On a blustery day in early October 2023, half a dozen volunteers stood outside a street market in Łódź, Poland’s fourth largest city, handing out flyers, stickers, and cherry cakes. We were campaigning for Aleksandra Wiśniewska, a 29-year-old former humanitarian aid worker and political novice, who was running for parliament from the Civic Coalition (KO) list, the largest Polish opposition party. I was her campaign manager.

Unexpectedly, Zbigniew Rau, the Polish foreign minister and a member of the nationalist-conservative ruling party, Law and Justice (PiS), appeared. He interrupted the event and started a shouting match with several other opposition candidates campaigning at the market. Instead of engaging in the melee, Wiśniewska turned her back and firmly spoke to a camera held up by a volunteer.

“Poland deserves a real foreign service. Our ruling party does not represent us,” she said.

Within minutes, the video—uploaded online with the caption “#bazaardiplomacy”—had garnered hundreds of thousands of views.

Just a week later, Polish voters overwhelmingly backed the opposition in the historic elections, ending eight years of PiS rule. The turnout of more than 74 percent smashed all previous records. Ten percent more people voted than during the first partially free elections in 1989, when Poles ended communism at the ballot box. This election compares in significance: It was a case study of how a highly motivated and well-organized opposition can win, even against a ruling party that cheats. For that reason, it deserves to be better understood around the world.

For the past eight years, PiS has eroded media freedoms and undermined judicial independence, moving the country towards authoritarianism. Despite the opposition’s win, the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) noted that “the ruling party and its candidates gained a clear advantage from the misuse of state resources,” meaning that the election was fought on a “tilted playing field”: taxpayers’ money donated by state companies and newly created “foundations” was used to back the ruling party. State-run media, the only broadcast media available in parts of the country, was more than biased. It has been turned into a Goebbelsian propaganda machine that twisted and manipulated video and spewed hatred against the opposition, minority groups, and civil society organizations.

PiS had also passed a series of restrictive laws, including an abortion ban so drastic that women with problem pregnancies died because they were refused abortions that would have saved them. A nationwide women’s strike followed: for many younger women, participation in that march was their first experience of politics. Polling data from election day strongly suggest that young and female voters, many of whom had not voted in the past, propelled the opposition to victory. Four years ago, only 46% of voters under 29 voted; this year, over 68% did.

The success of Wiśniewska—now the youngest woman MP in the parliament—was part of this change. Our team was entirely made up of young people in their 20s. None of us had been involved in Polish politics before. Despite our lack of experience and despite starting from a lower position on the party’s list of candidates, Wiśniewska received more support than four sitting MPs. We showed voters how an innovative, grassroots, and energetic campaign can change the political arena.

Three strategies enabled our success.

The first strategy was our team. Wiśnewska has charisma, international experience, and a compelling story, but the campaign was not only about her. We knew that our potential electorate consisted of many open-minded, young, and curious people who were looking for someone to vote for, but perhaps felt they had been overlooked by politicians or parties. We featured photos, ideas, and profiles of our team members in our online communications.

When we went to early morning markets or stood on street corners handing out flyers, we always went as a team. We spent countless hours on the streets, talking to people, proving that democratic engagement isn’t boring. At our events, we brought together musicians, artists, and other young experts to talk about issues in Polish society. Our idea was to talk about things that younger people care about, and by doing so, show that Wiśniewska was part of a greater movement of younger people who were daring to take the first step into the world of politics. We think that we succeeded because this was true: we were all committed to changing politics and we think we transmitted that commitment to people.

Our second strategy was to stay positive and patriotic.

PiS ran a remarkably nasty campaign. The day we announced Wiśniewska’s candidacy we made national news when PiS media accused our candidate of falsifying her entire life story, as well as insinuating that she was not a “real Pole.” Our social media was inundated with hateful messages. Some particularly aggressive people stopped us on the street, calling us frauds or Germans. But we knew politics would be dirty, and before the campaign started, we had created a social media campaign encouraging young people to be brave and get involved in politics.

We stuck to our strategy, proudly wore Polish flags, didn’t engage in shouting matches, didn’t reply to trolls, and didn’t dwell on the negative campaign of the ruling party. Instead, we focused on our values, urging our voters to vote not based on political promises that particular campaigns made, but based on what kind of people they wanted to represent them in parliament. For us that meant people who promote hope, responsibility, and kindness. We laughed and smiled through every campaign event, emphasizing personal conversations with voters over large rallies. Once again, this succeeded because it was real: We were enjoying ourselves.

Only once, when a prominent PiS activist shared racist memes implying our candidate was in a Russian pornography film, did we retaliate. We went straight to court, and within a week won a defamation case against the activist who had to publicly apologize. We found this was the most impactful way to deal with hate—by standing up for your values and for decency through established checks and balances.

The third strategy is perhaps the most obvious. But bizarrely, it was the one which so many Polish political campaigns lacked.

In order to convince people to vote for you, you have to reach them where they are. And every single young voter is online. We built an around-the-clock social media presence on every platform—Twitter, Instagram, Tik Tok, and YouTube.

We also took advantage of micro-targeted online advertising. Understanding that voters are different also means that you are forced to consider what different groups may need. Campaigns can send different messages—or the same message in different ways—to voters depending on their age, gender, income, neighborhood, or what they like on Facebook. We leveraged publicly available data about historical voting patterns to target particular areas with specific messages. It’s common sense too. Your message and tone to young people attending a music festival is going to differ from your message and tone to older voters and small businesses at an early morning bazaar. On the street, this tone shift is so obvious it is automatic. But it needs to happen online, too, and it allows you to more effectively convince voters that you have the ideas and values that can enact positive change.

