Why Lebron James and the Left Hate America | Victor Davis Hanson

LeBron James is at the National Anthem. I don't know if it was the first game the 76ers were playing. He's at the end of the line. At least the 76ers didn't run back into the locker room. And he acted like a complete ass. He's doing fake golf swings, imaginary free throws. And this is while the National Anthem is playing. Victor, this guy just, I think he hates America. Doesn't he love China too? Anyway, what are your thoughts about this? Yeah, I mean, the NBA didn't do anything to him. The NBA makes a half a trillion dollars, excuse me, a half, well, they make about a half a billion at least, and it might be even more in China. And he makes... Well, I think $40 million a year from his Nike endorsements, and he probably makes another $30 million in other endorsements, and his salary makes $100 million a year. So what is it? And he lives in a big mansion, and he's a popular icon. What is this beef with the United States? What did it do to LeBron James? Did it ever ask him to go to the Gulf War? Did it ever say to him, we're not going to cover you, you won't get endorsements because you're black? No, I didn't do any of that. He treated him like anybody else, and his ability in basketball made him one of the richest people in the United States. And he can't even stand for two and a half minutes, three minutes, so he has to practice his elitist golf swing, and then he practices his free throws in front of everybody, and they all eat it up. And then it's hard for me to comment because I think I have not watched an NBA game in 20 years, NBA. I can remember Magic Johnson. I can remember Kevin Hart. I can remember Larry Bird. I can remember Jerry West. That's about it. I quit watching a long time ago. And they subsidized with their Chinese money the WNBA. I watched about four games online, and it's corrupt from the top. The top management is all left wing. It's not diverse. Of course. 30 or 40 percent of the players identify as gay when the population is about 8 percent. 60, 70 percent African-American when the population is about 12. I'm just using the left's nomenclature about proportional representation. There's no diversity of opinion. Everybody's left wing. So if Sophie Cunningham sounds like she's moderate or center right, everybody demonizes her. The referees are partisan and incompetent. The coaches are partisan and incompetent. Um, it's a very physical thuggish game. I know you're not supposed to use that Indian word thug, but that's what it is. People are trying to rough up Caitlin Clark. She's been emasculated, um, psychologically. So she can't even say anything now about what's going on to her because she's, she's hated for a particular reason. She has brought probably. Several, over a billion dollars in new attendance revenue, new media coverage, and new advertising revenues to all the players. So their lives have materially been vastly improved, and they hate her for doing that because they think it's racist. So they would rather be poor and not have her in the league than all better off and have her in the league. That's how much their hatred is of her. I think this little bump that everybody got, they got attention. It was kind of like a mossy boulder. I've used that metaphor before. You turn it over. It looks really kind of neat from the outside. Then you turn it over, and it's not very pretty to look at. The more you learn about the WNBA, the more you learn about its ideological extremism, its intolerance, its incompetence. On the intolerance front, did you see the video? I saw it just this morning. I think it happened last night in Portland. A woman. I had one of the X, Y, X, X anti-trancer was escorted out of the, she didn't want to leave. She didn't say anything to anybody. She came, I think if you had a, you walked into any arena in America and had a shirt on that said F Jesus, they would, no one would escort you out. But if you have something that says essentially, I believe in biological women through that symbol XXXY, they'll take you out and nothing you can do about it. While people taught you. Well, I guess it would be as if, if you think of a counterpart sport that's predominantly not integrated, not by statute, but it'd be something like hockey or NASCAR, and they've had black players in them. In the case of NASCAR, the player in question, he had to invent a hate crime about the rope on the garage. So there were too many. There were too many victims and not enough victimizers. So with this huge white crowd, if he felt that it was racist, he could have at least found a real incident rather than saying a rope on a garage that I've had. I have two garages, and I can tell you I have ropes on both of them. And sometimes when they dangle down, they might hit somebody or tangle. I've made a little loop on them, but apparently he thought that was. A media event, but what I'm getting at is it's not both ways, and it's just another divisive part of American life, that it's race, race, race, race, race, race, sexual orientation, sexual orientation, sexual orientation, which would be okay, but then you spread capitalism and socialism, and then you spread capitalism, and they're all getting rich on a free market that they hate. LeBron's a man of the left, and he's a capitalist. Par excellence. That's all he does is sell his name. And he doesn't do anything for the Adidas. I mean, excuse me, the Nikes. He doesn't do anything. He just puts his name on it. But he does do something because his name is, it's marketable. And so I'm not asking he not make money. I'm asking that he appreciates it. So funny because the right, I mean, the left just hates Trump because they said he's not a businessman. He just goes all over the world and he sells Trump and they splash it on a hotel and they pay him $50 million. Well, yeah, they do it because they think they can make money. It's like LeBron James. No different. But the difference is that Trump isn't trashing his country the way that LeBron James is. And I think it goes back to Colin Kaepernick. He was the one that really started the idea that right after the. But before, but during the George Floyd, it became acceptable for you, if you were a DEI person, to mock, ridicule, despise symbols of your own country. And that would be kind of popular in popular culture. And that's what's happened. And they've lowered the bar so much.