Writing about woke/SJW activism is exhausting. Yet that exhaustion is outdone by the moral duty felt to address a society influenced by a steady stream of activistic drivel.
Our latest example comes via soccer icon Megan Rapinoe, who just received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian honor in the United States.[1]The Medal of Freedom is the civilian equivalent of the Medal of Honor, which is the highest military honor a U.S. president can bestow. And yet contrasting this fact with a recent pre-match press conference in which she weighed in on the overturning of Roe v. Wade proves instructive—if only because it casts a clearer light on who and what the hell we’re celebrating these days.
Athletes, activism and… courage?
We need to get a few things straight regarding athletes and activism and courage.
Just as it no longer feels appropriate to merely add black people to a commercial, a movie or tv show, or leadership positions and then smugly feel that diversity has been achieved,[2]If true diversity were the objective we’d be seeing a huge uptick in the presence of every type of person: Bangladeshis and Vietnamese and Mexicans and Peruvians and Ugandans, plus Muslims … Continue reading it no longer feels appropriate to describe the activism of athletes like Rapinoe as courageous.
It’s no longer courageous for athletes to take a knee[3]I may disagree with Colin Kapernick’s position on a number of issues but his initial decision to take a knee was in my mind an act of courage. or to protest gun violence or the overturning of Roe v. Wade, or to express any other indentitarian left talking points. I say this because these acts of virtue signaling receive the near unanimous support of peers and colleagues and a hefty assist from a complacent media and the unequivocal endorsement of a salivating corporate world.
They are then less acts of courage than opportunities for branding and toeing the party line.
Take them at their word
It is important with activist athletes like Rapinoe to move beyond our emotional resonance with what they’re saying and to deal instead with their actual content.
Rapinoe, for instance, views the Supreme Court decision to overturn Roe v. Wade as an act of cruelty.
“I just can’t understate [sic] how sad and how cruel this is,” she said in the presser. “I think the cruelty is the point because this is not pro-life by any means.”
That five of the brighter legal minds in the land might have arrived at their respective positions on Roe v. Wade and its apparent excesses for reasons other than cruelty does not occur to Rapinoe and her tunnel-visioned activism. And how could it?
She seems far too busy reciting clichéd left talking points to really grapple with the issues. After all, even a little time spent with those who are pro-life reveals that they take that position not out of a wish to cause women harm (in fact some of the historically greatest advocates of women’s rights were adamantly pro-life) but to protect those most vulnerable in our midst.
Seen in this light, their position is hardly, as is so often alleged, one of cruelty and misogyny. In fact what’s shocking, yet telling, about the pro-abortion position of people like Rapinoe is the dismissiveness, the neglect, of a consideration of the rights of others, including those entirely dependent on women.
Rapinoe’s prejudice
Rapinoe also commits a common and prejudicial mistake when she cites the pro-life position as a religious one.
She objects to “the entirety of the U.S. Government (saying) to peoples’ faces, to women’s faces, we do not care, we are going to force our belief system, which is deeply rooted in a white supremacist patriarchal Christianity, we are going to force that upon you.”
While many Christians are in fact pro-life, abortion is not a religious issue per se but a serious ethical one.
This never seems to occur to Rapinoe, whose abortion rights orthodoxy renders her ill-informed.
For instance, the big bad patriarchal Founding Fathers implicitly referenced above were (pardon me) actually hellbent on separating religion and politics. The Supreme Court is but a branch of the U.S. Government, not its “entirety.” And the most recent decision on abortion is not about forcing anything on anyone; it’s about overcoming a 50-year campaign to force the abortion issue on the nation and instead return rights to the states.
Rapinoe went on a little longer, decrying the decision further “particularly as we come out of Covid as the economic situation will likely continue to deteriorate for so many people.” As if the Court bases its decisions on matters like abortion based on economic trends.
Rapinoe has collected her Medal of Freedom for all to see—in part, according to the White House, for “advocating for the most vulnerable among us.”
As “inclusivity” is a favored term of Rapinoe and the zeitgeist, it’s worth considering how (and how not) that gets applied.
Notes, etc.
| ↑1 | The Medal of Freedom is the civilian equivalent of the Medal of Honor, which is the highest military honor a U.S. president can bestow. |
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| ↑2 | If true diversity were the objective we’d be seeing a huge uptick in the presence of every type of person: Bangladeshis and Vietnamese and Mexicans and Peruvians and Ugandans, plus Muslims and Taoists and atheists, and so forth. But we’re not. |
| ↑3 | I may disagree with Colin Kapernick’s position on a number of issues but his initial decision to take a knee was in my mind an act of courage. |