Many students, even student leaders, these days take a flippant, dismissive stance toward patriotism, myself included. I think it's a backlash against the overly patriotic middle-aged people we were all around after 9/11. These days the hyperpatriotism of our fathers has mostly died down aside from the occasional crazy conspiracy theorist who thinks the Jews or Santa Claus or every Muslim ever including Barack Hussein Obama was really behind 9/11 and that America is the only safe place in the world or whatever. Despite the relatively less patriotic scene in America these days, student pride in our country isn't nearly as high as it used to be due to the way most of the rest of the world hates us as well as the tanking economy and endless war in Iraq and everything else that has gone wrong over the last several years.
Despite the lack of patriotism usually found in students, I've noticed that there is something that has gotten most everyone excited to be an American again: the Olympics.
If Facebook statuses are any indication, most of my friends, even the ones who aren't sports fans, watch the Games as much as possible to see our best athletes kick the crap out of the rest of the world. The men's 4x100 meter freestyle relay on Sunday night was the catalyst, I think, and would have been an excellent cap to our Olympics this year had it happened later on in the Games. After the amazing comeback by Phelps and Phriends, a lot of my friends reacted with such intelligent remarks as “eat it, France” and other colorful language. I only read descriptions of the event and thought, okay, that's kinda cool I guess. I watched the race the next day on NBC.com and found myself on the edge of my seat, arms raised in triumph even though I knew what happened. Fellow SL blogger Steve and I watched Michael Phelps dominate some scrubs in some swim meet last night and I felt we really bonded as Americans. I guess what we can learn here is that it may be hip to say America blows and we should all move to Canada or France, but after watching our best beat everyone else (except the Chinese at diving and gymnastics, sheesh those folks are ridiculous), living here and enjoying it is still pretty cool.
The man responsible for renewing college students' faith in America, ladies and gentlemen.
You and Steve seem to be really synchronized today (har har). Sadly, I didn't even realize the Olympics were happening until about an hour before I read your posts. But now that I know, I am pretty psyched about it (though I never know whether my loyalties should lie with my current hometown - USA - or my original hometown - Ukraine; I usually just cheer for whoever's winning).
But regarding pride - I think it's a really interesting topic, and I think many schools pour lots of time and money into it. From what I hear, it's a really big deal for colleges with big, fancy sports teams and those letter jackets. At Hunter, we don't have much Hunter pride, and it probably contributes to the bleh attitude many students have about it. No body bothers to brain wash us into thinking we're awesome. I wonder to what extent that changes the college experience.
Posted by: Tania | August 12, 2008 at 09:35 PM
Rooting for whoever's winning and rooting for America are mutually inclusive.
Posted by: Mike Sharp | August 13, 2008 at 01:53 PM
nice one.
Posted by: Tania | August 16, 2008 at 12:06 AM