As long as I can remem­ber, I’ve been a sports fan. As long as I can remem­ber, I’ve been inter­est­ed in the mil­i­tary. Until recent­ly, I expe­ri­enced those as two sep­a­rate and dis­tinct worlds. While I was in the mil­i­tary – I served for 20 years as an offi­cer in the U.S. Air Force – I did, of course, play sports. As a young lieu­tenant, I was in a rac­quet­ball tour­na­ment at my base in Col­orado. At Squadron Offi­cer School in Alaba­ma, I took part in vol­ley­ball and flicker­ball (a bizarre Air Force sport). At the Air Force Acad­e­my, I was on a soft­ball team and when we final­ly won a game, all of us signed the ball. I also enjoyed being in a mil­i­tary bowl­ing league. I even had my own ball with my name engraved on it.

Since 9/11, however, sports and the military have become increasingly fused in this country.

Don’t mis­un­der­stand me. I was nev­er par­tic­u­lar­ly skilled at any sport, but I did thor­ough­ly enjoy play­ing part­ly because it was such a wel­come break from work – a reprieve from wear­ing a uni­form, salut­ing, fol­low­ing orders, and all the rest. Sports were sports. Mil­i­tary ser­vice was mil­i­tary ser­vice. And nev­er the twain shall meet.

Since 9⁄ 11 , how­ev­er, sports and the mil­i­tary have become increas­ing­ly fused in this coun­try. Pro­fes­sion­al ath­letes now con­sid­er it per­fect­ly nat­ur­al to don uni­forms that fea­ture cam­ou­flage pat­terns. (They do this, teams say, as a form of ​“mil­i­tary appre­ci­a­tion.”) Indeed, for only $39.99 you, too, can buy your own Major League Base­ball-sanc­tioned camo cap at MLB’s offi­cial site. And then, of course, you can use that cap in any sta­di­um to shade your eyes as you watch fly­overs, parades, reunions of ser­vice mem­bers return­ing from our country’s war zones and their fam­i­lies, and a mul­ti­tude of oth­er increas­ing­ly mil­i­ta­rized cer­e­monies that cel­e­brate both vet­er­ans and troops in uni­form at sports sta­di­ums across what, in the post‑9/​11 years, has come to be known as ​“the homeland.”

These days, you can hard­ly miss moments when, for instance, play­ing fields are cov­ered with gigan­tic Amer­i­can flags, often unfurled and held either by scores of mil­i­tary per­son­nel or civil­ian defense con­trac­tors. Such cer­e­monies are invari­ably tout­ed as nat­ur­al expres­sions of patri­o­tism, part of a con­tin­u­al pub­lic expres­sion of grat­i­tude for America’s ​“warfight­ers” and ​“heroes.” These are, in oth­er words, uncon­tro­ver­sial dis­plays of pride, even though a study ordered by Repub­li­can Sen­a­tors John McCain and Jeff Flake revealed that the U.S. tax­pay­er, via the Pen­ta­gon, has reg­u­lar­ly forked over tens of mil­lions of dol­lars ($53 mil­lion between 2012 and 2015 alone) to cor­po­rate-owned teams to put on just such displays.

Paid patri­o­tism should, of course, be an oxy­moron. These days, how­ev­er, it’s any­thing but and even when the Amer­i­can tax­pay­er isn’t cov­er­ing dis­plays like these, the meld­ing of sports and the mil­i­tary should be seen as inap­pro­pri­ate, if not insid­i­ous. And I say that as both a lover of sports and a veteran.

I Went to a Mil­i­tary Parade and a Ten­nis Match Broke Out

Maybe you’ve heard the joke: I went to the fights and a hock­ey game broke out. It was meant to poke fun at the fisticuffs in Nation­al Hock­ey League games, though these days there are few­er of them than in the ​“glo­ry days” of the 1970s. An updat­ed ver­sion would, how­ev­er, fit today’s increas­ing­ly mil­i­ta­rized sports events to a T: I went to a mil­i­tary parade and a base­ball (foot­ball, hock­ey) game broke out.