Over the next year, voters go to the polls in India, Venezuela, Georgia, and Mexico, all countries run by authoritarian populists. In each of them, young people who want something different will be fighting incumbent parties that tilt the playing field, cheat, or steal elections. In the United States, the incumbent president is not an authoritarian, but in many states, younger, democratic candidates are also fighting in conditions that aren’t as different from Poland as many Americans imagine. They will work inside gerrymandered systems, fight off vicious smear campaigns, and face consistent media bias.

Winning in these conditions is difficult, but as the election in Poland shows, it is not impossible. Success comes more readily to campaigns that look like a team and work like a team, that project a positive message in an overwhelmingly negative atmosphere, and that make full use of the tools available to them.

The post How Poland’s Opposition Won an Unfair Election appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

San Franciscans have Alfred Hitchcock’s Vertigo, a classic film of cinematic heights and existential falls, to define their city by the bay. Los Angeles explains its fundamental fatalism about corruption and power through Roman Polanski’s nasty noir Chinatown.

But San Diego—a beautiful place full of people who have thought and fought for their country—has long had to settle for 1986’s Top Gun, a dumb, jingoistic, and misogynistic Tom Cruise vehicle about Naval aviators, as its cinematic signature. Sure, San Diego played other places in acclaimed films from Some Like It Hot to Citizen Kane (the latter filmed in the city’s Balboa Park). But when it comes to playing and expressing itself, San Diego’s stuck with Top Gun and the 2004 comedy Anchorman, about dumb and misogynistic local TV personalities.

The arrival of a Top Gun sequel—after 36 years—certainly doesn’t solve the problem, even if it is a box office hit. This ludicrous film mirrors American decline, while misrepresenting San Diego in the process.

Top Gun: Maverick is premised entirely on an error of fact, pretending that the eponymous school for Navy fighter pilots operates out of the North Island Naval Air Station.

But the real-life Topgun was relocated from San Diego’s Miramar Naval Air Station to Fallon, Nevada back in 1996, as part of post-Cold War defense consolidation.

It’s not coming back.

Except in the movies—because a vapid and predictable film wants to tap into the magic of San Diego.

Part of that magic lies in the city’s beauty. So, the movie transports audiences not just to the naval base on North Island, but to Point Loma, various parts of Coronado, and Fort Rosecrans National Cemetery. And we also get the tourism-bureau-approved privilege of watching Jennifer Connelly and Tom Cruise sail across the bay.

Another piece of that magic is San Diego’s image as protector of America. San Diego is California’s most American city, a striking contrast to Los Angeles and San Francisco, which see themselves as global metropolises, proudly out of step with the rest of the United States.

While other Californians debate whether to stand for national anthem at all, San Diegans sing the song themselves, often while flying the flag outside their front door. And the longstanding presence of the military provides the city with a deep well of patriotic renewal.

Top Gun: Maverick seeks to mine this well, but ultimately undermines it. When the movie taps into San Diego’s patriotism, it does the city a disservice.

While the original Top Gun was full of memorable, funny one-liners (“I feel the need, the need for speed” and “No points for second place”), the sequel decides to champion the line, “Don’t think—just do.”

The phrase isn’t just clunky. It reads as an indictment of both the film’s idiotic denouement (a Star Wars rip-off, with jets flying through a steep canyon to get off a miracle shot in the climactic moment) and of the United States itself.

“Don’t think” all too perfectly describes a country that thoughtlessly fails to vaccinate or wear masks—and ends up with more than one million people dead from COVID, apparently the highest death tally in the world. “Don’t think” fits an America that responds to gun violence by loosening restrictions on guns, making mass shootings routine. “Don’t think—just do” mirrors the American foreign policy that has kept us at war, in one place or another, for decades.

Pity San Diego, or any place else with a mission of defending such a country. Because so much of the time, to defend America is to defend the indefensible.

Which is why the movie is so unfair to San Diego. While military and aerospace are still highly visible in San Diego, the place is hardly dominated by these industries.

And San Diego actually does quite a lot of thinking.

In the original Top Gun, Cruise’s love interest was a mathematician with a PhD who worked for the Department of Defense; in the sequel, his love interest owns a bar. But San Diego, unlike Cruise’s cinematic partners, has become smarter over the past generation. It’s one of the country’s most educated cities, by measures that combine college degree attainment with the quality of its schools. It’s a leader in inventing new health and medical devices. Its remaining military installations are deeply grounded in science and tech. It’s a force in trade. And it just opened a new trolley line to its leading university, UC San Diego.

The film ignores this context, instead projecting its idiocy onto the city.

That’s too bad. San Diego deserves a cinematic touchstone as smart as it is.

The post <i>Top Gun</i> Is Too Dumb for San Diego appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

The Civil War was a time of great discord, tearing men away from their families and routines, pitting neighbor against neighbor and countryman against countryman. But it unified Americans in at least one crucial way. As illustrated by White’s services at the Confederate prison in Macon, it forged together twin traditions that still resonate in American life today: civil religion—the celebratory, peaceful tradition that unites a chosen nation “under God” that is not linked to any specific religion—and religious nationalism, with its emphasis on blood and sacrifice as guarantees of American success.

It was during the Colonial era that civil religion took root in America. Sociologist Philip Gorski has drawn attention to its emergence in seminal documents such as John Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” speech from 1630, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S. Constitution. All three works define a sense of this budding American civil religion. Winthrop’s speech was a jeremiad specifically intended to chasten sinful listeners, but it also emphasized God’s covenant with the Puritans and a sense that they were a chosen people. The Declaration and the Constitution suggested that what was happening in America was unique, revolutionary, and exceptional. As early as 1777, Americans were commemorating the Continental Congress’ adoption of the Declaration of Independence, as they gathered for Fourth of July celebrations.

