American Pride, Olympics Edition

The Olympics are known to inspire - whether it's Oscar Pistorius, the double amputee competing in the 400m track semifinal or Andy Murray finally winning something and in front of his home crowd no less or just Tom Daley's abs....

Tom who? John - the cuter of the Daleys IMO.

While these people should inspire me to go out and achieve, to strive to be the best at what I do, all the Olympics really inspire me to do is watch more of the Olympics. The Olympics serve as a 4 year alarm clock reminder that I love swimming and archery and gymnastics and other sports that I have no clue how to score or evaluate the athletes.

Not only am I inspired to continue watching, but I'm inspired to love this country more - this country being the United States of America. I'm glued to the TV rooting for our athletes with no idea as to what I'm rooting for them to do.

Events that are judged (and seemingly objective) fire me up the moist most. Take gymnastics for instance, a sport I know nothing about except that rings are hard. An American gymnast will land a Matrix-inspired spring from the vault. With typical American ignorant pride, I'll pump my fist into the air like I'm Judd Nelson at the end of The Breakfast Club. Then the judges will award a docked score. I'll stand up to my TV yelling "GARBAGE!" despite not having the slightest clue as to what would have warranted a higher score other than the fact that we're American.

Jardieu, Rio 2016

Of course, we root for our own country, but is it a sense of pride or a sense of WE HAVE TO BE BETTER THAN EVERYONE ELSE? We already have a lot of benefits over other countries, some of those benefits being as taken for granted as running water. It doesn't matter. We still want the U.S. to not just win, but to destroy other countries. But why? We should ease up on the country "pride" and enjoy the Games for the display of pure talent, athleticism, and hard work that they embody.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go enjoy this hamburger, wear these 1990s made Nikes, leave my sink on, and act like I'm better than you.

,

CJ