George Clooney speaking in Boys in the Boat featurette: “These guys at the University of Washington are taking on the seniors, and then taking on the fraternity [something], and then taking on the Nazis.”
Clooney is using the usual shorthand, of course, but does he really mean that the young athletes who belonged to Germany’s 1936 Olympic rowing team were devout “seig heil” guys? Yes, Adolf Hitler saw the Berlin ’36 Olympics as a a potential proof of Aryan supremacy (Jesse Owens screwed that pooch), but how many German citizens were ardent supporters of the Nazi party that year, and how many were playing along to get along? A third or less?
How many blue-state liberals today pretend to be wokester sympathizers but are just keeping their heads down in order to stay out of trouble?
Let’s imagine, God forbid, that The Beast might win the ’24 election. He would therefore be president during the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. Would it then be fair or accurate to describe the U.S. Olympic team as “the MAGAS”?