By the 1860s, Civil War hospitals and prisons provided fruitful atmospheres for civil religion, too. Chaplains and missionaries flocked to these spaces to minister to men with ample time on their hands and a keen interest in the afterlife, encouraging spiritual development by providing religious education and leading services, prayer meetings, and funeral services. Holidays, in particular, were a time when men fostered a deep connection to the Union. Confederate soldiers demonstrated a similar devotion during fast days, held periodically throughout the war. As remembered by hospital administrator Jane Woolsey in Hospital Days: Reminiscence of a Civil War Nurse, holiday sermons during Christmas (a religious holiday) and Thanksgiving (a civic celebration), filled the air with patriotic motifs such as “Rally Round the Flag, Boys” and “My Country ‘tis of Thee”. White reported that his fellow chaplain Charles Dixon delivered a Fourth of July service that included “warm and holy petitions for the President and the country” and national songs.

One might think imprisoned soldiers would not be receptive to such warm feelings for their country, but Union soldiers reveled in any chance to celebrate the Union—led, in large part, by President Abraham Lincoln, the stalwart defender, and epitome, of Union civil religion. Loved and respected by many Union soldiers when he was alive, Lincoln was revered by them in death. Special services within general hospitals after his assassination attracted large crowds of mourners. Two thousand people met in the open air to celebrate Lincoln’s life at Fort Monroe, Virginia, on the day of the president’s funeral in April 1865.

At the same time, Civil War hospitals and prisons were fertile ground for the growth of religious nationalism, an impulse that had never been a major force in U.S. civic life before. Religious nationalism’s martial undertones resonated with soldiers facing unprecedented high casualty rates, sacrifice and tribulation—including soldiers housed in Civil War prisons. Importantly, it justified the massive scale of death in this conflict, far surpassing that of any other war American had fought to date.

Union Chaplain Charles Alfred Humphreys described the transformation from purely civil religion to civil religion merged with religious nationalism in his memoir, Field, Camp, Hospital and Prison. While imprisoned in Lynchburg, Virginia, Chaplain Humphreys preached to his fellow captives on the Sabbath, reminiscing about religion at home. But instead of hearkening to feasts and celebrations and Lincoln’s comforting equanimity, Humphreys spoke to his audience about the Babylonian Captivity of the Hebrews. He emphasized the “duty of remembering still our country’s cause and serving it by patient endurance of our sufferings—as ‘they sometimes serve who only stand and wait.’” Detained at Kinston, North Carolina, the same Henry S. White who was later to be imprisoned at Macon emphasized the “sacred flag and its noble defenders,” as well as “our personal salvation and holiness.”

These messages, clearly needed in the prison environment, affirmed the reality of suffering but noted that it could be overcome. In a sense, all worldly suffering was temporary, for a Christian hoped to reach heaven. Soldiers also viewed these ideas through a more secular lens. These men were fighting to preserve the Union and their identity as American citizens.

After the Civil War, the twin ideologies continued to expand their importance in the U.S. The post-Civil War North adhered to a civil religion tied to a strong union, while the post-war South clung to the religious nationalism of the Lost Cause. Civil War battlefields became contested through monument building by Northern and Southern groups, valorizing the soldiers on their respective sides. While the North continued to industrialize at a fast rate and the South maintained much of their pre-war agricultural focus, these dueling ideologies gained adherents in the respective sections of the reunited country. By World War I, as U.S. strength was on the rise, the two regional bents unified into a single central ideology motivated by increased militarism and imperialism. Later, with the development of nuclear weapons, religious nationalism shifted away from sacrifice toward apocalypse and sacralization of the military.

While the average American seldom thinks about it today, many present-day patriotic demonstrations—from singing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at sporting events and standing for the Pledge of Allegiance in school to calls for war to protect American interests in another region of the world—share their origins in Civil War hospitals and prisons. America has become a very different place than it was in the 1860s; but the Civil War chaplains would recognize it all.

The post The Civil War Chaplains Who Shaped Modern American Patriotism appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Roosevelt did not extend that consideration to professional football players, whose sport did not register politically. As a result, the NFL nearly shut its doors during World War II. So many players were called to serve that several franchises had to merge. In fact, the league didn’t take off until it closely associated itself with national politics. For the last half-century, the intertwining of American football and politics has sustained both pastimes, and no one played both games more enthusiastically than Richard Nixon.

By the 1960s the United States was involved in a different war, and the politics of sport had changed, nowhere more so than in the nation’s capital. Washington was “a male town, and football is its game … the right metaphor for its politics,” journalist Hedrick Smith wrote. “Not to possess Redskins season tickets spells a fatal absence of status,” observed Mary McGrory, an astute observer of local mores. The Washington Post detailed David Broder, its prizewinning political columnist, to cover a preseason game. The Harris poll named football America’s most popular sport in 1965, the Gallup poll in 1972.

What had changed? The NFL, to grow its business, spent the post-war decades single-mindedly pursuing cultural currency. Under PR-conscious commissioner Pete Rozelle, who took the job in 1960, the effort resembled nothing so much as an advertising campaign: in Rozelle’s mind, “anything that caused people to connect with pro football” would do. Conveniently enough, that’s exactly where politics were heading. “We’re moving into a period where a man is going to be merchandised on television more and more,” a Nixon aide explained to a reporter in 1968.

