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Welcome to the commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Tuesday, July 27th,

2021. I'm John Pajor. It's the editor of commentary magazine, which you can find at our new URL

www.commentary.org where we give you a few free reads and ask you to subscribe. You should be

subscribing. You will be able today to read Noah Rothman talking about Afghanistan and we're

going to talk about that on the podcast, but you can read his more considered prose on the subject.

It's a great question. I'm going to talk about it. I've heard my voice and you are hearing me speak

about this now. Got a lot of good stuff there. Got the July August issue there. We're preparing a

blockbuster September issue. We are preparing an even more blockbuster October issue. This is

the place to be commentary.org. Subscribe today and with me as always is the aforementioned

associate editor, Noah Rothman. I know. I just want to throw some items at you guys.

Simone Biles. I think universally considered the greatest female gymnast of all time and many

people say is the greatest athlete of all time. Maybe the greatest single athlete who has ever lived

in the world has pulled out of the team competition at the Tokyo Olympics for the women's gymnastics.

Having said yesterday, the day before yesterday after a problematic performance that she had the

way to the world on her shoulders. Supposedly, she has a medical issue. She may not be out of the

individual event. She is out of the group event. Add to this the loss, the second loss in Tokyo of

the American basketball team, which is crazy because the American basketball team is almost by

definition 10 times better than the basketball teams of any other country. We have Katie Ledecki

losing the gold in swimming to an Australian. We have, did I mention the Omiosaka, the tennis

female tennis champion who lost yesterday. American athletes seem to be cracking up at this

very difficult and weird Olympics. It just brings to mind this general question about

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