Just a few weeks ago, Americans were able to eat salad without the fear of liquid feces and breathe in air that didn’t taste like campfire ash.
And — we were just really excited to watch some soccer.
One major concern at the outset was whether America’s foreign and strict immigration policies would impact the levity of the games, and, at worst, deny entry to people, and perhaps even athletes and officials, from countries at odds with the current administration (it did).
But in the early days of the World Cup, Americans and fans across the globe were surprised by how much of the world embraced coming here — and vice versa. Visiting international fans shared their astonishment at the sublime oddities this massive country has to offer, posting about: ranch dressing (in bowls if you ask nicely), unlimited refills in towering glasses, dairy products, air conditioning, Tex-Mex, ammunition displays, chicken tenders, cowboy hats, and, among other things, the Cheesecake Factory. Oh, how we all rejoiced in seeing the rest of the world experience the Byzantine beauty of our chain restaurants for the first time, and how craggy we enjoy our fried chicken strips!
Adding to the cultural exchange on the sidelines, fans were also pleasantly surprised by how well the United States — historically a country that’s been bad at soccer — showed up.
We were high off the US team’s 2-0 win over Bosnia-Herzegovina. We looked like a team with guts! Malik Tillman scored a goal down a man after star striker Folarin Balogun was sent off with a (questionable — experts said) red card. Many players on the US team have immigrant parents, are army brats, or are American by birthright citizenship (a constitutional privilege that the Trump administration has sought to dissolve). Though Belgium, in the next round, was going to be a difficult matchup, you couldn’t count out toughness.
Even though many Americans root for the underdog, and many see themselves as underdogs, it’s rare that America is ever actually the underdog.
But in the context of the World Cup, one of the rare things that American men will never win because soccer is one of those rare sports that no American man has ever been the best at, the stars aligned for Americans to have the scrappy longshot team of our dreams.
But it didn’t take long for the illusion to shatter.
As the Fourth of July weekend finished, FIFA announced that it had reversed Balogun’s red card and that he would, in an exception to the rules, be allowed to play against the Belgians. The move was unprecedented and fishy.
That red-card reversal also ripped open a portal into a nightmare realm.
Acting like a person who can’t keep a surprise party a surprise, President Donald Trump began insinuating that he might have had something to do with the decision. Then, on the morning of the match against Belgium, Trump said that he had placed a call to FIFA president Gianni Infantino about the red card and implicitly took credit for its reversal. Infantino not only confirmed the call but said that he takes calls from important and rich people all the time — a cartoonishly suspicious response from an organization that’s historically famous for corruption.
Some fans, upon learning that the laws had been bent for the host country, reacted with astonishment, if not fury. Ethically, FIFA’s bar is on the floor, and this blatant move to help the United States somehow seemed to confirm onlookers’ worst fears.
In that moment, it was clear the US was no longer an underdog. Underdogs aren’t supposed to be able to put their thumb on the scale. They surely aren’t supposed to have their papa call favors. Perhaps all that talk of guts and toughness and how the team was a band of overlooked outsiders was just a mirage — and all that ranch dressing merely a charm offensive.
Whether you’re a soccer fan or someone who is ambivalent about soccer but loved the vibes, the shift was palpable. We’re all experiencing a collective whiplash and perhaps a sports-affected melancholy.
And now that the Cup is ending, Americans are now living in a country where vegetables, famously healthy, and good for you, carry the risk of “explosive” diarrhea. Diarrhea itself is something many would not consider a calm experience, so the idea that this is not just diarrhea but somehow a special, even worse diarrhea, one akin to detonation, feels especially terrifying.
This week also saw swaths of the US living under a plume of wildfire smoke — the dirtiest air in the world. Breathing outside is, according to scientists, the equivalent of smoking 10 cigarettes. Breathing in smoke-laced air and worrying about the looming spectre of diarrhea with every meal puts the shared cultural joy we had in perspective. But even without these extreme plagues, it’s worth mourning how fleeting those moments can be.