The NFL published its own books, made its own movies, and eventually sponsored an essay contest officially certified as part of the 1976 bicentennial celebrations. NFL Creative Services’ books depicted professional football as the essential expression of a complex and multifarious America. NFL Films sold viewers a vision of the game as a spectacular, vivid, and heroic showcase for passionate excellence.

The NFL’s intention was to persuade audiences both popular and elite that the sport deserved support because it was quintessentially American, perfectly in tune with the contemporary world, and deserving of solicitude should it encounter any legal roadblocks.

But the NFL never stopped politicking. Its cultural productions went global, usefully extending American soft power while cementing the association between NFL and Americanism.

Politicians benefited as well. Just as the NFL grew more adept at selling itself, so too did political figures begin to cultivate an interest in sports figures. In 1960, the John F. Kennedy campaign “put celebrity-gathering into mass production,” as one veteran consultant put it. A Nixon campaign organizer noted that “round[ing] up practically every All-American here” had helped the Republicans carry California.

Soon every politician was seeking out jocks. In 1968, Bobby Kennedy’s recruiters noted that athletic endorsements paid big dividends because “you are dealing with people who usually get press on their own steam.” Hubert Humphrey directed his campaign toward sympathetic sportswriters, attempted to get an article published in Sports Illustrated on the virtues of competition, and even scooped up Kennedy’s “top recruits” two days after his assassination. “With luck, if Teddy doesn’t run,” they could be enticed to hit the campaign trail for Humphrey.

Politicians across the spectrum hobnobbed with players and coaches, endorsed the campaigns of former players, and exerted themselves to win new franchises for their states. By the mid-70s, the collective intertwining of what one reporter called the “sport of politics and the politics of sport” had become inextricable.

The coziness between football and power rendered lobbying almost unnecessary: Lawrence O’Brien, Lyndon Johnson’s special assistant for congressional relations, recalled “inordinate efforts on behalf of the NFL in the Senate” by Senators in “constant quest…for a franchise location in their state.” No wonder that, when House Judiciary committee chair Emanuel Celler stalled a bill allowing the NFL to bypass the Sherman Anti-Trust Act and merge with the rival AFL in the fall of 1966, the House and Senate majority whips, Louisianans Hale Boggs and Russell Long, schemed to push it through the Ways and Means Committee. All it took was for the NFL to establish a team in New Orleans. “Pro football provides the circus for the hordes,” a disgusted Celler remarked.

In 1973, the House Interstate Commerce subcommittee “rammed through” without debate an NFL-backed measure preserving TV blackout rights for games that had not sold out 72 hours before their scheduled start. That blackout rule created incentives for fans and even cities to buy up unsold tickets. Without a sellout, TV stations would not show the home team’s games.

“It’s not true that Congress is divided, paralyzed, and unable to act with decision and leadership,” the journalist Nicholas von Hoffman acidly commented. “The pro football fans of America will be able to see their teams’ home games this year on television.”

Football on film sold America in ways that politicians liked. NFL Films perfected its craft with its magnum opus, They Call It Pro Football. Made in 1967, the 25-minute documentary neatly served the propagandistic, promotional, and political needs of both the league and the Defense Department. A number of reviews recognized the film’s social significance without fully grasping its extent, one extolling the “beauty and violence of the game—and its impact on the entire country.” At a briefing discussing how to sustain the morale of soldiers in Vietnam, General Creighton Abrams told Defense Secretary Melvin Laird that the men wanted football games.

“These films are important to them,” Abrams said.

“We better call Rozelle up tonight,” replied Laird, who quickly pledged “a two-minute bureaucratic drill” to ensure that the Armed Forces Network provided servicemen with more televised football.

Their bosses enjoyed these movies just as much. Secretary of State William Rogers brought a supply of NFL films on tour to show to foreign diplomats in the Far East in 1969. Air Force One flew an NFL film to Lyndon Johnson’s ranch in Texas, and Nixon later ordered a big-hits special for the White House. NFL Films’ productions were shown at the Continental Hotel in Paris, where homesick fans could savor the national pastime while munching hot dogs. They became a staple of life at military bases and on Navy submarines; and even in Saudi Arabia, where oil companies ordered copies of the films to console “American workers far from home.”

By the 1972 election, the merger between politics and football seemed almost complete. In April 1972, George McGovern announced an athletes’ committee heavy on football players. Its chair, Redskins guard Ray Schoenke, a history major and academic All-American at SMU, had walked into McGovern’s office the previous summer and volunteered his services. Schoenke made himself a one-man political operation. He handed out campaign literature at training camp, obtained rosters from the league office, and worked the phones every night.

But McGovern got crushed by Nixon in what a disappointed journalist panned as “one of the dullest political football games ever played before a nationwide TV audience.” No surprise. He was up against the country’s most football-friendly president.

Richard Nixon was a football fanatic who did the most to turn the game to political ends. Nixon’s connections to the sport ran deep. He frequently credited his coach at Whittier College, Chief Newman, with teaching him never to quit. He officially kicked off his first campaign for president on Whittier’s field before 20,000 roaring supporters and thanked Newman when accepting the Republican nomination in 1968. In his final memoir, In the Arena, Nixon recalled that “I learned more about life sitting on the bench with Chief Newman than I did by getting A’s in philosophy courses.”

He was not averse to putting those lessons to use. Nixon and his staff invoked football and attended games at strategic junctures throughout 1969 and 1970 with clear political intentions.

