Last weekend millions of Americans utilized their inalienable right to property. They stockpiled and consumed enormous quantities of food and alcohol while using incredible amounts of energy to power their sound, entertainment, and climate control systems. I watched the Super Bowl, and it hurt. Don't get me wrong, I loved the game itself, and I couldn't be happier that the team play of the Patriots won out. Still, I went to bed hurting badly. It wasn't my bleeding liberal heart, nor my intelligentsia aesthetic sensitivities, but my stomach. Beyond my football purist sentiments and impatience with on-field interviews and showboating, my gastrointestinal system just couldn't handle the quantity of comestibles.
It's amazing to imagine, but the Super Bowl has acquired full-blown, albeit unofficial, national holiday status. In many ways, it is the American holiday, a celebration of the cornucopia yield of free economic forces. Each individual leaves that Sunday entertained, even pleasured, win or lose. It is the satisfaction of sensuality satisfied; all of our basic appetites find fulfillment: food, sex, and a feeling of community with others, just to name a few. Again, I'm no prude, but the full-blown orgy that is the Super Bowl is an embarrassing display of opulence.
So thus it stands, as historical opponents of democracy suggested. It turns out that liberating the masses has an ugly side. Providing the right to speak freely cannot teach an individual to speak intelligently, and allowing him or her the freedom to amass property does not suggest to him how to use the materials under his control. Unprepared for the open field before us, Americans have lost control of their urges. The magnitude of our wealth does not match the greatness of our character. While television commercials and personal entertainment technology become increasingly more complex, Americans have lost touch with the things that matter.
In fact, the United States government remains one of the world's stingiest nations as far as foreign aid is concerned. We rank among the least generous of the developed nations in terms of aid that we committed last year per capita. The world's "hyperpower," the wealthiest nation-state that history has ever seen, allocates substantially fewer resources per person than the much-reviled French. Though many charge that "Old Europe" has become morally decadent, it is instructive that The Center for Global Development ranked the United States behind all of Western Europe except for Spain in the overall quantity and quality of its aid allocations. Evidently our values stretch only far enough to cover Janet Jackson's chest.
I'm not suggesting that the Super Bowl be canceled next year, only that it need not be such a spectacle. The obsession with flyovers and extreme patriotic and nationalist symbols is much more overblown than it need be. Are we so unsure of ourselves that we need martial celebrations before, during, and after the game? Must sport and war be so closely bound? There is not space enough to elaborate answers to these questions here.
Nor am I suggesting that American democracy is a failure, or that it is preferable to withhold freedoms from citizens. Rather, I think that what's important is that individuals develop a consistent moral code that is not based upon rhetoric and political ideology. Our careless allegiances frequently create blatant hypocrisy. We will love our enemies and judge ourselves before our brothers, but only when it is convenient. We defend the right to life until birth but trample upon it afterwards. America is sorely lacking in moral fortitude; we appear confused, placated by our own success.
It doesn't have to be this way, however. Just as Americans could curb their obesity by following more careful diets and avoiding quick miracle diets, they can regain the moral high ground through some rigorous, and undoubtedly painful, introspection. Rather than celebrate our most specious forms of entertainment with overblown national fanfare, we might tone it down a little. We could spend a little less on self-pleasure and a little more on self-development, and in my opinion, it would do the national body good.