here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\nLast year I returned to my alma mater, Kansas State University, for a football game. Manhattan, Kansas, floats on a sea of prairie grass at the junction of the Big Blue and Kansas Rivers, a good ten miles from the nearest interstate. K-State was the first land-grant institution west of the Mississippi. Under the Morrill Land-Grant Act of 1862 (signed by President Lincoln), the US Government gifted federal land, once part of the Kansa Indian reservation, to the state of Kansas. The state sold off the land to finance the building of a school. My wife and I drove our two boys around the campus, tailgated with family, and walked into the stadium just in time to witness a K-State pregame tradition called the Ceremony of Allegiance.<\/span><\/p>\nFans were asked to stand and remove their hats, and then the public address announcer began the ceremony with a dramatic reading of lines from the preamble to the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence. A marching band underscored the sense of reverent patriotism by accompanying the man with iconic themes of Americana\u2014\u201cBattle Hymn of the Republic,\u201d \u201cMy Country \u2019Tis of Thee,\u201d \u201cAmerica the Beautiful.\u201d The reading culminated in a recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance. I don\u2019t mean that the announcer read the pledge; I mean that the entire stadium recited the pledge to flag and country in unison and with gusto, like a massive classroom of buzzed elementary kids. I remember wondering if I was the only one thinking, Why the hell are we reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at a football game?<\/em> I suppose that if any descendants of the Kansa people were in attendance that day, they might have had a similar thought.<\/span><\/p>\nThe music swelled and then faded to the staccato of a single snare. The crowd stood fixed in rapt attention. It struck me like something out of a war movie\u2014the climatic drum roll before the drop of the gallows or the command to charge the enemy. Finally, the announcer broke his silence and invited us to join in singing the national anthem.<\/span><\/p>\nIn case you didn\u2019t catch my cynicism, I must confess that I\u2019m somewhat conflicted about my American identity. It\u2019s not that I don\u2019t love my country. I do. But I don\u2019t go in for the sentimental God-and-country shtick. I don\u2019t sing the national anthem or say the pledge. I stand and take off my hat mostly to avoid being harassed, but I don\u2019t put my hand over my heart. When my sons are next to me, I whisper, And now for a moment of forced patriotism<\/em>. I\u2019ve taught them to insert don\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>after the word I<\/em> in the pledge, although I\u2019m pretty sure they ignore me. Patriotic rituals of this kind are my least favorite part of attending a game.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd yet there was something compelling about that moment. Over fifty thousand corn-fed red-state football fans, decked out from head to toe in purple and white, belted<\/em> the national anthem in full voice. It was stunning. I turned my head to listen to the front and then behind. Everyone was singing.<\/span><\/p>\nAs if on cue, when we reached the line about the rockets\u2019 red glare, the colossal choir seamlessly shifted into two-part harmony, a good twenty thousand altos demonstrating this wasn\u2019t their first visit to Bill Snyder Family Stadium. The sound brought tears to my eyes. It was aesthetically beautiful. It\u2019s a rare treat to hear such a substantial choir singing with such passion. But it was also unnerving and ominous in a Leni-Riefenstahl-Triumph-of-the-Will<\/em> kind of way.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Ceremony of Allegiance, which concluded with the singing of the K-State \u201cAlma Mater\u201d and fight song, had all the elements of public worship: standing in reverence, removal of hats, reading from the sacred texts, recitations of liturgy, and hymns of praise. It was all there\u2014a civic worship service meant to consecrate the game. The message of this worship was that we are exceptional. Our school is exceptional. Our state is exceptional. We are Americans, and America is exceptional.<\/span><\/p>\nContinue reading\u2026<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You can always tell what the sacred cow is\u2026 Colin Kaepernick is getting crushed for his (rather tame) symbolic act of civil disobedience.\u00a0The timing is interesting for me because an article I\u2019ve written for The Other Journal, in which I write about my own experience of the national anthem at a football game, went live […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1118,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1592,1591,1593,744,1595,1239,1596,1598,1597,1590,1594],"class_list":["post-5191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-colin-kaepernick","tag-competition","tag-empire","tag-football","tag-kansas-state-university","tag-liturgy","tag-national-anthem","tag-nationalism","tag-patriotism","tag-sport","tag-the-other-journal"],"yoast_head":"\n
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<\/a>You can always tell what the sacred cow is\u2026 Colin Kaepernick is getting crushed for his (rather tame) symbolic act of civil disobedience.\u00a0The timing is interesting for me because an article I\u2019ve written for The Other Journal<\/em>, in which I write about my own experience of the national anthem at a football game, went live this morning. It\u2019s called \u201cWe\u2019re Number One: Sport as the Liturgy of Empire.\u201d In it I talk about the way sport habituates us into\u00a0the myth of American exceptionalism. Below is\u00a0an excerpt from the article. You can read the full text here<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n