The world showed up, fell in love with ordinary America and reminded us why this country is still worth fighting for.
In today’s America of culture wars, obscene wealth, endless scams, masked terrorists riding public transit, rampant racism, corrupt justices, and feckless office holders, it is easy to hate what one sees and transfer that to others. Or worse, to our country.
When the man at the top of this thumb on the scale, finger in your eye type of public life inserts himself into everything—and I mean everything—and then day-after-day consistently proves that he is incapable of even throwing a decent anniversary party, we too often want to scream. Shut out those who we perceive as supporters of this type of ineptitude and polarization. Assume that the whole thing is not worth saving.
They want you to hate, because in their mind it justifies their hatred. It also takes your eyes away from the corruption.
Just when you thought we’d lost everything, who could have known that a world full of football fans would invade America and help us see what’s right, what’s beautiful, what’s crazy quirky, and most importantly what’s loveable about this country of ours.
Jessica Craven recently posted a link to a piece in The American Pamphleteer newsletter which she introduced by saying “This piece will delight you.” It certainly delighted me. The piece is titled I Was Wrong About the World Cup and I urge you to read the whole thing. As another commentator suggested, have a tissue nearby, because it winds up hitting you in the heart.
After confessing that she thought “the whole spectacle would be a five-week humiliation reel,” the author admits she was wrong:
“. . . what has unfolded instead is one of the sweetest, strangest, most culture-affirming things I have seen in a long time.
It has not felt like an invasion. It has felt like a great big international sleepover where everybody brought a flag, learned one another’s songs, got sunburned, ate too much, cried at midfield and discovered that America is not only the place they see in disaster clips, shooting headlines, political horror shows and social media sneer-posts . . .
We need to see the world come here and find joy in us. We need to see strangers fall in love with our ordinary. We need to see our cities become meeting places instead of battlegrounds. We need to hear other people sing our songs badly and beautifully. We need to watch them eat our ridiculous food and call it wonderful. We need to remember that culture is not just museums and monuments . . .
This World Cup has not fixed America . . . But it has done something I did not expect. It has let us see America loved from the outside.
And sometimes, when you are tired, furious and half-convinced the whole thing is beyond saving, that matters. Sometimes you need to watch a crowd go still for the national anthem and remember why your throat tightens. Sometimes you need to see visitors cheer for our cities, laugh with our people, eat our food and sing our songs before you can feel, again, that this place is not only what has been done to it.
It is also what is still alive in it.
And that’s why we fight.”
In spite of everything we’ve been through since 2016, what the World Cup fans discovered was that the better America still exists. Yes, Donald Trump inserted himself into our lives and instantly killed some of the vibe. As Heather Cox Richardson noted, “a world in which playing fields are level is not the world Trump wants. He wants one in which people in power can ignore the rule of law for their own ends.” He called his friend, another corrupt authoritarian, and worked to get a suspended U.S. player reinstated.
Irony of ironies is that the player he got reinstated, striker Folarin Balogun, is a birthright citizen. Yep, those people that Trump, Stephen Miller, and four justices on the Supreme Court love to hate. Balogun’s Nigerian parents were living in London when they took a trip to New York in the summer of 2001.
“The trip proved fateful. Balogun’s mum was not allowed on the flight home when airline attendants realized she was heavily pregnant, and instead of being born in the English capital, he arrived into the world in Brooklyn, New York on July 3, 2001.
Being born in Brooklyn meant Balogun was automatically granted US citizenship under the country’s birthright citizenship laws—based on the 14th amendment to the US Constitution.”
Consistency of thought is not our president’s strong suit. In this instance Trump acted to make it clear that America’s birthright citizens are crucial to U.S. success. Journalist and lawyer Marcy Wheeler wrote that “If I were Stephen Miller, I would resign on what other people call principle.”
After Trump’s intervention the U.S. Men’s Team lost on Monday night to Belgium 4-1, ending their World Cup run. Unfortunately, we saw that one coming.
But we can see our way through. Just look to the New York Knicks. Donald Trump showed up at Madison Square Garden during the NBA Finals, turned the mood sour, and the Knicks lost their only game in an amazing playoff run. But they recovered—thanks to an otherworldly OG Anunoby tip heard ’round the world—restored the vibe and went on to become NBA champions.
Yes, the world’s going to hate what Trump did in our name to try and rewrite the rules. Those who thrive on hate, from all political perspectives, will tell us that the vibe is lost. But that will pass unless we let it eat us up.
Instead let’s remember that the world has reminded us that there’s still plenty worth fighting for in this country. As Lady Libertie wrote in her post quoted above, love for the promise of our country still matters.
“It matters because Americans have been force-fed contempt for ourselves for years. Some of it we earned. Let’s not get precious. We have real violence here, real poverty, real cruelty, real corruption, real democratic danger. Nobody needs to put a doily over the rot and call it patriotism. That is not love.
But the opposite is just as dangerous.”
Love trumps hate. Always.
More to come . . .
DJB
Photo of DR Congo vs Uzbekistan World Cup Match in Atlanta by Olympic.uz CC via Wikimedia Commons
MORE TO COME... 