The US national soccer team is sticking it to Qatar, all right:

The United States' men's national team have made a huge statement at the World Cup in Qatar by redesigning their crest to incorporate the rainbow flag, in a bid to show solidarity with the LGBTQ+ community.

The tournament, which starts on Sunday and sees the US play their opener against Wales on Monday, has been hugely controversial in its build-up, given Qatar's human rights record and attitude to homosexuality.

As recently as this month, a Qatar World Cup ambassador told a German TV broadcaster that homosexuality was 'damage to the mind', and it remains illegal to be gay in the conservative Muslim country.

The USMNT appear to have made an immediate stand on their arrival in Doha, though, by changing the usual red stripes on their crest to a rainbow.

I personally disagree with Qatar's official policies on homosexuality, in general. But this cheap woke stunt is wrong. It's an insult to the Islamic host country. I'm old enough to remember what then-president Barack Obama said in his celebrated 2009 Cairo speech:

I've come here to Cairo to seek a new beginning between the United States and Muslims around the world, one based on mutual interest and mutual respect... . There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. 

The very moment this conflicts with the most sacred value of the American Left and the US ruling class -- LGBT rights -- respect for Islam goes out the window. I have lived in Central Europe off and on for the past two years, and I tell you, American cultural imperialism on the LGBT front is very much in your face -- and the people in this part of the world resent the hell out of it. In the past week I spoke to a Christian activist from one former Communist country who was extremely angry about this. She said that in her country, the US Government and Western civil society organizations have pushed and pushed for the eradication of conservative religious and social values there. She said, "The ordinary people don't want these things, but they keep happening, and nobody knows why. Nobody knows why."

I know why.

Second, the US Men's National Team is in theory compelling US soccer players to endorse something that might violate their consciences. And for what? You must bow the knee. You must burn the pinch of incense. You must comply. If there are any believing Christians on the US Men's National Team, will they dare to withdraw for conscience reasons? Are there any Christians in this photo below of the team (you can see what the standard US team logo looks like)? If so, do they have the courage to stand for their faith, not for their worldly glory?

I despise that the team leadership put our players in the position of being forced to take a side on this hot-button issue. Maybe some of the men on the team hate the Qatari policy on LGBT, but also feel that they should respect the right of their hosts to be wrong, out of fidelity to the Muslim faith. Now they don't have that choice, because as we know, American elites in sport and everywhere else politicize every damn thing. This is soft totalitarianism, insofar as a totalitarian society politicize all things in private life.

That same activist I mentioned above told me about her relatives who live in the United States. She said that the teenage son of that family was twice suspended from his public high school because he refused to use the chosen pronoun of a trans student. He didn't attack the trans student, or mock him, or anything like that. He simply refused to conform. The school suspended him twice for being a "homophobic bully." The family withdrew the boy from that public school. The activist told me that people in her part of the world cannot comprehend why the United States despises them and their religion so much. All I could tell her is that the United States ruling class despises people like me and my religion too. I'm telling you, readers, the contempt the United States is generating from many people in this part of the world over its high-handed moralism and cultural imperialism is real and intense.

UPDATE: Yep:

Sick of these people. Sick to death of them: