RUSH: It’s December. It’s Christmas. It’s the most wonderful, beautiful time of the year, traditionally. And a lot of people are trying to make it so again this year. You gotta love ’em. You gotta love the people trying to keep tradition alive, because there are so many people who are doing just the opposite. They’re trying to destroy every American tradition and get their hands on every American institution they can get their hands on.

For some people it’s depressing. For other people, it just makes them mad. Others just scratch their heads and say, “Why can’t people just be happy? Why does everybody have to be so mad all the time?” Well, everybody isn’t mad all the time. The people who are mad all the time are people on the left. And I know it sounds simplistic to say, but just ask yourself something, if you doubt me. When is the last time you ever saw one of those people literally happy?

Even after they have won something they claimed to have really wanted, some legislative idea, some new government benefit, whatever it is, when’s the last time you saw them happy? When’s the last time you saw them smile? You cannot satisfy them. You cannot give them enough no matter how much they want, you give it to them, they always want more. They are perpetual victims, which is why they cannot be happy. They’re perpetual victims. They are victims of this country’s racism and bigotry, its unfairness. And they infect everybody with their pessimism. They infect everybody with the negativism. And they are relentless.

I have a column here by Jason Whitlock at the website Outkick.com. “China’s ban on Twitter might be its single greatest advantage over the United States of America. Social media has accelerated America’s transition from a competition-based society to an attention-based one. This acceleration can be most easily seen in the sports world.”

This is a key point, folks, so stick with me here. “Social media,” which is poison, “has accelerated America’s transition from a competition-based society to an attention-based one.” In other words, competition is bad. It hurts people’s feelings ’cause there are people that don’t win, and it’s not fair. So what have we transitioned to? “Notice me, notice me! Hey, hey, notice me, I’m here, I matter, hey.” And as long as you notice somebody and they can get your attention, they’re happy. But don’t expect them to have to compete for it.

Now, Whitlock says that this acceleration can be most easily seen the world of sports. The modern-day Muhammad Ali, he says, is Colin Kaepernick. “Colin Kaepernick has the resume of Jimmy Young, a heavyweight boxer most famous for losing a controversial decision to Ali. You no longer have to be the greatest to be compared to ‘The Greatest.’ You simply need to win the social media attention competition.

“The young ladies at Vanderbilt University have been inspired by the Kaepernick model. The Commodores women’s basketball team announced via Twitter Tuesday afternoon that they will not be partaking in the pregame national anthem. They will sit inside their locker room and ‘mourn’ racial injustice. That’ll fix it.

“No one cares all that much about Vandy women’s basketball. They haven’t advanced to the NCAA Tournament in six seasons. They’ve never won the SEC regular-season title. Their current coach, Stephanie White, has a lot in common with former football coach Derek Mason. She’s under a lot of pressure entering this season. In her previous four seasons at Vandy, the Commodores have never finished higher than tied for 12th in the SEC.

“Last month, Mason tried to save his job by recruiting a player from the school’s women’s soccer team to squib a second-half kickoff.” He wanted her for one play. “The publicity stunt worked to perfection. Sarah Fuller’s 30-yard kick was treated like the left-hand shot Buster Douglas delivered to knockout Mike Tyson.”

You remember that, right? Big story. Thirty-yard kickoff. Not even for points. Just a squib onside kick, but a woman did it. She joined the guys’ football team. She proved that women can play with the guys. All she did was squib kick a football off a tee.

“The kick heard ’round the woke did not, however, rescue Mason. Vandy fired him two days later. His virtue signal and the attention lathered on Fuller did, however, inspire the young women on Vandy’s basketball team. They publicly announced their decision to privately mourn racial injustice. It’s an attention grab. Attention, not competition, is becoming the point of sports. This week, Sports Illustrated named five ‘activists’ athletes sportspersons of the year. NBA star LeBron James, NFL star Patrick Mahomes, WNBA player Breanna Stewart, tennis star Naomi Osaka and retired NFL lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif.”

Now, Whitlock, it says here, is a Chiefs fan. “Mahomes and Duvernay-Tardif are/were Chiefs players. Mahomes is my favorite athlete at the moment. Mahomes’ activism comes down to fronting a couple of Black Lives Matter commercials and tweeting in solidarity with LeBron. Duvernay-Tardif, a doctor, didn’t play football this season. He wrote on Twitter that he opted out over concerns about COVID and fear that he could unintentionally transmit the disease.

“Sports Illustrated claims that Duvernay-Tardif opted out so he could work on the frontlines of the medical pandemic. The reality is he is no more heroic than Avery Bradley, the Lakers guard who opted out of the NBA bubble for the exact same reason Duvernay-Tardif did.
What’s being promoted by Sports Illustrated, the mainstream media and social media is media-approved activism and attention whoring. Competition is being deemphasized. I’m supposed to be ashamed that I’m bothered by this deemphasis. I’m not. An attention-based society cannot compete with China –” folks.

An attention-based society cannot compete with the ChiComs, “– the communist-run country that is rapidly changing American culture. I do not support banning Twitter. That’s what communist, anti-freedom countries do. What we used to do in America is break up monopolies, especially ones that operate as undemocratically as Twitter and Facebook. The activist athlete isn’t changing America for the better. He or she is simply building a brand to be monetized domestically and globally.

“The global monetization process stops first in China. The Chinese Communist Party — the CCP, the political apparatus running China — financially rewards leagues (NBA), corporations (Nike), athletes (LeBron and Kap) and entertainers (movie stars) willing to smear America as inherently racist, sexist and evil. China doesn’t care about American winners. It cares about the athletes and entertainers who can bring the most attention to its anti-American propaganda campaign,” because it’s now an attention-based society.

So the more people you can attract to you by being anti-America, the more valuable you are to the Chinese. And they will underwrite you and they will fund you with and they’ll make sure you don’t need to be hired by the NFL, Colin, in order to have a lifestyle.

“China bans Twitter because it wants its citizens focused on competition with America. China manipulates our social media apps because our competition for attention undermines the competitive spirit that used to define our culture and made us the envy of the world.”

Whitlock has been on a roll lately about what’s happening to the United States, and he’s using the world of sports as the looking glass. And he sees a rapid deterioration of the essence of sports, and that’s the competitive nature of it. And it’s being replaced by, “Notice me, notice me,” attention-grabbing things that are then used for political purposes.