June 27, 2008

The other night I went to a Pawsox game with some friends. As has been the case at stadiums throughout the country since September 11, the seventh inning stretch featured a rendition of 'God Bless America.'

Look: I like the song as much as anybody. Indeed, unlike our national anthem, 'God Bless America' is really positive and stirring and doesn't celebrate war. It's a beautiful song.

However, the seventh-inning stretch is something that each stadium has traditionally celebrated in its own way. At Tiger Stadium, they'd always play "Thank God I'm a Country Boy," for some reason. They probably still do at Comerica Park.

After September 11th, and particularly during the world series of 2001 (in which the New York Yankees played), it became common for stadiums to play 'God Bless America' during the seventh-inning stretch, either in place of or in addition to whatever it was that stadium used to play. This is fine—temporarily. But can we please decide when this can come to an end? Is 'God Bless America'  being played in recognition of the Iraq War? The War in Afghanistan? Or is it for the never-ending "Global War on Terror?"

There is a time and place for openly manifested group-oriented displays of patriotism. What I object to is the extent that these public and semi- obligatory displays of patriotism have crept into our lives in ways that would have been unfathomable before September 11th.

Most of us have shaken our heads clear of post-September 11th panic and fear. But many elements of it remain. The flack Barack Obama received for not wearing an American lapel pin is one example. Military fly-overs at big games are another example. The American flag patches on NCAA basketball players come to mind, as do the air force jets that buzz my parents' cottage on Lake Michigan while 'patrolling' the Great Lakes. All of them are reminders: we are at war, people! We are all a part of this!

Except we're not all a part of this. Indeed, separating the voting, better-educated, better-connected parts of society from those people who are actually doing the fighting has been a strategy of the Bush administration since September 11th. Our job was to shop, to get the economy moving again. Okay, George! No problem, whatever you say!

No wonder Bush was so popular then.

If people in this country want to get serious about not forgetting the troops and the fact that we are at war, then they should instate a draft and bring some equality to a deplorable situation in which the poorest and most poorly-connected are sent to fight in the interests of the oil companies. That, I think, would bring an end to the war very quickly.

Playing 'God Bless America' endlessly makes me feel that I, along with everyone else, am being asked to put myself on a war footing, but only in a civilian way: by shutting up, standing up, taking off my hat and, for the second time in about two hours, prove my patriotism.

I think that we can prove our patriotism by, at the very least, sending our troops into battle with decent equipment, not stop-lossing them, giving them first-class medical and psychiatric treatment, increasing their benefits, and through countless other tangible measures (immediately beginning a withdrawal from Iraq would actually be my highest preference). The screaming airplanes and mandatory displays of patriotism I can do without.