I’ve spent quite some time in the United States. I graduated from high school there. I played for the school’s American football team. I stood while my class recited the Pledge of Allegiance, or my team sang the National Anthem. But one thing I never did was clasp my chest through either ritual. It wasn’t my Pledge of Allegiance or National Anthem. Besides New Zealanders are not into those jingoistic displays of patriotism. More than once I struggled to reconcile their brash heart holding with the three years it took them to join the rest of the world resisting the Nazis. And even then, Japan had to give them a hurry-up. Was all that heart holding patriotism just for show? When it came down to a real scrap with Hitler, or Israel’s genocide in Palestine, or Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, all the heart holding meant nothing.

After some time in New Zealand, I went back to the United States to coach swimming in the US Virgin Islands and in Delray Beach, Florida. Once again, I witnessed the whole heart holding routine. Eventually the hypocrisy of it all made me sick. Pompous pricks standing there before every swim meet, holding their hearts, while their country was butchering those who lived in Vietnam, Iraq, or Afghanistan. Were they really trying to tell me their hearts were as one with American slaughter around the world?

By the time I left America for the last time the whole pagan, heart holding liturgy represented death, decay, and treachery. It was the worst of America and America could keep it.

Except I was wrong. America did not keep it. They exported their jingoism to New Zealand. First it was T.J. Perenara. God knows where he got the idea from. But there he is clasping his heart through the National Anthem while every other All Black stands in dignified respect, the way New Zealanders have always done. The best non-selection the All Blacks’ coach, Ian Foster, made this week, was to drop Perenara. At least we won’t have to endure his grotesque display during the National Anthem.

But heart holding didn’t stop with Perenara. Next thing we knew was the New Zealand football team had been ordered to practice the Americanism. There they are, eleven mindless Statues of Liberty, standing to order, with their hands clasped over their fake hearts. No wonder soccer has never taken off in New Zealand. The game is made for wimps and played by wimps. That team really is pathetic. Their pre-match display makes a lie of everything patriotic about our country. They are an embarrassment to us all.

Without question I hope New Zealand gets beaten out of sight in the World Cup qualifier against Costa Rica. It would save us the shame of watching NZ soccer’s overt display of Americanism. There is no sincerity in it, even in the United States. For a New Zealand team, it looks fake and stupid. If it is “in the bonds of love we meet”, NZ football should avoid the mannerisms of the most militant nation on earth.

I wonder if Perenara and NZ Soccer know that prior to World War II, Americans used the outstretched right hand, Nazi salute during their National Anthem. Out of embarrassment the hand over heart replacement was only adopted after the war. The action may have changed, the purpose is the same. The gesture was probably more honest when the whole country did the Nazi salute.  

I guess Donald Trump would like those in NZ who copy the Americans. Perhaps NZ Soccer is pushing to have the bone-spur soldier as their patron. They certainly deserve each other. Go Costa Rica.