Editor's note: All opinions, columns and letters reflect the views of the individual writer and not necessarily those of the IDS or its staffers.
It tells you something about the United States of the 2020s that the nation’s 250th anniversary will be celebrated this fall by a high school athletics competition, the Patriot Games.
Importantly, the games will be televised and feature celebrity coaches. The message is not that Americans are any more patriotic — by most metrics, Americans have become drastically less patriotic over the past 30 years — but that we've arrived at a juncture where patriotism is increasingly packaged into a show with just such a tacky name.
This trend isn’t unmoored from other societal currents. The Patriot Games’ premise feels familiar. After all, it should. Before entering politics, its architect, Donald Trump, spent over a decade on a similar project: “The Apprentice,” a show where contestants vied for his approval as a celebrity businessman.
Trump’s gawdy showtime antics, like his dramatic, emblematic “You’re fired,” better fit reality television than corporate reality. Still, they cultivated an image of him that became entrenched in popular imagination.
It was exactly this image — as casino magnate, pageant impresario and tabloid fixture — that, a decade ago, made Trump an unlikely helmsman for America’s traditionalist conservative movement. To the point, it’s not unlikely Yale-educated cultural pedant William F. Buckley Jr., who so consequentially formed this movement, would have dismissed him as vulgar.
Yet within six years of his first inauguration, Trump achieved what more conventional leaders had not. After half a century of Republican efforts to reclaim the judiciary, his Supreme Court appointments secured a majority and paved the way to overturning Roe v. Wade.
But effectiveness has not dissolved the unease between Trump’s penchant for performance and the older, more restrained conservative attitude. Tabloid culture and tradition still make unlikely bedfellows. Trump’s second cabinet offers a particularly vivid expression of the tension: a coalition that combines ultratraditional Catholics and fundamentalist evangelicals with figures drawn from the techno-utopian right and anti-woke entertainment. When the administration, as it has, moralizes over old-fashioned concepts like the nuclear family and dressing well in public, it just as quickly subverts them. In his quest to save the planet, for example, one-time administration member Elon Musk is seemingly untroubled to go beyond the pale of marriage.
The longer Trump attempts to coalesce conservatism and entertainment culture, the stranger it becomes. The Turning Point USA All-American Halftime Show captured this paradox. On one stage, the scandal of early 2000s Kid Rock — whose lyrics endorsed sexual crimes — met the Christian call to newness of life, all under a backdrop of freedom.
The planned UFC fight on the White House lawn in June is another, equally blatant example of Trump’s theatrical — and trivializing — approach to patriotism. Big, glittery belts and scantily clad ring girls “for one night only!” are a far cry from the White House’s moderately-lit portraits of the first presidents, ancient and adorned in powdered wigs.
Then, of course, there are the Patriot Games.
In concept, the Patriot Games are patriotic. And that’s good. Patriotism, after all, is a virtue. In practicing it, we extend the love we have for our family and community to the nation as a whole. Why shouldn’t high schoolers exhibit this virtue, and in a healthy way? In presentation, however, the games more closely resemble a Nickelodeon Kids’ Choice activity more than a celebration befitting the anniversary of this country, founded by serious people in serious attire — like tricorn hats.
The name itself is evidence of this. It’s tacky, not just because it sounds like the name of a popular movie franchise. In its name, much like Turning Point USA’s “All-American” Halftime Show, it needs to advertise that it’s patriotic, so viewers can receive the virtual signal.
This iteration of American patriotism is uniquely suited to the MAGA age. In a figure like Trump, traditional values have been alloyed with Jerry Springer-esque antics, which is to say spectacle has won over substance. Something similar risks occurring within the Indiana University community, where a showy, winning football team — which I love — can replace actual Hoosier traditions, like Dunn Meadow demonstrations.
The country is trending in two directions now. On one hand, enduring values like patriotism become caricatured — bigger, louder, pseudo — as in cabinet member Pete Hegseth’s machismo. On the other, they are rejected. Liberal and left-leaning Americans, in particular, are less patriotic than ever.
But if the Patriot Games must go on in their current form, at least Indiana is better equipped than any other state to win. Excepting the West Lafayette containment zone, it excels at sports. See IU’s football season.
Just call the games any other name.
Eric Cannon (he/him) is a sophomore studying philosophy and political science and currently serves as a member of IU Student Government.