Nowa­days, it seems as if pro­fes­sion­al sports sim­ply couldn’t occur with­out some notice of and cel­e­bra­tion of the U.S. mil­i­tary, each game being trans­formed in some way into yet anoth­er Memo­r­i­al Day or Vet­er­ans Day lite.

Con­sid­er the pro-mil­i­tary hype that sur­round­ed this year’s Major League Base­ball All-Star Game. Not so very long ago, when I watched such games I would be trans­port­ed to my child­hood and my fan­tasies of becom­ing the next Nolan Ryan or Carl Yastrzemski.

When I watched this year’s ver­sion of the game, how­ev­er, I didn’t relive my youth; I reliv­ed my mil­i­tary career. As a start, the pre­vi­ous night fea­tured a tele­vised home-run der­by. Before it even began, about 50 air­men parad­ed out in cam­ou­flage uni­forms, set­ting the stage for every­thing that would fol­low. (As they weren’t on duty, I couldn’t help won­der­ing why they found it appro­pri­ate to don such out­fits.) Part of T‑Mobile’s ​“HatsOff4Heroes” cam­paign, this mini-parade was jus­ti­fied in the name of rais­ing mon­ey to sup­port vet­er­ans, but T‑Mobile could have sim­ply giv­en the mon­ey to char­i­ty with­out any of the mil­i­ta­rized hoopla that this involved.

High­light­ing the oth­er pre-game cer­e­monies the next night was a cel­e­bra­tion of Medal of Hon­or recip­i­ents. I have deep respect for such heroes, but what were they doing on a base­ball dia­mond? The cer­e­mo­ny would have been appro­pri­ate on, say, Vet­er­ans Day in November.

Those same pre-game fes­tiv­i­ties includ­ed a mil­i­taris­tic mon­tage nar­rat­ed by Bradley Coop­er (star of ​“Amer­i­can Sniper”), fea­tur­ing war scenes and war mon­u­ments while high­light­ing the pop­u­lar catch­phrase ​“free­dom isn’t free.” Mar­tial music accom­pa­nied the mon­tage along with a bevy of flag-wav­ing images. It felt like watch­ing a twist­ed ver­sion of the film Field of Dreamsreshot so that sol­diers, not base­ball play­ers, emerged ear­ly on from those rows of Iowa corn stalks and stepped onto the play­ing field.

What fol­lowed was a ​“sur­prise” reunion of an air­man, Staff Sergeant Cole Con­diff, and his wife and fam­i­ly. Such staged reunions have become a reg­u­lar aspect of major sport­ing events – con­sid­er this ​“heart-melt­ing” exam­ple from a Mil­wau­kee Brew­ers game – and are obvi­ous­ly meant to tug at the heart­strings. They are, as retired Army Colonel Andrew Bace­vich wrote at TomDis­patch back in 2011, pro­pa­gan­dis­tic ver­sions of ​“cheap grace.”

In addi­tion, Bud­weis­er used this year’s game to pro­mote ​“free­dom” beer, again to raise mon­ey for vet­er­ans and, of course, to bur­nish its own rep. (Last year, the com­pa­ny was hyp­ing ​“Amer­i­ca” beer.)

And the All-Star game is hard­ly alone in its mil­i­ta­rized cel­e­bra­tions and hoopla. Take the 2017 U.S. Open ten­nis tour­na­ment in New York City, which I hap­pened to watch. With John McEn­roe in retire­ment, ten­nis is, gen­er­al­ly speak­ing, a qui­eter sport. Yet before the men’s final, a Marine Corps col­or guard joined a con­tin­gent of West Point cadets in a cer­e­mo­ny to remem­ber the vic­tims of 9⁄ 11 . Nat­u­ral­ly, a by-now-oblig­a­tory over­sized Amer­i­can flag set the scene – here’s a com­pa­ra­ble cer­e­mo­ny from 2016 – capped by a per­for­mance of ​“God Bless Amer­i­ca” and a loud fly­over by four com­bat jets. Admit­ted­ly, it was a dra­mat­ic way to begin any­thing, but why exact­ly an inter­na­tion­al ten­nis match that hap­pened to fea­ture final­ists from Spain and South Africa?

