EDITOR’S NOTE: This sports column by Jason Whitlock was posted on Dec. 9.

China’s ban on Twitter might be its single greatest advantage over the United States of America. 

Social media has accelerated America’s transition from a competition-based society to an attention-based one. 

This acceleration can be most easily seen in the sports world. 

The modern-day Muhammad Ali — Colin Kaepernick — has the resumé of Jimmy Young, a heavyweight boxer most famous for losing a controversial decision to Ali. You no longer have to be the greatest to be compared to “The Greatest.” You simply need to win the social media attention competition.

The young ladies at Vanderbilt University have been inspired by the Kaepernick model. The Commodores women’s basketball team announced via Twitter Tuesday afternoon (Dec. 8) that they will not be partaking in the pregame national anthem. They will sit inside their locker room and “mourn” racial injustice.

That’ll fix it.  

No one cares all that much about Vandy women’s basketball. They haven’t advanced to the NCAA Tournament in six seasons. They’ve never won the SEC regular-season title. Their current coach, Stephanie White, has a lot in common with former football coach Derek Mason. She’s under a lot of pressure entering this season. In her previous four seasons at Vandy, the Commodores have never finished higher than tied for 12th in the SEC. 

Last month, Mason tried to save his job by recruiting a player from the school’s women’s soccer team to squib a second-half kickoff. The publicity stunt worked to perfection. Sarah Fuller’s 30-yard kick was treated like the left-hand shot Buster Douglas delivered to knockout Mike Tyson.  

The kick heard ‘round the woke did not, however, rescue Mason. Vandy fired him two days later. His virtue signal and the attention lathered on Fuller did, however, inspire the young women on Vandy’s basketball team. 

They publicly announced their decision to privately mourn racial injustice. 

It’s an attention grab. Attention, not competition, is becoming the point of sports. 

This week, Sports Illustrated named five “activists” athletes sportspersons of the year. NBA star LeBron James, NFL star Patrick Mahomes, WNBA player Breanna Stewart, tennis star Naomi Osaka and retired NFL lineman Laurent Duvernay-Tardif. 

I’m a Chiefs fan. Mahomes and Duvernay-Tardif are/were Chiefs players. Mahomes is my favorite athlete at the moment. Mahomes’ activism comes down to fronting a couple of Black Lives Matter commercials and tweeting in solidarity with LeBron.

Duvernay-Tardif, a doctor, didn’t play football this season. He wrote on Twitter that he opted out over concerns about COVID and fear that he could unintentionally transmit the disease. Sports Illustrated claims that Duvernay-Tardif opted out so he could work on the frontlines of the medical pandemic. The reality is he is no more heroic than Avery Bradley, the Lakers guard who opted out of the NBA bubble for the exact same reason Duvernay-Tardif did. 

What’s being promoted by Sports Illustrated, the mainstream media and social media is media-approved activism and attention whoring. Competition is being deemphasized. I’m supposed to be ashamed that I’m bothered by this deemphasis.

I’m not. An attention-based society cannot compete with China, the communist-run country that is rapidly changing American culture. I do not support banning Twitter. That’s what communist, anti-freedom countries do. What we used to do in America is break up monopolies, especially ones that operate as undemocratically as Twitter and Facebook.

The activist athlete isn’t changing America for the better. He or she is simply building a brand to be monetized domestically and globally. The global monetization process stops first in China. The Chinese Communist Party — the CCP, the political apparatus running China — financially rewards leagues (NBA), corporations (Nike), athletes (LeBron and Kap) and entertainers (movie stars) willing to smear America as inherently racist, sexist and evil.

China doesn’t care about American winners. It cares about the athletes and entertainers who can bring the most attention to its anti-American propaganda campaign.  

China bans Twitter because it wants its citizens focused on competition with America. China manipulates our social media apps because our competition for attention undermines the competitive spirit that used to define our culture and made us the envy of the world.

(c.) 2020, Outkick.com