In November 1969, the administration countered nationwide anti-war marches with “National Unity Week,” featuring flag displays and what a White House memo called “a patriotic theme or event” at halftime of every televised college football game. Nixon told reporters that he was going to spend the Saturday afternoon of the march the right way: “It was a good day to watch a football game.”

The next fall, he kicked off his campaign for a Republican Congress before an enthusiastic crowd at Kansas State by contrasting the school’s football team (good) with youth protest (bad). He followed that up by sharing a podium with Ohio State coach Woody Hayes, celebrating the recently-deceased Vince Lombardi as “an apostle of teamwork,” and accompanying the Secretary of Defense and Wisconsin’s Republican candidates for Senator and Governor to Bart Starr Day, an event honoring the legendary Packer quarterback in Green Bay. A reporter traveling with the campaign found Nixon’s rah-rah approach utterly predictable: “It may be hard for some politicians to reduce a major political campaign to football terms, but not this one.”

In 1971, Newman’s successor at Whittier, George Allen, became coach of the Redskins. Nixon and Allen had supported each other’s endeavors since the 1950s, and the relationship deepened in Washington. Allen campaigned for Nixon and attended White House functions, and Nixon sent Allen a shoebox-full of notes, called him at home, and even attended practice at Allen’s invitation in 1971 to encourage his players.

The 1972 convention ratified what Nixon’s Republican detractors termed “game-plan politics.” “The President likes football analogies, and the relationships of field position and ball control were the essential elements of what the campaign organization tried to do,” the head of his advertising agency explained about the smoothly-run spectacle.

Bart Starr introduced convention chair Gerald Ford, and newly-elected New York Representative Jack Kemp, a former NFL quarterback and “No.1 [political] draft choice,” as a Sports Illustrated reporter following his campaign had described him, gave an “electrifying” speech seconding the nomination of Spiro Agnew. Numerous Republican power brokers nurtured Kemp’s political ambitions for a decade: Herb Klein, Nixon’s communications director, gave him a newspaper column, Reagan and the RNC hired him, and the White House publicly supported (and graced him with a congratulatory phone call after) his first run for Congress.

Despite Nixon’s electoral dominance, football’s triumph wasn’t partisan. No single participant succeeded in cementing a dominant political meaning for the nation’s most popular sport. Instead, football’s popularity provided a new language for politics and debate. Was one candidate trying a Hail Mary with a last-minute attack? Was another running out the clock with a lead? Had miscommunication in the Congressional huddle made a key bill fail? A political scientist complained in 1975 that “the discourse of politics” threatened to be “completely absorbed by the language of sports.”

The NFL, a profit-minded entity, both cultivated and profited from all this political attention. So when Richard Nixon told the crowd at Bart Starr Day that “the 1960s will be described as the decade when football became the No. 1 sport,” that sport’s number-one fan was merely adding a presidential signature to what a broad popular referendum had already decreed.

The post How the NFL and American Politicians Politicized (and Helped Merchandise) Pro Football appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

Patriotism may be defined as a belief in the greatness, if not superiority, of one’s country relative to others. Depending on how one defines the term exactly, somewhere between 85 to 90% of America’s poor are “patriotic.” They would rather be citizens of their country, for instance, than of any other country on Earth, and they think America is a better place than most other places in the world.

This is striking for at least three reasons. First, those are very high figures in absolute terms. Secondly, the corresponding figures for working class, middle class, and upper class Americans are generally lower. And, thirdly, the worst-off in most other advanced nations are also less patriotic than America’s—even in countries where people receive better social benefits from their government, work fewer hours, and have better chances of upward intergenerational mobility than their counterparts in the United States.

Why are America’s poor so patriotic? The short answer is: We don’t know for sure. And we should, because so much depends on the patriotism of poor Americans. Their love of country contributes to social stability, informs and supports America’s understanding of itself as a special place, and is essential for military recruitment. It is also a force that can be tapped into by politicians eager to rally a large contingent of voters.

To understand this patriotism, I spent parts of 2015 and 2016 in Alabama and Montana—two distinctly different states that are both ‘hotbeds’ of patriotism among the poor. I hung out in laundromats, bus stations, homeless shelters, public libraries, senior citizen centers, used-clothing stores, run-down neighborhoods, and other venues. And I interviewed 63 poor Americans of different ages, genders, religious and political orientations, races, and histories of military service.

I came away with three overarching insights.

First, many view the United States as the “last hope”—for themselves and the world. Their strong sense is that the country offers its people a sense of dignity, a closeness to God, and answers to most of humanity’s problems. Deprive us of our country, the people I met told me, and you deprive us of the only thing that is left for us to hang on to.

This feeling of ownership is national and personal. Consider the words of Shirley (all names here are pseudonyms, per my research rules), a 46-year-old unemployed black woman in Birmingham with plans to become a chef: “For me to give up hope on the country in which I live in is almost to give up hope for self. So I gotta keep the light burning for me and for my country or I’m gonna be in the dark.”

That comment connected to a second insight. America appeals to the poor because it is rich. “The land of milk and honey” was a phrase I heard often. The poor see it as a place where those who work hard have a chance to succeed. In my interviews, people separated the country’s possibilities from their own frustrations; many took full responsibility for their own troubles in life. “People make their own life, make their own money the way that they wanna make it and however much they wanna make it,” said Jeff, a white man in a bus station in Billings, Montana.

Many saw this as an American virtue. Here, at least, your failures belong to you. Your chances aren’t taken away by others. “If you fail,” said Harley, a vet now on food stamps, “gotta be bad choices.” This sentiment was articulated with particular frequency by African American interviewees in Alabama—something that particularly struck me, given the legacies of slavery and segregation in that part of the country.