Blend­ing Sports With the Mil­i­tary Weak­ens Democracy

I’m hard­ly the first to warn about the dan­gers of mix­ing sports with the mil­i­tary, espe­cial­ly in cor­po­rate-con­trolled blenders. Ear­ly in 2003, pri­or to the kick off for the Iraq War (sports metaphor intend­ed), the writer Nor­man Mail­er issued this warning:

“The dire prospect that opens, there­fore, is that Amer­i­ca is going to become a mega-banana repub­lic where the army will have more and more impor­tance in Amer­i­cans’ lives… [D]emocracy is the spe­cial con­di­tion – a con­di­tion we will be called upon to defend in the com­ing years. That will be enor­mous­ly dif­fi­cult because the com­bi­na­tion of the cor­po­ra­tion, the mil­i­tary, and the com­plete investi­ture of the flag with mass spec­ta­tor sports has set up a pre-fascis­tic atmos­phere in Amer­i­ca already.”

More than 14 years lat­er, that com­bi­na­tion – cor­po­ra­tions, the mil­i­tary, and mass spec­ta­tor sports, all wrapped in a gigan­tic ver­sion of the stars and stripes – has increas­ing­ly come to define what it means to be an Amer­i­can. Now that the coun­try also has its own self-styled strong­man pres­i­dent, enabled by a spine­less Con­gress and an increas­ing­ly reac­tionary judi­cia­ry, Mailer’s men­tion of a ​“pre-fascis­tic atmos­phere” seems prescient.

What start­ed as a post‑9/​11 dri­ve to get an Amer­i­can pub­lic to ​“thank” the troops end­less­ly for their ser­vice in dis­tant con­flicts – sti­fling crit­i­cism of those wars by link­ing it to ingrat­i­tude – has mor­phed into a new form of nation­al rev­er­ence. And much cred­it goes to pro­fes­sion­al sports for that trans­for­ma­tion. In con­junc­tion with the mil­i­tary and mar­ket­ed by cor­po­ra­tions, they have reshaped the very prac­tice of patri­o­tism in America.

Today, thanks in part to tax­pay­er fund­ing, Amer­i­cans reg­u­lar­ly salute gross­ly over­sized flags, cel­e­brate or oth­er­wise ​“appre­ci­ate” the troops (with­out mak­ing the slight­est mean­ing­ful sac­ri­fice them­selves), and applaud the cor­po­rate spon­sors that pull it all togeth­er (and prof­it from it). Mean­while, tak­ing a stand (or a knee), being an agent of dis­sent, protest­ing against injus­tice, is increas­ing­ly seen as the very def­i­n­i­tion of what it means to be unpa­tri­ot­ic. Indeed, play­ers with the guts to protest Amer­i­can life as it is are reg­u­lar­ly cas­ti­gat­ed as SOBs by our sports- and mil­i­tary-lov­ing president.

Pro­fes­sion­al sports own­ers cer­tain­ly know that this mil­i­ta­rized brand of patri­o­tism sells, while the ver­sion embod­ied in the kinds of con­tro­ver­sial stances tak­en by ath­letes like for­mer Nation­al Foot­ball League quar­ter­back Col­in Kaeper­nick (cashiered by his own league) angers and alien­ates many fans, ulti­mate­ly threat­en­ing profits.

Mean­while, the military’s bot­tom line is recruit­ing new bod­ies for that all-vol­un­teer force while keep­ing those tax­pay­er dol­lars flow­ing into the Pen­ta­gon at increas­ing­ly stag­ger­ing lev­els. For cor­po­ra­tions, you won’t be sur­prised to learn, it’s all about prof­its and reputation.

In the end, it comes down to one thing: who con­trols the nation­al narrative.

