Patriotism In The Military Analysis

In the United States we are constantly reminded to pay thanks to the men and women who work to protect our nation, and rightfully so, but sometimes the cost of doing so can outweigh the positive aspect. In the past week Arizona Senators John McCain and Jeff Flake published a report showing that the United States Department of Defense had been spent $6.8 million of their budget paying sports teams to promote the military. Anyone who has watched or attended a sports game is familiar with military appreciation, from having a veteran throw the first pitch to teams wearing camouflage uniforms. It has always seemed somewhat forced, as teams would always try to one-up each other to try and prove how patriotic they are. Now seeing that most of these

This is an essential part of the postmodern war that Shohat and Stam talk about, in our connected society the government continuously tries to gain support through making citizens feel as if they are a part of the fight as well. The two writers talk about this and refer to Christian Metz as he calls it, “secondary identification” which they further describe as, “identification with the human figures on the screen: the anchors, the correspondents, the generals, the experts, and the people interviewed on the street.” It is the same thing with this paid patriotism case, when fans watch a game on TV and see the jets fly over while a veteran sings the national anthem they feel like they are part of the fight. It is a distasteful display from the military and sports teams, as the government throws these billion dollar franchises a few extra hundred thousand to make it seem like they truly care about the military. The motive of secondary identification works so well that it makes sense why the U.S. government felt the need to do these actions. Mass amounts of people can always be used to sway public opinion on something. An example is watching a presidential hopeful give a speech with a crowd that has been hired, the viewer will see the politician on TV talking intensely about a subject and then will receive a crazy ovation. When the common viewer watches that they will think to themselves, “that must be important because he’s so passionate about it and all the people agree with him too” then they feel a part of the movement because all these other people are going along with it too. If done effectively large crowds of people can be the best marketing ploy, and with sports there are thousands of people packed into a contained space. Once the government realized the potential marketing of that,