why soccer? why now? because millennials.

There is a brilliant scene in the Mel Brooks’ western spoof, “Blazing Saddles” that, I believe, helps explain the cultural shift that the United States is experiencing right now. Couldn’t explain the context if I wanted to, but the long and short is that the viewer initially thinks the scene is set in the dusty main street of a typical western town, until, as only Mel Brooks can do, the camera zooms out to reveal that we are actually seeing a movie within a movie. What appeared to be a dusty town in the wild west was actually a soundstage lined with cheap, two-dimensional facades that only look like buildings on the face.

This is what has happened to the myth of American exceptionalism in the time it has taken the millennial generation to come of age. People from all generations but, I suggest, especially Millennials have walked around to the backside of the exceptionalism façade and seen that there is nothing there. If we have seen behind the façade and put the lie to the myth that America is innately more faultless, more inventive, more industrious, and in all ways superior to the rest of the world, it should not be credited to us as some profoundly clever insight. Anyone could have seen it all along. Many chose not to.

Whether one is disposed to believe in American exceptionalism or not has little to do with his or her own talent for critical thought and everything to do with how much he or she stands to gain from believing in it. It is a claim so sweeping and unjustified that it almost begs to be deconstructed with little mental exertion, but one is far more likely to deconstruct it if one is sixty thousand dollars in student debt, has worked two or three unpaid internships to even be considered for a job with a livable salary, and has too much life-expectancy to pretend with the rest of one’s society that ecological choices don’t have consequences.

So it’s not  that Millennials are particularly gifted at seeing through facades. They have simply run out of time to believe that which, deep down, we all knew was a lie but which was too convenient of a lie to reject.

This is why I believe it’s not mere happenstance that America has suddenly embraced soccer. This world cup has drawn more American viewers than either the concurrent NBA finals or the 2013 World Series. And, contrary to the view of naysayers who claim that this spike in popularity is only a quadrennial phase that we go through and that it means nothing, the MLS has grown from 10 to 19 teams in just 18 years with plans to grow to 24 by 2020. That is lightning fast in the world of professional sports. Yet, rather than seeing its talent pool diluted by this expansion, the league continues to lure big name players across the pond closer and closer to their prime while, conversely, seeing it’s own home growns have increasing success in Europe. And I’d venture that far more Americans are familiar with the Ronaldo of Real Madrid in Spain than were familiar with the former Brazilian top player of the same name not ten years ago.

That this seemingly neutral change in entertainment preferences points to a cultural shift that is much larger than itself is attested to not just by those who have joined the global party but by the almost violent reaction of those, like Ann Coulter, who haven’t. Undaunted by the danger of parodying herself, she calls the embrace of soccer a “sign of the nation’s moral decay.”

Few but Ms. Coulter, mind you, would suggest that a sport can carry a certain low moral value that’s not based on its inherent violence, its gratuitous use of resources, and its potential for injury—all things that she considers soundly moral and American. But here is my point: the things that the exceptionalist mindset finds most repulsive have become some of the deepest yearnings for those who have allowed themselves to walk behind the façade—maybe the majority of Millennials.

To the exceptionalist who continues to purposely believe the lie told in the street between wild western facades, it’s a mark of superiority to speak only one language to which the rest of the globalizing world must adapt. But to the one standing in the emptiness behind the façade, being monolingual is a cause for embarrassment.

To the exceptionalist, embracing a game that was first embraced elsewhere would be a capitulation of America’s presumed uniqueness. But behind the façade, it seems more likely that the other seven billion people who love futbol are onto something.

To the exceptionalist, a new sex-symbol for men who is as clean-cut, skinny, and immaculately dressed as your average European footballer is an offense to a commercially crafted image of manliness that is supposed to be drawn to bacon cheeseburgers that require you to "man up" and gas-guzzling trucks that are “built Ford tough.” But behind the façade, one sees the deep insecurities sitting just beneath that type of obsessive masculinity.

For the same reason, to the exceptionalist, a game described as “beautiful” should not be a draw for a purposely misogynistic worldview that is deeply troubled when males show any hint of effeminacy. But behind the façade, one wonders if it’s really our effeminacy that has caused so many problems in the world.

To the exceptionalist, Americans, by definition, cannot and should not learn from or adopt anything that first developed elsewhere. But behind the façade, one wonders if a little more humility and worldliness is such a bad thing.

It’s not accidental that soccer has found its moment in the states. I sense in our culture not just the love of a good party but a deep yearning to not be so exceptional anymore, if it should continue to isolate us from the world community.

That, and I love soccer.

'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.”