The National Football League held its two conference championship playoff games in January, the winners of which played in the Super Bowl two weeks later. One of the games was between the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens. It was an excellent game, won by the Patriots in the final seconds following a failed field goal by the Ravens that would have tied the game and sent it into overtime.
Before the game there was the obligatory over-produced, flamboyant singing of the National Anthem. This time it was sung by Steven Tyler who regaled a large New England crowd and a huge national television audience with an absolutely terrible rendition. (As one post-game critic put it, "If he’d been auditioning for ‘American Idol,’ he wouldn’t have made the cut.") Anyway, as Tyler was winding down, there was a "fly-over," not of the usual three or four jet fighter planes, but a single unmarked, dark, mysterious, very large, what seemed to me like, cargo plane. But whatever it was, no question, the thing was big. As the plane lumbered off into the overcast sky, the camera panned to a close-up of the face of Tom Brady, the Patriot’s all-pro quarterback, as he looked skyward, and then to the team’s monster star tight end, Rob Gronkowski, who could be seen mouthing the word, "Wow."
Right. Wow. But there’s not much news in that, is there? Patriotism, military prowess, and sports, particularly violent sports, all coming together for a glorified patriotic celebration in the middle of one of America’s favorite pastimes, professional football, is nothing new. (And what did you say is the nickname of the New England team again?) It’s been true for years. It’s just one of many of the constant reminders that we live in a warrior culture, that we are a warrior nation. And I’m not referring to "warrior" in the good, archetypal sense.
I was reminded of our obsession with patriotism earlier that Sunday upon reading a feature article in the Traverse City Record-Eagle. The Record-Eagle, if you’re not familiar with it, is a pretty fair newspaper for a small town but, like everyone else in this part of the Midwest, it too is enamored with patriotism and everything military, real or imagined. For example, at the mere drop of the hat it will run a long, front-page spread about what I call "war nostalgia." You can always count on it on Memorial Day, the Fourth of July, Veterans Day, and Labor Day, but also on days commemorating Pearl Harbor, the Battle of the Bulge, the Normandy invasion, as well as the Civil War, World War I, the Viet Nam War, and our current wars. And I’ve left some out. Really. Think of a way to ennoble a war, a battle, or a military skirmish of whatever kind, and the Record-Eagle will be there.
The article of which I speak was comprised of several short items, the first of which was entitled, "Grateful Citizens Salute Army Veteran." Here it is in its entirety (the name of the subject of the article is changed):
"John Doe, of Traverse City, wears his Army hat everywhere. He’s a veteran of World War II, serving in Hiroshima and Nagasaki from 1945 to 1947. He had it on in Glen’s on East Eighth Street before Christmas when a young girl thanked him for his service. He finished his shopping, only to have the cashier tell him his groceries were already paid for. Later he went to Applebee’s with his wife and a neighbor. They all ordered shrimp dinners ($9 each) and coffee, and a fellow diner paid the bill."
"I’m proud of serving our country," Doe said. "And I guess others are grateful, too."
Being a contrarian, my reaction to this story is that I feel very sorry for Mr. Doe. Imagine, wearing your Army hat everywhere 65 years after the war ended. Not only is that sad in itself but, according to the story, Mr. Doe didn’t even serve during the fighting part of the war. You either remember or know from the history books that we dropped a couple of rather dreadful bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and 9 of 1945, that the Japanese surrendered on August 15, and that we didn’t enter mainland Japan in any numbers until September. At that point, the Japanese people were thoroughly beaten, annihilated really. There wasn’t any more fighting, certainly not in Japan. Which is to say, the war was over before Mr. Doe began his military service.
Actually, since I think it’s a little strange for a guy to wear his Army hat 65 years after the fact, I would have felt a little squeamish even had Mr. Doe been in combat on Guadalcanal, Tinian Island, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa, or had fought aboard one of our ships or planes in the Battle of Midway, the Coral Sea, or the Philippine Sea. But, fortunately for him, he just missed those engagements. In Japan in the fall of 1945, the real danger was becoming infected by the radiation left by the bombs we’d dropped. The role of the military at that time was not fighting a war but doing police and administrative work, the work of post-war occupation; this is not to say that it was unimportant but that it was less like fighting a war than it was like working a job. At the time, those military jobs weren’t any more dangerous than the ones held down by the fathers of some of my friends back in Indiana in the Gary steel mills.
But yes, I am grateful in a way that Mr. Doe was there to do whatever he did in Japan. I would have felt a lot better, however, had he not worn the hat the other day and, upon being asked about his WWII experience, he had said something like: "Me? I really didn’t do much. Heck, I got there when it was all over. If you want to express your gratitude, express it to the guys who were in combat on Guadalcanal, Tinian Island, Iwo Jima, or Okinawa, or on a ship or a plane in the Battle of Midway, the Coral Sea, or the Philippine Sea." Had he done that, I would have been a little less uncomfortable celebrating his military service.
The point is that, in an era of unending American exceptionalism, unusual, excessive forms of patriotism are not only accepted, but honored.
Why? Why the hell do we do that?
