.L. wanted to recognize Pride Month to try and broaden its fan base, Pride jerseys became Pride tape due to player complaints"
The players who complained were three Canadians and four Russians.
Kash Patel looks like a Make a Wish Foundation winner.
If only he had some terrible disease besides Headuptrumpsassinoma.
They’re really going after Anthropic for not doing mass surveillance and fully autonomous killer robots: https://x.com/josephpolitano/status/2027514486345609557
As anyone could’ve predicted, Republican-controlled US government is the biggest threat to AI alignment. All the technical debates about alignment are totally useless if the government can just force you to make it evil—the main focus of AI alignment should be how to keep Republicans out of power (which could mean defeating them in elections, as long as Democrats are more benevolent, or weakening the power of the US government generally). Unfortunately they still have a lot of power, at least financially. AI labs are now kind of in a race to develop their own financially sustainable models (or benevolent AGI that just takes over) the government uses its financial power to force them to make malevolent AGI. Interesting times ahead but it seems the only way through is full-speed ahead…
One of my biggest critiques of effective altruists is I think they’re politically naive. Most supported Harris, but I got the sense they didn’t see beating Trump in 2024 as being *that* big of a deal, certainly not a major cause area.
I hope they learned their lesson.
I support “keep republicans out of power” as the prime “make paper clips” directive of all the AIs. Would even give them Skynet/Wargames levels of military authorization for such an important goal
Related, even though this is quite old now, I always enjoyed looking at this graphic for sports fans:
https://i.insider.com/514789beeab8ea4e69000006?width=800&format=jpeg&auto=webp
Most of it made sense to me, but the one that really surprised me at the time was WWE--although perhaps nowadays Jesse Ewiak would enlighten us on why that's not surprising.
Remember one of the major villains in WWE is Vince McMahon himself, representing corporate bosses everywhere. There at least was an anti-authoritarian streak to the plot of WWE. I say this mostly because of this video: https://youtu.be/rnvSs3HEz2o - as a high voter turnout person I haven't watched very much WWE.
As a WWE fan, I might also be able to enlighten you. It's way more international now, with many wrestlers from europe, mexico, canada and japan so that changes the Hulk Hogan type of WWE. It should also be said that Jesse Ventura existed and while not a Democrat, always struck me as quite progressive(he got kicked out of the WWF for trying to unionize the wrestlers and it was Hulk Hogan who ratted him out to management). The current World Champion(C.M. Punk) himself is quite progressive. Jon Stewart is a big WWE fan. It has always had a somewhat progressive fanbase(at least as a large minority to somewhat smaller majority) because it's also more entertainment/hollywood adjacent as many have as used their WWE fame to get to Hollywood(The Rock, John Cena and Dave Bautista, who endorsed Harris and made fun of Trump on Jimmy Kimmel). A lot of the stereotypes come from the McMahons(who no longer own the company) but when you get to lower levels, it's actually quite a bit democratic among fans and many of the wrestlers.
Also, JVL of The Bulwark is a big fan of wrestling.
ezra klein, too, afaict
Thanks. The first thing I thought of when I saw it is perhaps a bit of a non-conformist flair.
This comment better be a pun
WOOOOOOOOOOOOOI!
i don't have any graphs to show, but I'm pretty sure that european soccer in europe is much more right-coded. Also, distinctly remember going to a rodeo in small New Mexico town and getting annoyed that the announcer wouldn't stop talking sh*t about Obama.
"...the announcer wouldn't stop talking sh*t about Obama"
You mean when Obama was in office? Or more recently?
this was near the end of his second term
Oh, then he was fair game, no?
it was the first and only time in my life i had heard an mc talking shit about a politician at a sporting event.
Yes, well. It's a brave new world.
Neat! I would not have guessed that golf is more republican than NASCAR or drag racing.
It probably isn't anymore.
Still true as of 2023 apparently (although there is a weird split between PGA and LIV).
I'm also not alone - NASCAR is the sport by far over-estimated as conservative.
And look at the change in WNBA fans between 2007 and 2023 - WNBA is now a 50/50 split! The Caitlin Clark effect?
https://www.sportico.com/leagues/golf/2023/harris-sportico-poll-politics-fan-bases-liv-pga-1234760109/
Trump's a big golfer.
