re: USMNT Rainbow Kits

I'm not mad about it because I'm desensitized to it.

But yeah, it's a bad thing. It's an immutable characteristic - isn't that what was pushed so hard for so long over people who wanted to call it unnatural? Well, the people pushing that fact won, and with that comes consequences IMO. Like, celebrating immutable characteristics is pretty fricking stupid, particularly when some are worth celebrating and some are arbitrarily deemed problematic (whiteness, masculinity, etc.).

But more importantly, it's bad to constantly emphasize group identity over the individual, especially when that group identity isn't particularly pluralistic in nature. You're either gay or you're an ally and you support everything promoted by pride (including all the inherently politically loaded themes) or you're a regressive piece of shite. That runs counter to 50 years of successful emphasis on judging people on merit, on character, on individual traits and actions. The move toward everyone being defined by their group identity is destructive, it puts us at odds based on things we don't control.

Not to mention this is particularly problematic when we're supposed to be playing on behalf of one, singular, overarching concept - the United States of America. We're going to pretty quickly lose the value of the national teams, much like you see in England, if this persists (and it will). They'll cease to be a unifying feature of American sports and it'll strip more and more fun out of international competition.