Shocking US Open Incident Reinforces How Idiotic & Uncompassionate Americans/People Can Be

It’s funny — I was going to write about this a few days ago, but then didn’t get to it, and then I saw Larry’s article about the US Open. First of all, I’m super happy for Larry that he was finally able to attend. Secondly, man, I wish I was there!! Thirdly, if you’re not a tennis fan, I have to explain some things before getting to the incident that triggered this article.

In tennis, when it’s your service game, you have a first serve, and if you miss that, a second serve. If you miss them both, you lose the point. If something weird happens that interrupts the match after you’ve missed your first serve but before you’ve taken your second serve, it’s generally the case that the umpire lets you start over and take another first serve. The idea is that it’s unfair to the server if their mind, body, and routines are interrupted by a disturbance.

Well, something very weird happened during a 1st round US Open tennis match the other night. The French player Benjamin Bonzi (ranked 51 in the world, with a career high ranking of 42 that he had risen to two and a half years ago) had gotten two sets and a break of serve up on former US Open champion Daniil Medvedev (currently ranked 13, but having risen to #1 in the world in the past). Bonzi was serving for the match and had gotten to match point. He was playing one of the best matches of his career and was on the verge of a potentially stunning upset that very few people would have bet on. Unfortunately, after he missed his first serve, one of the pro photographers walked from the corner of the court along the side of the court to the midcourt photography pit. This is, of course, not allowed, and the umpire, shocked, sort of freaked out a bit and said through the mic that this is not the time to be walking onto the court and to get off the court. Unsurprisingly, after that brief but super odd interruption, the umpire said that Bonzi got another 1st serve.

Well, that completely pissed off Medvedev, who walked over to the umpire and started ridiculing him and complaining for a couple of minutes. Naturally, given that it’s the appropriate thing to do to give the server another first serve and Medvedev’s chances of winning the match were absurdly low at that point in time, the truth is that most of Medvedev’s outburst was surely due to his frustration with his own performance and the fact that he was losing the match so badly. However, this is where things really got weird.

The New York crowd decided to fully get behind Medvedev and cheer him on for more than 6 minutes! This delayed the game continuously, to an absurd degree that I had never seen and the pro commentators and former payers had never seen. It was insane. From the time of the last point to the time when Bonzi was finally able to serve again, more than 10 minutes had passed!

And that wasn’t even the end of it. Then, every single time Bonzi made a mistake — even the smallest kind — the crowd went wild for Bonzi. They had decided to tribalistically back Medvedev to an enormous degree. Note that this is the biggest tennis stadium in the world and Bonzi, a super mild mannered person (not normal among tennis players while they run into struggles on the court), had done nothing to turn the crowd against them. All of a sudden, tens of thousands of people were loudly cheering anytime he hit a ball into the net or outside the lines. It was insane and cruel. Match point came and went, and he lost the service game that it seemed certain he’d win 15 minutes before. He then lost the set tiebreak, all while the crowd went wild in support of Medvedev and against him. He must have been feeling completely ill treated and abused. He clearly did not take it well and then lost the next set 6-0! To not win a single game in a set, especially in men’s tennis where the server has a much bigger advantage, is very uncommon. Bonzi was having the worst experience of his life on a tennis court right after he was on the verge of having probably the biggest win of his career. He managed to compose himself again in the 5th and final set, though, and thankfully won it 6-4. If he didn’t, my goodness, how traumatizing that would have been. He was on the verge of tears in the post-match interview and was clearly not happy with the crowd.

Okay, well, with all of that out of the way, what’s the relevance to what we do here at CleanTechnica? To me, it was a shocking example of how idiotic and cruel people, especially Americans, can be. It was an example of how much Americans abuse freedom of speech and freedom of expression to ruin people’s lives, act without compassion, and just act moronic. “Hey, I’m allowed to say what I want and do what I want! It’s a free country!” Yes, we are free to do stupid things, we are free to bully people, and we are free to be total jackasses. It’s America! Did Bonzi deserve to have the largest crowd in tennis ruin his night and almost ruin one of the biggest achievements of his career? No, but he was in America, so that’s what he got.

Politically, we’ve seen this far too much in the past decade. We have elected a rapist (convicted), a serial fraudster, a money launderer, a mob-connected criminal, an obsessive cheat and adulterer, perhaps the biggest pathological liar the country has ever seen, and a fully certified moron. Twice. Now we have an administration and Congress repealing policies to clean our air, protect our health, preserve a livable climate, and just do good things for people. We have cancelled billions of dollars of funding for human aid that will result in countless human lives, and that will also lead to horrible disease outbreaks that will also lead to deaths and suffering in the United States. We’ve shot ourselves in the foot because we have the right to do that. Twice.

The destruction to federal agencies that were set up for Americans, by Americans, to help Americans is so inane that it’s incomprehensible to me. The repeal of sensible, helpful policies that bring the United States forward and make us better economically is just what we’re doing now. The militaristic rounding up and cruel imprisonment of countless Americans — because they or their ancestors came from other countries (as if that’s not truly the case for 99.999% of Americans) — has become the norm. People cheer it on. “Love-thy-neighbor” Christians are normally the driving force behind it, eager to imprison and send to other countries they’ve never touched foot in before other Christians because they are brown and speak Spanish. And because they’ve been riled up to support this.

That’s what this crazed crowd had me dwelling on. They got riled up by nonsense, and perhaps because they didn’t want to go home yet and wanted to be entertained, and it was just a reminder of how idiotically tens of millions of Americans have let themselves become enraged and misled by propaganda parading as news, thus supporting an increasingly fascist and cruel government that is even harming them — but at least entertaining them. That’s the country we live in today. That’s the world we live in today. Blind, thoughtless cruelty. Moronic tribal behavior. An insensitivity and lack of morals that we don’t even have the self-awareness to notice or feel shame for.

We need to turn things around with regard to cleantech policy and sensible climate policy. However, first, we need to bring back compassion, caring for others, and a feeling of civic responsibility.