That was one big beautiful war. Maybe the greatest war. Some say it was the war to end all wars. We won that one like nobody has ever seen before. Shame it had to end when everybody got the flu.
Very sorry you had to go through that. It’s well-established law that you can’t be forced to stand or to say the Pledge: West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette - Wikipedia. That’s not much help right there in the classroom when the teacher and probably some fellow students are glaring at you, though.
Yeah, I didn’t know about the case. I went to a conservative school in a conservative place. I don’t know if they knew and didn’t care, or perhaps didn’t know because they didn’t care.
Not to derail the thread, but at FIFA World Cup games and the like, isn’t it customary for everyone to stand for both anthems involved? “Please rise for the anthem of Germany…(song plays)…please remain standing for the anthem of Italy. (song plays)”
Okay, I’ll cop to it - I’ve never watched an international sporting event. (Or any televised sporting event even - at least not all the way through.)
So yes, I was pulling that out of my ass. Probably not the best GD behavior, but it seemed a reasonable guess.
When these calls go out, does everybody in fact stand?
If you’re watching the game at home and they televise the anthem, do you stand?
If not, doesn’t that mean it’s only political if other people can see you? The deciding factor isn’t whether or not you want to support or want to protest your country, but whether anybody is watching. It’s the Schrödinger’s cat of political gestures.
I haven’t watched much more than you either, so I am going by a super-small sample size too, but apparently yes people usually do stand for both anthems involved, unless they particularly hate the country in question. (e.g., at the 2004 AFC Asian Cup final, the Chinese fans pointedly refused to stand during the Japanese anthem, and in fact booed and whistled while it was being played)
Political but before it was not normally controversial because all mainstream political perspectives agreed that the US was a good country and deserved respect.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at here. Of course a political gesture is meant to be seen, that’s the whole point of it. If it weren’t seen it would be meaningless.
Yes. At NCAA college hockey games, both the Canadian and American anthems were played at the beginning. And we remained standing for both.
Since the consensus seems to be that the Anthem and the tradition around it was purposely designed from the ground up to be political, I wonder if perhaps it was also purposely designed to expose malcontents?
Probably, although that’s probably more of a secondary effect than the main intent of it. If you compel everyone to do something, and 1% refuse to do so, that exposes them as ‘disloyal’ or something, be it the Pledge or anthem or some other form of signaling.
Then it has nothing to do with the anthem and everything to do with group conformity, and specifically conformity among a bunch of strangers since I doubt anyone cares if their friends and family members see them at home not rising for a televised rendition of the anthem.
What’s this about my cat?
Nothing, or maybe everything. It’s not decided yet.
Based on my google of history (which I linked), it wasn’t “purposely designed” at all. It just sort of happened.
And any widely-observed gesture can reveal ‘malcontents’, by the fact that if people aren’t doing it, there’s probably a reason.
(A nacho-based reason.)
Sure it’s political. There are a lot of different ways it’s interpreted though, and not the kind of thing you can easily establish who believes what about it. I think most people just stand because everyone else does, though that is not the only reason they do it, they probably wouldn’t stand up if no one else was. If you ask them about it you might get most people saying they stand out of respect for something, but that’s just a cover story.
Nor have military units carrying the flag, nor military flyovers.
Yes. I like hearing both anthems at these international games. I wish we’d dump it at domestic events.
FYI, the NFL was paid by the Department of Defense for those military displays. In other words, it was recruitment marketing.