When the USA men's basketball team defeated Spain to win the gold in London, the arena started playing Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.
Born in the USA is not a patriotic or nationalistic anthem. It deals with the effects of the Vietnam War on Americans. Hearing it played to celebrate an American victory reminded me of 1984 when Ronald Reagan used it during his presidential campaign.
To quote Wikipedia:
Springsteen was lamenting the loss of a true sense of national pride. The working class no longer had a say in the foreign policy or decisions made by the government as a whole. The reverberating chorus of "Born in the U.S.A." was a cry of longing, of sorrow. It was a hollow cry of patriotism that once was, but now ceased to exist.
The more things change...
