Pride in America has fallen to staggeringly low levels among Democrats, who lash out at everything including the gold-winning USA hockey team because politics has become their one and only obsession. For me at least, there has to be another way.
On Sunday, the US men’s hockey team won the Olympic gold medal for the first time in 46 years in a thrilling overtime match that at least in principle should’ve filled the average American with pride. Personally, I am not much of a hockey fan, nor much of an Olympics fan to be honest, but I still found myself following the game because these moments simply don’t happen every day and in a highly polarized country where most days are steeped in outrage, controversy, or a more generalized malaise, we need all of the moments we can get and all the reasons we can find to rise above it. Sadly, we saw evidence of precisely why a day earlier. Almost exactly 25 hours before the game began, the progressive website, The Huffington Post dutifully and dreadfully informed its readers, “There’s A Name For The Discomfort You’re Feeling Watching The Olympics Right Now. If waving the American flag or chanting ‘USA!’ turns you off right now, you’re not alone.” According to Monica Torres, “whiplash between pride for United States competitors and national shame for the federal government is common. Even U.S. Olympians competing in the 2026 Milan-Cortina Games in Italy feel ambivalent about representing the stars and stripes.” So common, in fact, that the Post recruited therapists to help understand the scope of the “cognitive dissonance of rooting for U.S. sports while hating the U.S. government.” Los Angeles-based licensed clinical social worker Aimee Monterrosa claimed “it continues to be one of the main topics I hold space for in therapy,” “As we continue to witness national and global atrocities in real time…it can trigger feelings of guilt, despair, shame, anger.” Perhaps needless to say, though “these feelings are common, you shouldn’t ignore them.” “Cognitive dissonance isn’t just ‘having mixed feelings,’” explained Tanisha Ranger, a Nevada-based clinical psychologist. “It’s a psychological state that happens when someone holds two conflicting beliefs or values at the same time, or they are engaging in behaviors that contradict their values.” “Our brains don’t like inconsistency, so it searches for ways to reduce that tension. Oftentimes, not [in] the healthiest of ways,” she added.
According to Dr. Ranger and The Huffington Post this cognitive dissonance can result in both physical and mental symptoms including an “internal war of words.” Such horrors can include worrying why you want your team to win when you are angry about the state of the country, qualifying why you are rooting for them in the first place, or even turning off the game “right after a big moment because it suddenly feels all too complicated to keep rooting.” Dr. Ranger described this as typical, a “weird mix of excitement and discomfort at the same time” that might feel like “a tightening in your chest or stomach when you realize you’re cheering and cringing simultaneously.” The tightness can also extend to the neck, shoulder, and jaw, or the dissonance might manifest in other symptoms such as digestive issues and trouble sleeping. Overall, “The degree to which you feel shame and guilt right now for cheering U.S. Olympians might also depend on how much cognitive dissonance you have between the stated values of being American –– freedom, revolutionary spirit, opportunity for all –– versus how our government has actually acted in the hundreds of years since the U.S. was formed, said Lauren Appio, a psychologist and executive coach. That’s why some people might not experience cognitive dissonance at all because what the U.S. government is doing to its citizens is not new for them. For these people, ‘They have already been exposed to the difference between what America claims to be versus what it is,’ Appio said” as if the gap between the ideal and the reality is a new discovery for some people, especially those who believe that the US was founded on racism and sexism in the first place, but that’s a topic for another time. For now, the Post concluded by providing coping strategies, truly insightful ones like “don’t forget to breathe” and remember “we are all just trying to take things one day at a time while navigating too many uncertainties.” Otherwise, believe it or not, “You can hold more than one truth at the same time,” Dr. Ranger explained. “You can admire the discipline and sacrifice of the athletes, you can strongly disagree with government policy, [and] you can feel both pride and disgust without needing to collapse that into one ‘correct’ feeling.”
While The Huffington Post would like to pretend this phenomena is somehow unique to the Trump Era, polling by Gallup appears to indicate that Democrats have been fair weather friends with the United States for more than the past two decades, proud of their country when a Democrat is in charge, not so much when a Republican is. Last year, Gallup released their annual survey with the headline finding that pride in the country had fallen to the lowest level ever recorded, but this was almost exclusively driven by pride among Democrats plunging from over 60% to 36% after President Donald Trump returned to office. Somehow, they managed to be proud with a President whose own Justice Department ruled him unfit to stand trial, who presided over an ignominious defeat in Afghanistan, the start of two global wars, and the worst inflation in decades, but suddenly changed their tune when the American people voted against their express wishes and decided the best way to respond was to hold a collective temper tantrum. Further, this overall trend has remained the case since shortly after 9-11. In the second half of the George W. Bush Administration, Democrat pride fell from 88% to barely 74%, only to launch back upwards when President Obama took office, plummet to 44% during the first Trump Administration then rebound to 62% during the reign of President Joe Biden. In comparison, Republicans have remained much more stable in their American pride, existing in a relatively narrow range between a peak of 92% shortly after 9-11 to a low of 84% during the Biden Administration. To account for some of the overall decline in Democrat pride, Gallup also found that “Younger Generations Less Proud Than Older Americans. There are clear generational differences in American pride, with each new generation significantly less likely than the previous one to say they are extremely or very proud to be an American,” suggesting that using our educational system as a vehicle for indoctrination is having the desired effect.
