ationalism, religion, and sports.  What do they have in common?  They are the three things that people have the most illogical attachments to.

September 13th, 2002

I've written in the past about religion vs. sports.  They are similar in that people have very strong feelings about them, with no real analytical reason.  You tend to believe in what you were raised to believe in, and root for the team you grew up rooting for.  There is very little logic involved in either decision, and people will persist in their loyalties years longer than they have any reason to.

You probably know guys who grew up somewhere, have moved ten times since then, but still love their first team the most.  That sort of thing is almost a mark of pride, especially if the original team is long-suffering, like the Cubs or Red Sox, in US Baseball parlance.

Religion is much the same.  People don't often get to age 20 or 25 and stop and look at all the religions objectively, and pick one (or none at all) that they like best.  Instead they just keep going to a church of whatever denomination their parents dragged them to when they were a kid, and usually return the favor when they have kids of their own.

In both cases, an objective evaluation would probably be a godsend (so to speak), but very seldom does this happen.  Why keep rooting for a baseball or football or whatever team that you happened to like when you were a kid?  Especially if they are boring or bad now, you don't like the owner, your favorite players are on other teams, etc?  Why not look around the league and find a team that's fun to watch, that doesn't have a bunch of rapists and junkies for players, and root for them?   You'd probably enjoy it more.  Or just root for whatever good team is on TV that week.  This is ultimately less satisfying; rooting for your old team for years and years when they suck makes it sweeter when they finally do get good again.

That's not true for religion, unless you count ending up in heaven as the eventual sweet vindication.  Which it would be, but we can't speak of that with any authority at this point.  And given the stakes of the game (eternal damnation) it would seem that an objective evaluation of which religion to choose would be a real priority.  Needless to say, virtually no one does that.  Most atheists are made over time, raised religious before they eventually throw off that yoke, for whatever reason.  Usually it's a logical reason, based on science or reason.  You might feel they are misguided fools, but at least they've given the issue some thought.  Most people that switch religions only do so if they get married and their spouse prevails on them.  One fairy tale is as good as another, would be the cynical view.

So religion and sports team preference tend to persist despite all reason or evidence to the contrary, and are not objectively selected.

The same goes for the third of this triumvirate, nationalism.  You could call it patriotism or even jingoism, but those aren't really the same thing, as I see it.  Nationalism is rooting for your country.  So is patriotism, but that's more of a "rah rah" sort of thing, flying the flag and wearing the colors.  You can be unpatriotic and still very nationalistic; you might despise public displays of allegiance, but be willing to give your life up for your country if needed.  For example.  And a patriotic person might actually be a callow coward. As the old saying goes, "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."  It's been argued that it's actually the "first" not "last", but you get the point. Talk a big game, wave your flag, and then hide out with deferments or bullshit medical excuses or have daddy pull strings to get you into the National Guard when the draft comes.

Anyway, nationalism is even less prone to logic and analysis then the other two.  How many people get to be adults and look objectively at their own country, size up the strengths and weaknesses, compare it to other nations, and decide where to live based on that?

It's not as easy as switching from the Yankees to the Dodgers, or Methodist to Buddhist, of course. You can't just move to another country in most cases, there might be language barriers, you need to get a new job, you would be leaving all of your friends and family behind, etc.  But just in theory, why not?  You can get by in probably 75% of the world speaking English, at this point, and lots of places you can get paid just to speak it, as a language tutor.

I'm not really offering this as a realistic proposal, but more to point out that it's just not done.  Some people do move between countries, usually if their job forces them to, or perhaps if they get married. Lots of people travel and love other countries, but very seldom do they pick a new one to live in, unless driven by economic desperation.  They tend to root for their birth country forever even then, in the Olympics or other athletic competitions.

Let's recap.

Religion:
• Objective selection: Virtually never.
• Irrational loyalty: Usually.

Sports team preference:
• Objective selection: Almost never.
• Irrational loyalty: Til death do you part.

Nationalism
• Objective selection: Never.
• Irrational loyalty: Mandatory.

One last factor could be termed "willingness to criticize".  Nationalism seems to take the cake here as well.

With sports teams, it's almost a duty to criticize.  The more rabid a fan, the bigger his mouth and opinions about why the team isn't winning (often enough). Grown men with their faces painted in the team colors can hold three hour discussions about whether the quarterback is good enough, if the coach knows what the hell he's doing, if the running back fumbles too much, if they should draft a new defensive lineman, and on and on.  Change the positions for a different sport, the point remains the same. Such arguments can be heated, but they tend to be inclusive.  You don't hear one guy telling another to go root for another team if he doesn't like their third down formation.  "Love our failed two-point conversion or go home!" Nope, doesn't happen.

Religion isn't quite as open to criticism.  In most faiths there is nothing really to bitch about. You either believe in their interpretation of their holy book or you don't, and if you don't you probably aren't in that religion for long. You can criticize the priests or clergy or how they conduct things, you might not like your local minister, but there's not a lot of lively debate over the legitimacy of transubstantiation in the back pews on any given Sunday.  How your church is adapting to the times is certainly open to debate, and is an ongoing thing in many religions at this time, with issues of homosexuality, female clergy, divorce, etc.  But still, even the most heated debates tend to be about how someone wants the church to be.  There are splinter groups from and schisms in religions from time to time, over major issues (Martin Luther/Protestantism, for instance) but those are very rare.  Even the most ardent protesters about child molesting priests aren't going atheist; they want changes in management, maybe priests defrocked, but they don't want them kicked out of the belief system.  They'd rather have murders and scum of the earth in their religion, since it reinforces their feelings of being the true faith.  They want those people to go to their version of hell, but they want them going as believers.

Nationalism differs here in major ways.  It's a more defensive belief system, it seems. One of the first responses to criticism from self-proclaimed nationalists, the type that are brimming with patriotism, is "Love it or leave it!" It's exclusive, rather than inclusive, and a conversation stopper. Sports fans and religious debaters may disagree deeply, but as I detailed previously, they don't do it in this fashion.  Yankee fans arguing over Posada vs. Jeter never tell each other to go root for the Mets if they don't agree on that last strike out. 

The boasting of supremacy is very strong with nationalism also.  It's much like sports, but you don't see that a lot in religion. "Catholics rule!  Kick that Methodist ass!" isn't something you hear ringing out of a cathedral too often, though it does often tie into nationalism.  Same with nationalism and sports, as you can see by the World Cup's popularity.

So my point, if I have one, is that nationalism seems to be nastier and more angry, and less tolerant, at least in the US the last 20 or 30 years.  The old fashioned idea of "loyal dissent" is not popular in times of crisis, at least not in the US.

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