For the same reason, many were confident that the future was about to bring them better things. Several felt that they had just turned a corner—perhaps with God on their side. Rich Americans, they told me, deserve what they have. Besides, they added, look at the rest of the world: They keep trying to come to America. This must be the place to be.

That related to a third source of pride in the nation: America is the freest country on earth. Many of the people I met spoke of feeling very free to come and go from different places, and to think as they wish. America allows people to be as they want, with few preconceived notions about what the good life should look like. Such a narrative took on libertarian tones in Montana.

For some, this included the freedom to be homeless, if they choose. As Marshall, a young, white homeless man, told me in Billings, “it’s a very free country. I mean, I’m actually, I live on the streets, I’m kinda choosing to do that … sabbatical. Nobody bothers me for it; I’m not bothering anybody. I got my own little nook. There are other places in the world where I’d be forced into some place to shelter up or, you know, herded off or … jailed.”

When conversations turned to freedom, guns were often mentioned. Guns give one security and make hunting possible—enabling one to feed one’s self and family. I was accordingly often reminded that Americans rebelled against the English by making guns. Guns equal freedom. And America, thankfully, ensures gun ownership.

Taken together, these conversations helped me understand that the patriotism of the poor is rooted in a widespread belief that America belongs to its people. There is a bottom-up, instinctive, protective, and intense identification with the country. This is a people’s country.

Of course, some of this patriotism is clearly grounded in misconceptions about other countries. One person told me that there are only two democracies in the world: Israel and the United States. Another told me that Japan is a communist country. Yet another that in Germany one’s tongue can get cut off for a minor crime. Many also assumed that other countries are poorer than they really are. But these were almost tangential reflections that further justified—rather than drive—their commitment to the country. They seldom came up on their own unless I asked about the limitations of other countries.

As I completed my interviews and reflected on what I heard from these patriots, I realized that their beliefs about America are not a puzzle to be solved. In America, there is no contradiction between one’s difficult life trajectories and one’s love of country. If anything, those in difficulty have more reasons than most of us to believe in the promise of America.

The post Why Poor Americans Are So Patriotic appeared first on Zócalo Public Square.

If you wish to inspect the front lines of the conflict between Donald Trump and California, head for San Diego.

Yes, it’s true that the Golden State’s fight against the president has so far taken place in the courts and in cyberspace. And, sure, challenging The Donald’s legitimacy is not a mere local pastime but an all-consuming statewide prizefight. But as a matter of geography, culture and economy, the California-Trump War feels more intimate, higher-stakes and potentially destabilizing in greater San Diego.

Embodying the conflict was the recent spectacle of nine-term Republican Congressman Darrell Issa, perched on the roof of his office building in San Diego County, peering down on angry constituents protesting outside. Protestors claimed that Issa, who has tied himself in knots with both pro- and anti-Trump comments, was hiding from them; he said he was taking photos. The vulnerability of Issa, a pugnacious Republican who was entrenched in his district before Trump’s political rise, is just one small sign of how the president’s weird gravity has shaken the region.

What makes Trump’s wild swings land as punches in San Diego? Because the city is more deeply tied to the United States than California’s other big regions. Los Angeles and the Bay Area, global mega-regions, define themselves in opposition to national norms. But San Diego is unapologetically American—“America’s Finest City” being its most durable slogan. And since San Diego is the nation’s biggest border city and home to one of the world’s heaviest concentrations of military power, many San Diegans represent America not just as civic commitment but as professional duty.

But San Diego practices an open and engaged brand of Americanness that doesn’t mesh well with Trumpian isolationism and ignorance. The population of active military and veterans leavens its patriotism with hard-won wisdom about the world. And San Diego, its businesses, and governments have built ever-closer ties to Mexico, encouraging cross-border commuting, considering a binational Olympic bid, and even constructing an airport terminal spanning the border to Tijuana’s Rodriguez International Airport.

And so Trump’s obsession with border security and walls is a threat to San Diego’s daily routine, and aspirations. The president’s increased deportations have inspired widespread fear in communities here, and his rhetoric against cities that don’t use police to enforce immigration laws (San Diego among them) has inspired a poisonous backlash against federal law enforcement. One result could be the unwinding of collaborations between local and federal authorities that are vital to policing this border city.

Further inflaming tensions, the Trump Administration has made San Diego the host of the contest to design the president’s promised border wall. Sometime this month, contestant firms are expected to build samples of their border wall designs in the Otay Mesa neighborhood, likely drawing protests and creating security headaches for the region.

Trump’s bigoted smear of refugees as security threats doesn’t go down well in San Diego, which has an especially strong infrastructure of organizations and institutions that support them. San Diego County has long led California in the number of refugees it takes in. The county has accepted some 15,000 Iraqi refugees since 2009, and has taken in roughly half of all the Syrian refugees who have settled in California.

In San Diego, Trump poses a direct challenge to the economy: Canceling a major new Pacific trade agreement, and threatening to pull out of NAFTA, were not friendly to local exports and importers. And Trump’s stubborn attempts to restrict travel from certain countries are seen as a clear and present danger to San Diego’s massive tourism industry, which attracts more than 34 million visitors a year to everything from the Comic-Con International convention to America’s best zoo.

Trump’s campaign against environmental regulation, and health funding and science funding, isn’t helpful to the area’s many research institutions, top health care providers, and life science companies.  The Scripps Institution of Oceanography is a pioneer in climate science, which Trump has called a hoax. (It was no accident that downtown San Diego saw crowds north of 15,000 people for this spring’s March for Science.)

