In February, I watched our US women’s hockey team win gold over Canada in the Winter Olympics in Milan. (I might have had this post open on my phone for good luck.) We were down 1-0 for most of the game and then got a late score to tie and send it into sudden death overtime, where we scored again and won it all. Yay!
Three days later, our usually-useless men’s team did the exact same thing, also against Canada, also down 1-0 most of the game before tying it near the end, and scoring in sudden death overtime for the gold.
There was so much fanfare, so much celebration and gushing about history being made, about it having been 46 years since we last won hockey gold, despite the fact that it had actually been three days. But I digress.
They raised our flag and played The Star Spangled Banner. Because these victories, and those of Alysa Liu and our other amazing gold medalists, were for us as Americans. Representing us. Emboldening us. Making us proud.
And currently we’re co-hosting the World Cup. People are visiting our country for the event and getting excited about ranch dressing. Those are our own cities (and Canada’s and Mexico’s, of course) holding these wild matches. Certainly a more special celebration of our 250th than whatever sparsely attended nonsense the Orange Thing is planning. I guess this event passing through two of the three co-host nations’ national days was a coincidence, but, hey, it works out. We’ve invited everyone over for this big ass weeks-long party!
(In a time of being extra hostile to visitors, though the case may be.)
Getting the real measure of a country requires seeing others. That’s not a competition. Every country is special and has their own uniqueness and quirks and all that Mr. Rogers jazz. The best thing about watching the World Cup is seeing the fans in the stands, with the over the top (and often stereotypical) symbols of their respective countries, whether the Australians with the giant inflatable yellow kangaroo or our own US fans dressing up as Uncle Sam, the Statue of Liberty, or a bald eagle. But we’re all much more complicated than that. One of the simplest joys in the far too few times I’ve traveled outside the country has been just noticing the little things that are different, the different products available at a convenience store, what the road signs look like, the manners of speaking that might be confusing at first, etc. And in doing this, you find things about your own country that are unique that you maybe never thought much about before.
All countries have gorgeous landscapes, but Yellowstone and the Grand Canyon and the Appalachian Trail are our gorgeous landscapes!
All countries have their favorite creatures, and ours is this majestic friend.
All countries have their many delicious foods. And so do we, with even more differences as you move around the states.
All countries have their long complicated histories, and we have ours in so many disparate stories.
There’s no hard and fast context-free definition of an American (or a national of any other country for that matter) that would satisfy everyone. Certainly people try. We just came dangerously close to simply being born here not being enough anymore, from a judicial standpoint anyway. We have a toxic administration still that, God willing, we can take some of the venom out after the midterms. But all that has nothing to do with it.
Our national teams aren’t competing for the Orange Thing. They’re competing for us. They’re competing, well, to make bank off endorsements, sure. But they give us something to get excited about connected to our national identity, however trivial that may ultimately be.
Whatever that national identity might entail, if anything more specific than simply thinking of the United States of America as home.
Maybe descended from people who were here at the time of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Maybe descended from those enslaved by them. Maybe descended from those displaced by them. Maybe descended from those in areas that weren’t within our borders at the time but are now. Maybe descended from or are those who arrived much later. Maybe a 250th anniversary means everything and nothing all at once. It’s a history that cannot be changed and a future that is still being created, with a present that is somehow both and neither, that at any given time is all that is real.
Maybe we just want to feel some pride and joy, and not everyone is going to get it from the same sources. We want to revel in our national teams’ successes as if they were our own, underneath the deep corruption of not only the governments but of FIFA and the IOC as well. We’re looking for simplicity in a universe that refuses it, and perhaps deny ourselves that joy and pride because of it.
I set out to write about our 250th based on some hockey and soccer joy this year, and here I am sitting with that complexity. Perhaps the most American thing I’ll do today.