Think about it. A set of cor­po­rate-mil­i­tary part­ner­ships or, if you pre­fer, some ver­sion of Pres­i­dent Dwight D. Eisenhower’s old mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex has enlist­ed sports to make mil­i­tarism look good and nor­mal and even cool. In oth­er words, sports teams now have a pow­er­ful set of incen­tives to appear patri­ot­ic, which increas­ing­ly means slav­ish­ly pro-mil­i­tary. It’s get­ting hard to remem­ber that this coun­try ever had a cit­i­zen-sol­dier tra­di­tion as well as sports teams whose ath­letes actu­al­ly went almost en masse to serve in war. Con­sid­er it para­dox­i­cal that mil­i­tarism is today becom­ing as Amer­i­can as base­ball and apple pie, even as, like so many oth­er cit­i­zens, today’s ath­letes vote with their feet to stay out of the mil­i­tary. (The NFL’s Pat Till­man was a noble post‑9/​11 excep­tion.) Indeed, the wide­spread (if shal­low) sup­port of the mil­i­tary by so many ath­letes may, in some cas­es, be dri­ven by a kind of guilt.

“Col­lu­sion” is a key word in this Trumpian moment. Even though Robert Mueller isn’t inves­ti­gat­ing them, cor­po­rate-owned sports teams are now active­ly col­lud­ing with the mil­i­tary to rede­fine patri­o­tism in ways that work to their mutu­al advan­tage. They are com­plic­it in tak­ing a select, jin­go­is­tic form of patri­o­tism and weaponiz­ing it to sup­press dis­sent, includ­ing against the mil­i­tary-indus­tri­al com­plex and America’s nev­er-end­ing wars.

Dri­ven by cor­po­rate agen­das and fea­tur­ing exag­ger­at­ed mil­i­tary dis­plays, mass-spec­ta­tor sports are help­ing to shape what Amer­i­cans per­ceive and believe. In sta­di­ums across the nation, on screens held in our hands or dom­i­nat­ing our liv­ing rooms, we wit­ness fine young men and women in uni­form unfurl­ing mas­sive flags on foot­ball fields and base­ball dia­monds, even on ten­nis courts, as com­bat jets scream over­head. What we don’t see – what is large­ly kept from us – are the mur­der­ous costs of empire: the dead and maimed sol­diers, the inno­cents slaugh­tered by those same com­bat jets.

The images we do absorb and the nar­ra­tive we’re encour­aged to embrace, immersed as we are in an end­less round of mil­i­ta­rized sport­ing events, sup­port the idea that mas­sive ​“nation­al secu­ri­ty” invest­ments (to the tune of rough­ly a tril­lion dol­lars annu­al­ly) are good and right and patri­ot­ic. Ques­tion­ing the same – indeed, ques­tion­ing author­i­ty in any form – is, of course, bad and wrong and unpatriotic.

For all the appre­ci­a­tion of the mil­i­tary at sport­ing events, here’s what you’re not sup­posed to appre­ci­ate: why we’re in our for­ev­er wars; the extent to which they’ve been mis­man­aged for the last 17 years; how much peo­ple, espe­cial­ly in dis­tant lands, have suf­fered thanks to them; and who’s real­ly prof­it­ing from them.

Sports should be about hav­ing fun; about joy, pas­sion, and shar­ing; about the thrill of com­pe­ti­tion, the splen­dor of the human con­di­tion; and so much more. I still remem­ber the few home runs I hit in soft­ball. I still remem­ber break­ing 200 for the first time in bowl­ing. I still remem­ber the faces of my team­mates in soft­ball and the fun times I had with good people.

But let’s be clear: this is not what war is all about. War is hor­rif­ic. War fea­tures the worst of the human con­di­tion. When we blur sports and the mil­i­tary, adding cor­po­rate agen­das into the mix, we’re not just doing a dis­ser­vice to our troops and our ath­letes; we’re doing a dis­ser­vice to our­selves. We’re weak­en­ing the integri­ty of democ­ra­cy in America.

We can afford to lose a ball­game. We can’t afford to lose our country.

This arti­cle first appeared on Tom Dispatch.