Recently I’ve been feeling patriotic, which is strange. I've always disliked authority, always sided with the underdogs. Patriotism always seemed a far too obvious choice. Plus, in the United States, it seems irrevocably tied to an anti-intellectual, conservative worldview, which is not in line with my upbringing. Maybe I've spent too much time abroad.
The other day a Babe Ruth picture nearly brought me to tears. He’s sitting in the stands. The seats directly around him are empty and he’s dressed in a three-piece suit. A far cry from the Yankees Bambino that drank beer between innings and waddled out of the dugout only to hit 410 foot home runs, here is a quiet, concerned spectator. One leg rests over the other and his hands are folded in quiet respect on his knee. It's a picture of vulnerability: someone trying to witness and understand what bought him the seats he's sitting in, and the clothes, and the solitude. He looks so embarrassed you feel he really must love the game.
The same feeling grabbed me during an NBA post-game show. The white communications major deferring to the black analyst, the former player, the former food-stamp beneficiary. There was such ease in the exchange. Tell me your story, he seemed to say. It was a nod to history. Harmony. Two hosts.
Then it struck me again, this time as I watched the commercials during a Bulls game from 1986, Michael Jordan's rookie year.
Alka Seltzer. No matter what shape your stomach is in, when it gets out of shape, take Alka Seltzer. Better than any other antacid. Better than anything you can get without a prescription. Anything. Alka Seltzer. It’s the best.
And then a commercial which appeared to have been financed by the Arizona Department of Tourism.
When hay fever pollen invades your sinuses, brings runny nose and watery eyes, take Dristan. Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona. Yes. Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona. When pollen causes hay fever misery, don’t wish you could be in sunny, dry Arizona. Just remember: Dristan is like sending your sinuses to Arizona.
There was something refreshing about the language. It was bold, direct, not yet the post-commercial world where people try and make themselves appear to be everything, anything, but what they are. It was unequivocal, unashamed. It was so...American.
Even the McDonald's commercial was fascinating. Ronald McDonald wore a cheap red wig and ran around hugging kids. You could see the wrinkles under the face paint. It was just a man in a suit, selling burgers. He seemed genuinely happy to do it, which was a relief. What scares people about clowns is their humanness, not the makeup. The emotions being concealed. The falsity.
Because McDonald's isn't trying to sell me hamburgers anymore. They're trying to sell me a lifestyle in which I would eat hamburgers. Ronald is largely absent. If anything, he's a cartoon, sometimes a life-sized cardboard cutout waving goodbye in the restaurant by the door, pushed one more dimension toward abstraction. "Bye!"
I felt like I was beginning to see America for the first time, and I loved it. Were my true colors starting to show? Had I been living a lie? With all I've said in my life about being a liberal, what have I actually done? Sure I've complained, but I didn't vote for Obama, either time. I don't appear to be any more prejudiced than your average person, but I really may be much, much more. Maybe I'm an Opposite Person.
Opposite People have fears that are so overwhelming that they're forced to display the opposite. There are countless models: the ladies man that's afraid of intimacy, the libertarian that's actually uncomfortable with people being free, the hippie, a person who cares so crushingly about what people think of their appearance, they forgo it altogether, and replace it with a form. And of course, there's patriotic people, a group almost uniformly dissatisfied with their respective countries. They say things like, “I’m damn proud to be an American,” yet don't acknowledge the authority of the federal government. They benefit inordinately from government relief, but often, on ideological grounds, refuse to pay taxes. How does this happen? Is it the love of something that’s no longer there, something that never really was more than an idea, that turns people screwy? Why do we attack outward expressions of what we fear we are? It must be something about balance, equalizing some pressure to ensure we never do exactly what it is we want to do.
I've decided it's best, even for a moment, to embrace those things you have spent your life opposing. Basic self denial prevents us from becoming monsters, but maybe it also prevents us from realizing the small truths that exist on our dark sides. Performed too vigorously, self denial will turn you into an Opposite Person.
Some people take drugs to see the other side and I did my fair share of that, but for me, drugs turned out to be just like the commercials. So now I entertain the possibility that they’re right, all my opposites, and the world seems much more sane. What if trickle-down economics is actually the best way? Why don't I pull myself up by my bootstraps? I find myself traveling, but why? What else could I be, in the end, but American?
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