As other people said, a big reason for this is a disproportionate of the fandom is African-American and Hispanic and generally somewhat lower income - when Eddy Guerrero and Rey Jr. were main eventers in the mid-00's, Smackdown on UPN was at times, among the top rated shows among Hispanics.
Plus, there is also a healthy chunk of younger fans who are very liberal - for instance there was a Fuck ICE chant at an AEW (WWE competitor) show a couple of weeks ago. Hogan got openly booked in his last WWE appearance after appearing at the RNC convention. There are of course, MAGA wrestlers, but as long as they aren't super political about it, they can still get cheered. Like, The Undertaker is a guy in his 60s from Texas who ride motorcycles all the times - his politics are not a mystery, but he doesn't talk about it all that much and isn't openly racist like Hogan was.
I think the biggest truth that this hasn't changed much is despite how WWE and UFC are now owned by the same people, the companies act very different. UFC fighters and Dana White are open on the show about basically being MAGA and Trump is there every single week, while basically, WWE acts like politics is a thing that doesn't exist, despite Trump being a WWE HOFer, Linda McMahon being a Cabinet member, etc. Ironically, they were more political (Rock speaking at the RNC, McCain, Obama, and HIllary all doing video messages during the '08 primaries, the Smackdown Your Vote! program, etc.) when a time when politics was a less major thing in society.
Plus ironically, WWE has also been aiming at a higher dollar advertising for decades now and just recently have been successful at doing so, and those are now Democratic viewers.
An interesting thing and this might be a 'liberals read, conservatives watch TV' is basically almost all smart fans, including people I've known or interacted with on the Internet on message boards and then listening to various podcasts since the mid-to-late 90s are at most non-partisan centrists all the way to annoying Bluesky types. Even most prominent YT creators are less toxic than your median YTer talking about video games.
I don't know the age of the chart (presumably post-2002, due to "WWE" instead of "WWF"), but if it's 10+ years old, I would be curious as to how it's changed. I'd expect all the racing and combat sports to have moved to the right.
2008/2009 looking at some sources online (1). Here's a completely different poll from 2023 (2). UFC's drifted right slightly but the biggest change seems to be the WNBA, which is now split between conservative and liberal viewers.
1) https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2010/04/07/political_leani/
2) https://www.sportico.com/leagues/golf/2023/harris-sportico-poll-politics-fan-bases-liv-pga-1234760109/
I believe it's from around 2012
How is tennis Democrat-coded? It and golf are the old-money, country club sports.
I have never met a tennis fan who did not attend college. That alone probably explains 90 percent of it.
I will +1 phil and Ciaran's responses -- it's not that Democrats became tennis fans, it's that the sort of person who is a tennis fan is turning into a Democrat.
I assume because educated upper middle class people used to be predominantly Republicans and now are predominantly Democrats.
Doctors used to overwhelmingly lean Republican and now are roughly 50:50 (with younger doctors now leaning strongly Democratic). Lawyers are ~70% Democrats now. So it's less that the demographics of tennis changed and more that tennis has always been an educated elite sport but educated elites moved from R to D.
Agree with most of you points, but want to point out that lawyers have been majority Democratic supportive for a long, long time.
there are city courts (usually near parks) in the `poor' places I've lived in the us. If you want to play on grass or sand then maybe you have to go to a club, but not for most us surfaces.
As far as I know he hasn’t made any public political statement, but Tommy Paul just screams MAGA
I'm a lifelong tennis fan and also a lifelong Democrat. I learned to play at the Y.
So one thing is that the WTA has many big names over the decades who are out lesbians (Billie Jean King, Martina Navratilova, Daria Kasatkina). While the ATP doesn't, they do play many tournaments with the WTA, so the sport is coded as gay-friendly for the audience. Also, the fact that the WTA and ATP often play the same tournaments means that every tennis fan I know watches both. While it's separate, it's not as separate as the other gendered leagues come across. However, the involvement of Saudi Arabia lately is working against that image.
Navratilova is a Democrat, and it appears John McEnroe and Andy Roddick vote that way as well. They're commentators.
The biggest current American star is Coco Gauff, who is outspoken and liberal. The current American ATP roster mostly codes Republican though.