The World Cup has made it okay for everybody to be ludicrously patriotic, Americans included

Ellie Attebery via Flickr

I know a guy named Doug who was once terrified of French Canadians. When he was in college, he took a long road trip with my brother and another roommate, and the three of them drove from Ohio State to Maine by swinging through Montreal. Everybody had different jobs on the trip. Doug had to pump the gas.

My brother was driving, and Doug was sleeping, and late at night somewhere in Quebec, just before they hit the Maine border, they stopped at a gas station. My brother went into the store and had a proposition for the 20-something clerk. Will you scream at our friend in French? It would mean a lot to us.

My brother went back out to the van and woke Doug up and told him there was a problem with his card, and that he needed to go in and pay. I’m not getting out of the van, Doug said.

Finally, my brother got him into the convenience store. My brother hid in the candy aisle as the clerk unloaded on Doug with a torrent of loud French. Doug turned white.

After a moment, Doug sheepishly asked the clerk if he spoke English, and the clerk started laughing and Doug stopped trembling. He paid for the gas, and everybody went on their way.

It’s not so much that Doug was afraid that people would be waiting at the Quebec province line with pitchforks or sharpened fleur-de-lis, it’s that he was worried of what they thought of us. That we’re arrogant. That the Stars and Stripes represented the loudest stereotypes that we can think of. Basically, that we’re assholes.

Watching the throngs of red white and blue in Brazil during the World Cup makes me think of that story, and what people there must think of us. The world’s biggest soccer tournament always seems to put American fans in a tough spot. For one thing, the United States is a clear underdog. We’re never the underdog. Not in the sports that matter the most to us. Sure, Kenyans can run a hell of a marathon and Norwegians pretty much dominate anything that’s, uh, Nordic. But basketball? At the Olympics? We’ve got that. Baseball? Still pretty good. Football? Son, we’re so good, they won’t even LET us in the Olympics.

But at soccer, we’re inexplicably bad for our size. We’ve tried to write this off in the past by saying people don’t care about soccer. That excuse no longer works. In 1974, only 103,432 kids played in youth soccer leagues. Today, that number is higher than 3 million. It’s no surprise, then, that the English Premier League is now becoming regularly scheduled TV on even bigger networks (goodbye, $8.99 digital tier, hello NBC!). FIFA says 200,000 World Cup tickets were sold in the United States this year, second only to the host country Brazil. And more than 25 million Americans watched the United States tie Portugal in the group stage in this year’s World Cup. That’s huge, but it makes sense. It’s much easier to focus on one team, playing one sport, one game at a time. Hence, we’re sticking out our chests after emerging from the Group of Death with a grin. It’s exciting. We weren’t supposed to do this. Being consistently good is boring. Being better than you’re supposed to be makes you tingle.

And so, I was caught in the afterglow after the United States lost their way into the knockout round with a 0-1 defeat at the hands of Germany. I needed to post something to show my joy. I chose this:

I don’t know why I chose Hacksaw Jim Duggan. It felt clever. Sort of funny. But not too funny. I almost posted #merica along with it, but stopped short. I don’t think I’m a hipster, but ‘merica felt too on-the-nose. Too easy. Too mainstream.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly where something like this starts, where a bit of irony becomes a meme. Some people seem to think #merica is a bastardization of LBJ’s Texas drawl. Know Your Meme seems to think it started as ‘murica on a Democratic message board in 2003. The Bush presidency helped. It became more popular in 2004 with the release of marionette-powered Team America: World Police, a movie in which the theme song comes to a conclusion by just listing American things followed by “fuck yeah”:

Starbucks, FUCK YEAH!
Disney World, FUCK YEAH!
Porno, FUCK YEAH!
Valium, FUCK YEAH!

And so today, #merica has turned into a winking expression of American Exceptionalism, a bacon eatin’, Silverado drivin’, Sarah Palinin’, not apologizin’, no compromisin’ carnival of mildly amusing anecdotes. Do you have a photoshopped picture of something riding a bald eagle? That’s #merica. A painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware with an AR-15 in his hands? #MERICA. A t-shirt featuring monster truck driving up the back of a cartoonishly well-endowed woman in a swimsuit, bent over as to avoid two bolts of lightning? MER. I. CA.

This World Cup? Pretty much #merica. If you track hashtags, an imperfect way people choose to categorize what they post, #America is more popular than #merica on most days. But on the three days when the United States has played, #merica spikes on Twitter. So does its older cousin, #murica:

One note here: #USA is the Twitter-preferred hashtag, which has been in the million-tweet range during the USA’s world cup games. And a search for America sans-hashtag shows the term comes up more often in tweets than the hashtagged #America.

We should have seen this coming, really. The World Cup is a cornucopia of nationalism aggregated neatly into two hour segments. FIFA controls the video feed that broadcasters all across the world use to air the games, and they need quick visual ways to convey where a fan is from and who he or she is rooting for. Therefore, here is a giant birdman dressed in the colors of the Colombian flag. Here is woman with soul-piercing Brazilian flag contact lenses. Here is a screaming German child.

So yeah, there are plenty of bite-sized stereotypes to consume. We have to compete. Americans in Brazil and at bars are wearing red-white-and-blue bandannas, tank tops, sunglasses and (ew) jorts. That’s how we choose to show we love our team. Even if our intent is pure pride in Howard, Dempsey and Altidore, it feels… ironic. The problem is, for so long, our brand of nationalism has been Toby Keith. It’s been shirtless dudes at NASCAR races. It’s been retired people in Florida wearing sequined American flag hats. If it’s not in connection with our troops, it’s gotten kinda corny. That’s what #merica used to be: something to add to “smh” whenever you ran across a picture of someone in a Wal Mart wearing something no human should wear. But now that pride in an American soccer team is so high, there needs to be a way to express this feeling without going full-Lee Greenwood. And that is what #merica has become, done with a wink and a link to a picture of Clint Dempsey riding an eagle while waving a flag:

These colors don’t run. They pun.

There are now almost 2.5 millon pictures on Instagram tagged with #merica, and while it’s still something that can represent the worst of America, it can also represent the best. For every picture of a guy dressed like Apollo Creed, there now seems to be a picture of a girl with red white and blue nails. For every picture of a dude in camo holding up an over-sized bass, there are picture of fireworks displays. Some people are posting pictures thanking our troops and tagging them with #merica. Yes, the sarcasm-to-seriousness ratio is still quite high. But #merica is starting to turn into a term of genuine gratitude. It’s a battle cry instead of a sigh. That’s quite a turn.

I called up Doug the other night. He’s married now, a police officer, and lives with his wife and some horses. I asked him about his trip through Quebec, and he laughed. He knew what story I wanted to hear.

He doesn’t remember where he got it in his head that French Canadians hated Americans, but it just felt like it should be true. It fit the narrative, that abroad, you had to be humble. You couldn’t be too #merica. Doug is still a little hesitant of Quebec. But he’s changed. And thanks to the World Cup, maybe we have too.

North Carolina Rabbit Hole

When America became #merica

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