Even a Participation Trophy is Too Big a Burden for the Special Snowflakes™

I played football when I was in high school, but I was nowhere near the best player on the team; I’m neither the strongest, nor the fastest, nor the most athletic person around. Nevertheless, I tried and did my best. Now, in the age of ‘Participation Trophies,’ President Donald Trump has revived the Presidential Physical Fitness Test for public schools:

From The New York Times:

Trump Is Bringing Back the Presidential Fitness Test

The president signed an executive order on Thursday that would reinstate the test for schoolchildren.

by Eric Vance | Thursday, July 31, 2025 | Updated: Friday, August 1, 2025 | 5:30 PM EDT

If you spent your childhood struggling to do chin-ups or groaning over a sit-and-reach box in gym class, brace yourself.

Today, President Trump signed an executive order to reinstate the Presidential Fitness Test in public schools. The move is part of the administration’s goal to “restore urgency in improving the health of all Americans,” according to a statement released by the White House.

The test, which was introduced in 1966, has taken several forms over the years. The most recent version included a one-mile run, modified sit-ups, a 30-foot shuttle run, the sit-and-reach flexibility test and a choice between push-ups and pull-ups.

In the last iteration, children who scored in the top 15 percent nationwide earned a Presidential Physical Fitness Award. The Trump administration has yet to announce which exercises will be included in the new test.

Of all of the things that Mr Trump has done, wouldn’t you think this was about the least objectionable?

But Juliet Jeske, who uses the handle Decoding Fox News on Twitter — I still refuse to call it 𝕏 — found it objectionable, awful, terrible, horrific, and I’m only surprised that she didn’t compare it to the Hitlerjugend.

Trump is bringing back the “Presidential” fitness test. That thing was used to torture un-athletic kids. I could meet the standard on the mile and the flexibility test and nothing else. Gym teachers used to laugh at me in front of other kids. It was just sadism.

Miss Jeske had plenty of responses, the vast majority of which were the whining of other people about that evil, evil test. It was liberal thinking in a nutshell, that because some people can’t pass the test, we shouldn’t have the test at all.

“Dom”, who claimed to be a mountain biker, tweeted:

Trump should have to meet this first, before it’s allowed to be implemented. Problem solved.

To which Miss Jeske responded:

I want to see him run the shuttle run against an able bodied 12-year-old. We know who would win.

Mr Trump is 79 years old, eats too much junk, and is obese. But it doesn’t take much looking on this internet thingy Al Gore invented to find out that Mr Trump attended high school at the private New York Military Academy, from which he was graduated in 1964. Military academies have rigorous physical fitness programs, so while the internet doesn’t seem to have much information on how well he performed in the physical fitness programs, he certainly had to take them at the time.

At a time when so many kids exercise only their thumbs playing vidiot games, shouldn’t encouraging physical fitness in the public schools be a good thing?

But no, the Special Snowflakes are just terribly, terribly worried that some kids might be embarrassed by the test results. A clue for them: all of the kids know which kids are decently fit and athletic, and which kids are not. The non-athletic ones are getting laughed at anyway.

This is American liberalism today: not only are they lazy, they’re terrified, literally terrified of competition, even in something as simple as a physical fitness test. And they absotively, posilutely resent those Americans who have gotten ahead by the virtue of hard work and competition!

But maybe, just maybe, Miss Jeske understands about men males claiming to be female should not be allowed to participate in women’s sports:

Boys have more upper body strength. Girls have a lower center of gravity. Making us do that (the rope climb) was just so incredibly stupid. I don’t think any girl was able to do it.

We are amused.