Throughout the Paris 2024 Olympics, I, like many Americans, glued myself to the living room TV. From the women’s gymnastics team’s dominance to the thrilling swimming finals, I screamed for Team USA athletes and manifested for a higher medal count every day.
With the Games now over, I find myself missing that daily excitement, and trying to relive the emotions by diving down YouTube rabbit holes recapping the highlights of the event. But more than the excitement, I miss the feeling of unity behind one flag: the conversations with strangers about the greatest upsets and the streaks of red, white and blue across people’s clothing. I don’t remember experiencing a comparable feeling of patriotism in the past four years.
I am not alone. In an Axios survey from before the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, 82% of American respondents said that they cheered for athletes from the U.S., a number that was consistent across political preferences and age groups. This figure is a stark contrast to the 39% of participants who said in a different survey that they were “extremely proud” to be an American, with the level for young adults at an all-time low. Given declining feelings of patriotism, we must redefine the word “patriot” and empower ourselves to create change that improves our relationship to the country.
Rising polarization and cynicism contribute to the declining levels of patriotism. Today, Americans fracture politically along geographic lines or within social media echo chambers. Deep-seated divisions fuel a sense of hopelessness in both the political system and future of the country. As a result, many Americans struggle to feel patriotic amid their cynicism, especially since many people link feelings of patriotism with a blindness toward the country’s flaws.
However, as we peel away the media narratives of unresolvable partisan divides, we uncover aspects of American culture that generate shared pride. For example, national parks inspire patriotism by protecting natural areas and providing access for all to share, and the United States’ research universities and innovative companies cultivate widespread pride for the country’s leading technological advancements. Outside of politics, we have many reasons to be proud.
These areas of pride make me hopeful we can achieve unity. We should apply that optimism toward politics. Despite partisan divisions, American voters are less ideologically polarized than they think they are. While politicians who dominate the media are highly polarized, average Americans across parties share many policy preferences. This surprising common ground emphasizes the opportunity for unity and possible policy change given the shared platform.
Given our common values, we can spur a new kind of patriotism together, one that allows us to acknowledge the generational flaws of this country while aspiring for a more equitable society. Although patriotism has taken on strong connotations over the past few years, we must reclaim the term from the throes of identity politics and restore nuance to the definition. As patriots, we can be both pessimistic and optimistic about the country, and we can accept this boggling paradox.
While we can be pessimistic, we should not be cynical. Of course, we have valid reasons to remain skeptical about whether we can see changes in our lifetimes. Even so, pessimism means that we advocate because of, not in spite of, the seemingly unresolvable issues that face us. We will not resign ourselves to cynical inaction. To address our cynicism, we can limit news consumption, spend time offline and engage in more community events to build social cohesion and trust.
This new type of patriotism also challenges the generalizations of the singular way to be a “patriot” and pushes for a multiplicity of manners to engage as one. Interacting with elected representatives, volunteering in our communities and celebrating national holidays are a few ways to be a patriot. Each of the previous actions include more ways to express our national pride and commit ourselves to improving our country.
However, some people may use the title as a guise to perpetuate bigotry. Therefore, we should recognize that patriotism (like our country) is an imperfect concept, and we should continue leading with optimism. As we explore the various ways to demonstrate national pride, we should promote inclusion as a foundation of this pride and diversity as a shared value among all patriots.
No change comes without effort. To start, we can find aspects of pride in American sports or holidays, and our shared feelings can segue into building unity in more divisive aspects of our culture. By leaning into our common ground of love for our country, we can lead with a conviction in our capacity to address long-standing issues, and we can perhaps start seeing the changes that we want to see.
Sarah Zhang is an Opinion Columnist who writes about gender, race and campus culture. She can be reached at sarzhang@umich.edu.
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