Dec.22

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Dem 51

   

GOP 49

The Word Cup, Part X: Group A (The Martial Spirit), Round Two

On to the knockout rounds! Since ties are relatively common in soccer, we've decided that any matchup decided by less than 5% of the vote will count as a tie. And with that note, here are the results (winners in bold):

That produces these results for Group A, Round One:

Somewhere, the ghost of Theodore Roosevelt is shedding a tear.

The tiebreaker between slogans with equivalent records is total votes received. Interestingly, "Remember the Alamo!" performed far and away the worst against "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!", but otherwise was the strongest performer, both straight up against "Remember Pearl Harbor!", and comparatively to "Remember Pearl Harbor!" when matched up against "Remember the Maine!" We don't know why that is. In any event, the overall stronger performance for "Remember the Alamo!" allowed it to advance.

We got a lot of interesting thoughts from readers on the various rounds; here are some comments on this round:

T.H. in Pflugerville, TX, writes: Remembering the Alamo is a civic duty in Texas, even if it makes little sense. On a holiday drive between blue oases, I saw this billboard out in red country: "Remember the Alamo. Vote no for Beto." It resonates ... something confusing. But it owns the libs, I guess?

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P.W. in Springwater, NY, writes: For the first three matchups, I chose "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" over the others each time. Not only is that probably the most famous, but it seems to have influenced (or at least was representative of) the thinking that led to the American Revolution and the founding of this country. And it's also reflected today in a singularly destructive way, for example, the freedom agenda of Ron DeSantis and others who feel that any "imposition" on individual liberties—from restricting gun purchases, to red flag laws, to requirements to wear masks to prevent the spread of a deadly virus—is anathema to the American way of life, the lives of others be damned.

In the next two rounds I chose "Remember the Alamo!" because when I think of Texas, I hear echoes of all those "freedom-loving, "fight to the death" "patriots," as well.

In the last round, I chose "Remember the Maine!" over "Remember Pearl Harbor!" Interestingly, although we still acknowledge Pearl Harbor Day every year, I never thought of it as a slogan, per se. On the other hand, I do recall learning about the slogan "Remember the Maine" in school. What led me to vote for that, however, was your mention of TR, his conspiratorial thinking, and his "splendid little war." It seems that slogan lives on in spirit in this century—conspiratorial thinking, paired with effective PR, still can lead to war (Iraq). But in the 1890s, the war that slogan helped to engineer propelled the U.S. to its first beginnings of imperialism and colonization and we still see those effects today. Puerto Rico the prime example (at least in the news), but we also have territories in places many Americans have never heard of. The status of these territories varies considerably, as does the right of their residents to citizenship and representation status in the United States. Not a good look for a country that is sometimes referred to as the "world's oldest democracy."

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D.B. in Farmville, VA, writes: I doubt it will win this round, but "Remember the Maine" had an interesting significance a half-century later that continues today: I'm sure I learned about the Maine in school (and the Spanish-American War), but the phrase "Remember the Maine" is better known to me as one of the slogans Harold Hill uses when he's stirring up the town of River City, Iowa, in The Music Man—which was written in the 1950s but takes place in 1912, when the slogan (and the war) would have been pretty recent memory:

We've surely got trouble! (We've surely got trouble!)
Right here in River City! (Right here!)
Remember the Maine, Plymouth Rock, and the Golden Rule!

It turns out that charlatans rousing a crowd by throwing out disconnected and unrelated, but well-known, slogans wasn't a new idea in the 21st century, or even the 20th. Who knew?

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D.E. in Lancaster, PA, writes: This one is so easy: "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" Patrick Henry's line is so punchy and to the point that even hundreds of years from now, people will know the emotions and the stakes of the conflict at hand. Someone go wake up Tucker and tell him to prepare to be offended at my next statement, but while our Founding Fathers might not be perfect, a lot of them could sure come up with very catchy lines. Of course, modern day Republicans would amend the phrase to "Give me liberty or give someone else's death. Just don't mildly inconvenience me!"

Regarding the others, unfortunately, as time proceeds, their rallying cry becomes more obscure. The sarcastic bastard in me wants to respond to "Remember the Alamo" with "... and the Hertz, the Avis and the Enterprise, too!" "Remember the Maine," being that it was very likely to have been ginned up so as to sell an unnecessary war, and a lot of newspapers, will have to join the "Remember the Nigerian Yellow Cake Uranium" and "Remember the Gulf of Tonkin" in a list of infamous slogans. Funny how those last two never caught on! At least "Remember Pearl Harbor," due to its proximity in time, still recalls imagery of treachery and brutal atrocities, but those I'm sure are concepts fading with each new generation.

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D.A. in Brooklyn, NY, writes: The other slogans were either articulations of already-existing sentiment or obvious but minimally consequential responses to events. "Remember the Maine!", however, was part and parcel of a yellow journalism campaign by William Randolph Hearst's segment of the U.S. ruling class that led the USA into its role as an offshore imperialist power. The Spanish-American War paved the way for the Japan/U.S. conflict in the Pacific, and still has echoes today in our conflicts with China, our pathological policy in Cuba, and our weird relationship with Puerto Rico.

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J.M. in Stamford, CT, writes: Since you asked, I voted for "Remember Pearl Harbor!" as the most significant of the four martial slogans. I ranked "Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!" as second, and ignored the other two.

My thinking is a bit presentist, but I feel that most Americans even today still remember Pearl Harbor—not personally anymore, but for what it refers to and the associations it still holds. The Second World War, and America's total victory and rise to supreme world power in its wake, still looms large in the American self-image even in more recent comparisons with subsequent declines or failures. They made a movie of Pearl Harbor just in the last generation, as a conscious effort to "remember" that attack in 2001 as the Cold War victory began to sour (though Tora! Tora! Tora! from 1970 was a better film). The eternal lesson that the slogan teaches is that an innocent and well-meaning America may be vulnerable to a surprise attack by evil-doers, but in the best super-hero tradition it always comes back to win decisively in the end.

As well, America's receipt of treacherous surprise attacks or upsetting national news still brings up comparisons with Pearl Harbor, as with "Where were you when...?" questions ranging from JFK's assassination, the Challenger disaster, and 9/11. Language like "not since Pearl Harbor..." is still used to liven up a news lead.

Presentist? Well, yes, because 1941, only 80 years back, is more recent than 1898, 1846, or 1776. But I suggest that in 1978, 80 years after the Maine blew up, no one used the event to spice up a speech or make an exciting patriotic film. Ditto about the Alamo in 1926 (outside of Texas, that is). Patrick Henry's stirring declaration has survived, I admit, more than the other two, because it is about a universal American principle rather than about a specific event. But even it has become somewhat embalmed as fewer and fewer Americans perceive our wars to be about an actual defense of domestic civil liberty in the face of a foreign foe. There's a reason only far-right wing causes (ref. the "Tea Party" movement, militias, originalist lawyers, etc.) still try to use American Revolutionary thinking to activate citizens to political action (or worse): They are invested in returning to a long-departed past at whatever cost in realism or modern thinking.

We can't launch the new ballot right now, because there will have to be reseeding. But once we reveal the second group of results, the first Round Two ballot will go live. (Z)