As you all know, I don’t really do sports but I just jumped out of my chair and started cheering when I saw Korey Dropkin and Cory Thiesse defeat the Italian team in the Winter Olympic semi-finals for mixed doubles curling.

The other night, during the Super Bowl, I was talking to some friends about how nothing seems to really unite people anymore.  Even the Super Bowl entertainment divided people this year.  The once legendary Super Bowl commercials have become bland and boring because there really aren’t universally beloved celebrities any more.  It used to be exciting seeing your favorite actor shilling for junk food or car insurance.  Now, when an actor shows up in a commercial, we immediately remember all the stupid things they said during the previous election cycle.  (The Budweiser commercial was an exception.  One reason why everyone loved that commercial with the horse and the eagle is because we all know that neither one of them is going to start spouting off about politics on Twitter.)

Even at the Winter Olympics, the same press that will never ask Eileen Gu about the Chinese government sentencing Jimmy Lai to life imprisonment is all too eager to demand that American athletes denounce their country.  Some people say that that goal of the media is to divide us.  Personally, I think the goal of the media is to make money and the easiest way to do that is to generate controversy which will then generate the clicks that are needed to survive.  Getting people angry is less a subversive plot and more a business model.

But as I watched Korey and Cory — two people from Minnesota who Duluth, Minnesota — come from behind to defeat the very strong Italian team, I felt more optimistic than I have in a long time.  Beyond the fact that Cory is a lab technician and Korey is a realtor, I don’t know much about who Korey and Cory are when they’re not on the ice and quite frankly, I don’t need to know.  I don’t need to know how they vote.  I don’t need to know how they feel about this issue or that.  I don’t need to know what movies they watched or what music they listen to or anything else.  All I need to know is that they’re good at curling and they’re representing America in Italy and doing a great job of it.  Whenever the camera switched to the watch parties in Duluth or to Korey’s family in the stands, I felt very proud of both them and my country.

As individuals, we may not always agree on everything but, as Americans, we can all cheer for Korey and Cory and, in doing so, we can be reminded that we’re not really as divided as the media’s business model and social media’s algorithms would like us to believe.  Tomorrow, they go for the gold against Sweden.  I’ll be watching.