The litigious Trump should stay out of San Diego courts. He made few friends in the region’s legal community last year with his racist attacks on a Federal District Court Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a San Diegan who is a highly-respected member of the legal community there, for decisions in litigation against Trump University.

For all of Trump’s provocations, opposing a president doesn’t come all that naturally to San Diego, a military town full of service personnel and veterans accustomed to saluting the flag and their superior officers. Trump also has nodded in San Diego’s direction by proposing big increases in defense spending that could be a boon to the military and the area’s many defense-related businesses.

And San Diego’s middle-of-the-road politics—the county’s voters are closely split between Democrats and Republicans—makes dealing with Trump trickier than it is in California’s other, monolithically Democratic coastal cities.

Trump poses a particular quandary for San Diego’s popular mayor, Kevin Faulconer, a Republican who is considered a possible contender for governor next year. Faulconer is not a Trump supporter, in word or deed—he backs comprehensive immigration reform, speaks Spanish, promotes cross-border trade, and touts his city’s Climate Action Plan. But his ambitions will require him to win the support of the small but powerful Republican base of voters who still mostly support Trump. Faulconer and other local Republicans have had to walk a fine line between respecting a president of their party and criticizing Trump’s many affronts to decency and common sense.

The California-Trump war is still young. It’s possible that the president and his self-destructive tendencies will make it easier for San Diego to unite and oppose him with full force. But if the president hangs in and gains traction on his border, immigration, trade, and budget policies, while delivering more money to the region’s defense industry, then steel yourself, San Diego, for very bitter fights in your very beautiful city.

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In saying this, I mean no offense to the patriotic pageantry of Petaluma or Paso Robles. Personally, it is hard for me to acknowledge San Diego’s supremacy in anything. In general, we Angelenos consider it bad form to ever give our baby sister to the south its due as a great city (especially since her international airport is actually in Tijuana). And with regard to the Fourth, I have long been convinced that the perfect Fourth of July is a barbecue in my hometown of Pasadena followed by the big fireworks display above the Rose Bowl—which calls itself, officially, “America’s Stadium.”

What place could possibly top such a Fourth?

San Diego could.

Last year on the Fourth, my wife and kids and I went down to San Diego to visit cousins, and by the end of the holiday the revelation had hit with the force of a cruise missile: San Diego has America’s Finest Fourth of July.

What makes it so special?

It’s not just the fireworks show right there in the harbor, even though it’s the biggest show on the West Coast, televised live not only in San Diego but also in Los Angeles, Santa Barbara, Palm Springs, and even northern Mexico.

And it’s not just the cool breezes that make San Diego one of the most pleasant places in California to spend a hot July day. It’s not just the assets San Diego offers visitors, from the zoo to the Gaslamp District to the museum treasures of Balboa Park. It’s not just that the San Diego County Fair is up and running every Fourth along the glorious coastline in Del Mar. And it’s not just that San Diego offers baseball and tasty hot dogs in the state’s most comfortable sports venue, Petco Park, (or that this weekend the Padres are at home to play the Yankees).

San Diego’s Independence Day advantage runs deeper. It is the most American of California cities.

It also may be our most patriotic pueblo. If you attempted a census of American flags, San Diego would win hands-down; look in any direction in the city and you’re all but certain to see the stars and stripes in some form or fashion.

Before you quibble with my claims about San Diego’s Americanness, consider its competitors: the Bay Area and Los Angeles are technological and cultural oddballs, proudly out of step with reality, not to mention the rest of the country. And our inland cities swing too far country and right of the mainstream. San Diego County, with fairly equal numbers of Democrats and Republicans (and lots of independents), represents our middle, and the closest approximation to the American norm that California can offer.

In other ways, San Diego is abnormally American. While the military is no longer the engine that drives the city, the visibility of the armed forces, via ships and military installations and veterans, offers constant reminders of America and its history that you don’t get at the same pace in the rest of the state. Being on an international border plays a role too. San Diegans, particularly the hundreds of thousands who cross the border at Otay Mesa or San Ysidro (or use the Tijuana airport), must pony up proof of their U.S. citizenship more often than most Californians.

Beyond the fertile patriotic environment, there’s San Diego’s theatrical geography, perfect for a show.

Sandy Purdon, a marina owner, Marine veteran, and longtime San Diego mover-and-shaker, was building a home out on Point Loma more than 16 years ago when it hit him: San Diego’s downtown waterfront sits at center stage of a massive natural amphitheater created by Mission Hills to the north, the hills east of downtown, the hills of Point Loma to the west, and the hills to the south on the Mexican side of the border. So why not fill it with a fireworks show that would draw big crowds over the July 4 holiday?

The Port of San Diego and port-affiliated businesses agreed to sponsor it, with proceeds going to the Armed Services YMCA, a charity supporting military families. The show started small in 2001, and there was a famous mishap in 2012, when all 18 minutes worth of pyrotechnics fired off in about 30 seconds. But the show has grown into a reliable giant, with four barges in the harbor now serving as staging ground.

The effect is powerful, like four simultaneous Rose Bowl-sized fireworks displays with an impressive water feature thrown in. And it’s possible more spectacle and more barges could be added in the years ahead.

Last year, my cousins took us out to the old Point Loma Lighthouse, which is part of the national monument named after the Portuguese explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo, the first European to navigate the California coast. The site, at the end of a peninsula, offered a stunning vista encompassing ocean, Mexico, downtown, harbor, and North County. From that vantage point, we could see smaller fireworks shows from different local communities around San Diego, as well as the shows at Sea World and the fair to the north.

