Suddenly, you can hear chants of “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” coming out of even the most snarky Brooklyn hipster bars. I’ve even heard rumors of blatant pro-American cheering on the Upper West Side.
Count it as a bonus effect of the World Cup.
It probably helps that we’re underdogs. Our severe German coach, Jurgen Klinsmann, not only refused to add America’s star player, Landon Donovan, to his roster — in December, he told The New York Times Magazine, “We cannot win this World Cup . . . realistically, it’s not possible.”
The hipster types may also feel liberated to cheer because Americans are notoriously uninterested in soccer; it’s on the long list of reasons Europeans love to hate us.
Apparently it’s OK to root for America in a competition most Americans don’t even care about. You’re still being ironic, I guess.
But there’s still some real patriotism at work here — or at least some all-American love of winning, because the wave really only started when we won our first game against Ghana.
Winning was thrilling — even more so because it was winning in a sport we don’t really care about when our opponents care a great deal.
A few days later, we played Portugal and tied — and apparently this was good! The game was the most viewed World Cup game ever on ESPN.
Then came last Thursday’s game against Germany. Gov. Andrew Cuomo let all New York state employees take an extended lunch break to watch the game. Bars were packed. Excitement was building.
Sadly, we lost. But wait, somehow we advanced into the next round anyway! Sure, no one understands what’s happening but . . . U-S-A! U-S-A!
It brings me back to my European travels in the 1990s, when young Americans inevitably faced abuse from their European peers for being, well, American — and most Americans would play along.
It would start innocently enough: Why does the United States pursue such-and-such a policy? But it would quickly turn into an indictment of all things American.
Why are your portions so big, your people so fat? Why do you only learn English? Why do you call it the “World Series” when only American baseball teams compete?
What are you so proud of, anyway?
And the proto-hipsters demurred. Yes, you’re right, maybe America isn’t so great. Yes, that policy from over 50 years ago (always Cuba — Europeans love to talk Cuba) was ill-thought-out.
I’ve heard American students apologize for our treatment of the Native Americans — while standing in countries that had colonized half the globe. It was a joke.
Me? Born in the Soviet Union and given an American name, brought to this country as a child and reminded every day of my unbelievable luck, I didn’t quietly accept the America-hating.
“You, you and you would be speaking German if it wasn’t for us!” I’d say while smoking a Gaulois or a Silk.
I was supposed to apologize for high US military spending when our bases helped keep the peace in their part of the world? Come on.
But I was an outlier. Even back home, patriotism was passé in “elite” circles.
Except for those few months, or maybe just weeks, after 9/11, when flags were everywhere and Lee Greenwood’s shmaltzy “God Bless the USA” could be heard out of car windows in even cosmopolitan Manhattan.
But that didn’t last. For years now, patriotism has been “out.” Rolling your eyes and criticizing Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, the Fourth of July or any truly American holiday was in. Something muted our long-standing belief that America was the greatest.
It’s easy to blame President Obama, who campaigned on being more worldly than the last guy in the White House, but it’s not just him. Conservatives believe America is in a downward spiral in a way they didn’t when Bill Clinton was president.
The doom and gloom is palpable. In a room full of NYC liberals, after Obama’s election and with Democrats controlling the Senate, I was one of a handful who raised a hand when asked if we were optimistic about America.
Last week’s Rasmussen poll found that 65 percent of Americans, a staggering number, believe we’re on the wrong track.
So I think there’s something more than irony to the hipsters joining with the un-hip bandwagon-joiners in chanting U-S-A. For the first time in a long time, we’re all doing something together, rooting for our team.
Come what may against Belgium on Tuesday, it’s been an exciting few weeks for patriotism in America. It’d be nice if it could go beyond sporting events, but we’ll take what we can get right now. Maybe America’s greatest days are ahead of us.
Whom do we play next?