'Murica vs. America and why the World Cup team helps me reclaim my patriotism

If you’ve been living under a rock, or you were a late adopter of The Beatles because of their suggestive haircuts, then you still might be insisting that Americans will never care about soccer. Let this sink in: America has had the most fans travel to this World Cup in Brazil of any visiting country. And while Lebron and Carmelo decide what city they want to underachieve in next year, your national soccer team is currently embodying the very best of our country while inflicting panic and self-doubt in the hearts of the would-be futbol superpowers of Europe (with a nod to other New World teams that are doing the same). And if you can appreciate this sort of thing, underneath the global spotlight, they are doing it with an integrity and style that goes a long way toward distancing the country we love from ‘Murica.

Some Americans busy not caring about soccer.

‘Murica, if you’re wondering, is a highly misogynistic, nationalistic, anti-immigrant, anti-other, petty, quivering mockery of a country whose big lifestyle and stockpile of deadly force does little to cover up his sad little insecurities—insecurities that developed largely in response to the outlandish vision of his alter-ego, the United States of America.

The United States of America, on the other hand, is a beautiful yearning. She is a precious dream, tirelessly pursued if never fully realized, of a door flung wide open, saying, “Give me your tired, your poor;” come to me if your own people think you a wretch and a burden and I will give you a place and a name equal to any other. The USA is a burgeoning hope that there are no classes or castes so thoroughly at odds that they can’t stand around the same grill. It’s a notion that would be dismissed at once if it weren’t so irrepressibly delightful—that John Adams and jack-tar might even do a jig together if they could just belly-up to the same bar (those interested, check out John Beckman's American Fun, a sort of people's history alternative to the usual narrative about how our nation's identity is rooted in Calvinist princiblah, blah, blah). 

We’re not sure if ‘Murica wasn’t coddled enough as an infant or what, but he has always been afraid of this vision. The world is not a trustworthy place through his eyes. Rather than just enjoy some cantaloupe and lemonade with some new friends, he spends his time building big walls and peeking around corners to keep out some new boogeyman that’s always out to take what he has. A mess of trembling nerves, he stockpiles “defenses,” mocks the weak, despises the effeminate, and blusters aggressions until, ironically, a real enemy is created in an ever-repeated, self-fulfilling prophecy. Having made the boogeyman, ‘Murica forever points to him as proof that there was, after all, something to fear.  

‘Murica was born of the same womb as the USA. There is part of him that wants to trust the dream. But his paranoia gets the best of him. He feels he must pull the trigger or his enemy will first. His worldview becomes a mess of internal contradictions. This is the tragic comedy of a certain compatriot whose bumper sticker I marveled at yesterday. By trying to make “Pro-God” and  “Pro-Life” synonymous with “Pro-Gun” by simple proximity, he has only put them into starker relief in an unwitting satire that Voltaire or Kierkegaard could not have invented.

Needless to say, ‘Murica has no soccer team. But the USA does.

It’s been said that the reason the US soccer team is so fun to watch is because seeing them play is a glimpse into the USA in its earliest and most idealistic days before the dream had grown jaded and drunk on power and influence. This is not the side of American history that has been marred by slavery and empire building. This is an American ideal, a glimpse of the America that social reformers in 18^th and 19^th century England and France used to romanticize because, unlike their own societies, we have no “noble” or “peasant” but only persons. Here, guys with names like Dempsey, Gonzalez, Jones, Jóhannsson, and Wondolowski play side by side without thought of class or status. Here, there is no ethnic qualification to be a part of the vision. The only races that matter are the many footraces that the one will seek to win for the betterment of the many.

In soccer, on the world stage, we are not the world superpower with a knack for self-justification and a twitchy trigger finger. In soccer, we have no brand name superstars for whom the joy of the game is only as great as the next endorsement deal. In soccer, we are the America that won’t succeed on individual gifts alone, and no advantages have been handed to us by accident of birth. We’re just a scrappy group of dreamers who want to believe that the future can be different than the past.

In soccer, geo-political roles revert back a few centuries. We are entitled to nothing and privileged nothing. We are the refuse, the have-nots, the riffraff of the old world. They would just as soon see us die of exposure somewhere in the Amazon than have to expend more resources extinguishing this naïve new vision of a world without class.   

No more space needs to be wasted showing that the so-called “Christian nation” of ‘Murica was never anything but a contradiction in terms.

But the United States of America is a vision with which my Christian faith can reconcile. The two are not and never will be synonymous. My identity as a Christ follower is one that transcends nationality and reserves the right to critique my cultural narrative as I am doing now. But the reign of God vision for the world, which is my primary commitment, need not be synonymous with the ideals of my national heritage in order for the two to live in the same house. Mine is a faith that can get with the “give me your tired, your poor” narrative—that is, what’s right about the American dream—if it’s an earnest one. Mine is a faith that can work side by side with anyone, whatever their background or creed, who believes that there needs to be in this world a place where the doors are flung open wide for outcasts and miscreants, those dreamers who believe that any class distinction can be overcome and any past division “United.”