Pew Research added a little more context based on their own surveys around the world. According to their findings, “Some Americans say they don’t feel proud of the U.S., including many who say they were previously proud of it but no longer are. In only a handful of other surveyed nations – including the United Kingdom, Spain and Nigeria – do people express as much or more negativity as Americans do on this question.” They quoted two men, one who claimed there’s “nothing to be proud of currently” and another who attributed that directly to President Trump, saying “I used to be very proud of the United States, but since the reelection of Donald Trump I’m not proud of the United States at all.” As they summarized it, “many Democrats explicitly tie their lack of pride in the U.S. to the current administration and its policies. Democrats and independents who lean toward the Democratic Party are four times as likely as Republicans and those who lean Republican to say something negative (32% vs. 8%).” At least a part of this might be due to another finding, that only 3% of Americans mention something in our history that makes them proud of their country compared to 37% of Greeks, 22% of French, 21% of Hungarians, and 20% of Poles. “Among the Americans who do mention history as a source of pride, more mention the nation’s founding – including the Founding Fathers, the writing of the country’s founding documents or the U.S. gaining independence – than any other historical event or period. Fewer mention things like the abolition of slavery, women’s suffrage, World War II or the Marshall Plan. Republicans are also more likely than Democrats to mention the nation’s founding as a source of pride.” As one man noted, the Founding era inspires pride in “ingenuity, the way our Founding Fathers tried to think of future generations” while another noted his pride that “our Founding Fathers set [the U.S.] up almost 250 years ago.” A few contrasted past and present, “I am proud of our history and the ideals upon which we are founded … I am saddened by the ugly turn we have taken of late, and what it has done to innocents around the world, those most vulnerable here, and our reputation” or “the ideals that our country was founded on and has stood for – equality, liberty, freedom of religion, freedom of expression, freedom of the press … I worry lately that so much of this is being erased, forgotten, and replaced with things that I am not proud of.”
Sadly, we saw evidence of what we may call the progressive pride failure immediately after the game, when the presence of FBI Director Kash Patel in the locker room drinking a beer with the team was enough for the media to spring into action to investigate the incident as though it were a national scandal of epic proportions. As one social media user put it, “The men of Team USA went from heroes to villains in record time. They win the gold medal, they honor their teammate’s wife & children, they shout out Megan Keller… and that all went right out the window after they drank with Kash Patel & laughed with Trump.” NBC News’ Chuck Todd claimed, “Kash Patel has embarrassed the office and himself. Sadly, that’s not news anymore. But I’m truly sorry he’s helped sully the men’s team. I choose to believe many of them are embarrassed especially after the POTUS comment about the women’s team.” Perhaps a tad more soberly, Mary Clarke, writing for USA Today insisted “The USA men’s hockey team utterly failed to meet the cultural moment.” Though she conceded, “the United States men’s hockey team finally winning Olympic gold in my lifetime was a dream come true. What has happened since has been nothing short of a disappointment. As the celebrations from the 2-1 overtime win over Canada spilled off the ice and behind closed doors, FBI director Kash Patel joined Team USA in the locker room in a leaked video that has since gone viral. In the video, Patel is seen celebrating and drinking beer with the team, whose victory came on the same day an armed man breached the perimeter at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago property. The FBI has since taken the lead investigating the incident. Then, in another video posted amidst the postgame celebrations, Patel was seen holding up a cell phone to the hockey team for a call with President Trump. Included in the call is a moment where Trump and the team seemingly share a laugh about having to invite the United States women’s team — who also won gold against Canada — to the White House as well.” As a result of her inability to take a simple joke, all the President said was that he had to invite the women’s team or he’d be impeached to laughter and cheers, not boos or hisses as she obviously wanted, Ms. Clarke claimed, “I’m sure I’m not the only one that feels as if a bucket of cold water has been dumped on your head after listening to that exchange.” In her view, “So much of the success Team USA had at these Olympics was at the hands of women. But, for most of the Games, the White House has either been silent in the face of these victories or has actively disparaged athletes that have spoken out against the United States politically,” but of course also in her view, there is no problem whatsoever with these athletes who are playing for the country that President Trump leads to speak out against it politically.
As I said shortly after President Trump prevailed in November 2024, the progressive obsession with politics dictating their feelings about anything and everything isn’t healthy. Many, especially those on social media and in the media, have collapsed in upon themselves, becoming emotional black holes of rage and despair from which no light can escape unless it affirms their existing obsessions, such as when Bad Bunny equated “God bless America” with the entire North and South American continents rather than simply the United States of America as it has always been used in the past. To me at least, this is no way to live. There should, some might argue there must be things other than family and friends in all of our lives that exist beyond politics. To some it’s sports. To me, it’s Bruce Springsteen in a lot of ways, and so when he announced his upcoming Land of Hope and Dreams Tour following the release of his “Streets of Minneapolis” complete with three No Kings emblems on the logo, what did I do? Did I decide to hate the man who produced the music I love for decades and who I’ve seen around 40 times, knowing we don’t share politics or much of anything beyond coming of age in New Jersey? No, I promptly got tickets, good ones, and you know what? I was giddy as a teenager because of it because politics has nothing to do with it. As a liberal friend of mine said, he’s tired of it. Politics has infected everything. He just wants to rock. I concurred: Give me a beer, a stogie, and a concert, and leave me the freak alone. It’s America, after all or at least it used to be.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 