Then the main show, called Big Bay Boom, exploded, bigger and more beautiful than any fireworks I’ve ever seen. The majesty of the lights and the setting, at the southwestern edge of our country, left me with nothing to say except three words, uttered without irony: God Bless America.

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I had every reason to stay home—not just in America but specifically in my cozy suburb of Birmingham, Alabama. My Norman Rockwell-style upbringing was loving, secure, and active: Girl Scouts, softball team, dance troupe, church, honor society, dinner at 7. My family had—and still has—lakeside summer reunions so crowded with third cousins as to require nametags. I grew up surrounded by much of the best America has to offer, and unsurprisingly, many of my childhood mates have chosen to build their lives within a stone’s throw of where they grew up. They bump into old friends and neighbors at Little League and watch their children snap honeysuckle from the same vine clusters they savored years ago. Grandparents and grandchildren see each other often. It’s an enviable cycle.

Yet I left. The promise of adventure was one draw, as was the prospect of satisfying a deep curiosity about other cultures. India, where I moved eight years ago, was also attractive because of financial opportunity. My husband, a naturalized U.S. citizen who was born and raised in India, and I saw a burrito-shaped hole in the culinary landscape of Bangalore and started up a chain of Tex-Mex restaurants to fill it. Mindful of the preferences of a large slice of our customer base, we created a range of vegetarian dishes—such as our eggplant and black bean stack—that are perfectly Tex-Mex in flavor but can’t be found anywhere on either side of the Rio Grande.

I can’t help but think of our story as quintessentially American: We took a ladleful out of the melting pot, carried it over to a new place, and kept on mixing. It seems to be working, and we plan to stay in India to continue expanding our venture.

Besides business, we have another compelling reason to stay: the chance to provide our two sons with a richly varied upbringing. The forces of school, neighborhood, community, and my husband’s family help steep them in Indian culture and history. My boys learn American ways from me, of course, and I keep the house stocked with purchases from the parent-teacher store: placemats of a map of America, rulers illustrated with portraits of all the presidents, books on everyone from Helen Keller to Rosa Parks. We make long trips home as often as we can.

Our family’s lives are a constant blend of the two places. Last week, an e-mail arrived in the middle of the day: Dear Parents, as some of you may be aware, a herd of wild elephants has been spotted in the vicinity of the school. We will be ending classes early as a precautionary measure …. It’s hard to imagine a more Indian incident than that. After school we shared a hearty laugh about it, and then my boys turned to American-style afternoon comforts: One plopped down on the sofa with a Judy Blume novel while the other pulled a jar of imported Skippy out of the cupboard and proceeded to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in the method my mother had taught him.

Americans like me who put down roots overseas may seem rare, and as a percentage of the population of any given state our numbers are indeed scant. However, according to some estimates, if you were to group overseas Americans into one political unit, we’d have roughly the same number of electoral votes as my home state of Alabama. Our collective concerns—double taxation, voting rights, banking regulations, and in-state tuition, to name a few—warrant dedicated representation in Washington, given our numbers.

But I digress. What I want to answer is the question of how durable American identity can be. Consider the terminology. Had I been a citizen of a different country who arrived in the United States and established a business, purchased property, enrolled my children in a local school, and clarified that I had no immediate plans to leave, I might consider myself an immigrant. Yet having taken these steps in reverse, I call myself an expat.

I personally know only one American who has surrendered his passport. He, like most others in his growing but still-tiny cohort, cited as his reason a thinning of the pocket that came from years of paying taxes to governments of two countries. It is not only the tax payments—more burdensome on expats than those of any other developed nation—but the complexities of filing that can weary even the most ardent patriot. Our joint IRS return last year totaled 54 pages. And those 54 pages of details on our business, our sale of a plot of land, and even the balance in the checking account I use for groceries came with a hefty price tag for the premium tax advice needed to navigate the maze.

Substantial as the financial discouragements may be, I cannot imagine giving up my nationality. My need to hold onto that blue passport goes far deeper than practical advantages such as security, power, ease of travel, or even dreams of a retirement amidst honeysuckle vines at an Alabama lakeside. It has more to do with history, legacy, pride, and a peculiar brand of optimism I have never seen anywhere else. My American identity is something like the air I breathe—it both fills me and surrounds me.

Because I’ve thrown myself into unfamiliar settings time and again, I now see my own reflection in those whose ways would, at one time, have been quite foreign to me. I have to admit a few uncomfortable parallels between my life now in South India and those of the colonial ladies who lived here a century ago. (There is someone who calls me “Madam” and brings me tea at 4 p.m., which makes it hard to dodge this comparison.) This is a jarring thought, especially considering that anti-colonialism is practically programmed into American DNA.

Living abroad also has also softened my feelings about fellow citizens who vote differently than I do. From a distance, the ideological divide between right and left seems, well, exaggerated. Even in the face of serious issues, being abroad fosters a stronger sense of “we” and lessens the perception of an “us versus them” schism within the American family.

As a group, overseas citizens may not be much on the minds of the population back home. But as a group, those in the traditional 50 states are never far from ours. We are informal ambassadors to the world’s other 6.7 billion people, and together with the new waves of immigrants who make their homes in America, we contribute to an increasingly vital exchange of ideas and depth of understanding between our nation and others.

This 4th of July, as dawn breaks along the International Date Line and proceeds with its slow bend eastward, Americans in my sliver of the world will be among the first to celebrate. My husband and I will spend the holiday shuttling between our restaurants, making sure the flags are hung straight and the barbecue platters are served just right. There may be a twinge of homesickness, but as part of a vibrant American diaspora, I know I am right where I belong.

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