To just react to this part: from the perspective of someone growing up in a country without school mascots or inter-school sports competitions, the whole US treatment of school sport teams and their mascots (or, at least, their depiction in media) is rather cultish behaviour.
It’s tribal. Or team like. We don’t have a good word for it in English.
Being strongly affiliated with a group isn’t a bad thing. It drives innovation in companies and research groups and campaigns. It’s easy to mock. Often, there is some totem Kool-Aid everyone rallies around.
This cult-ish mode isn’t antithetical to individualism. We freely choose to associate this way. Unlike cult members, there is an out. And at a certain level we know it isn’t life and death. Though it’s fun to pretend it is, since so infrequently does the modern world let us fight with a team to life or death.
There is an incredible amount of social pressure to conform, whether it be to cheering for school mascots, or daily pledging your unconditional allegiance to a nation, years before you are old enough to understand what half of those concepts mean.
Wut, that's some serious 1984 shit, where is this common?
I understand most Americans aren't that bothered, but that makes it even more creepy to us foreigners.
I'm sure North Koreans are used to the Kims' pictures in every room, but that doesn't make it less weird from an outsiders perspective.
"I pledge Allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with Liberty and Justice for all."
There are a number of obvious questions about the ethics of indoctrinating children with this sort of thing, but that is left as an exercise for the reader.
My point about social pressures still stands. The stuck-out nail gets hammered down.
I think you're vastly overstating the social pressure. It's nothing compared to adolescent pressure to wear the right clothes and ingest the right chemicals. Among adults, the far right wingers get outraged by those who refuse while the far left wingers get outraged by the existence of the pledge. The 70 percent in the middle care far less.
I grew up in the UK and that sort of thing was often viewed as just a step away from the nationalism of the nazis.
If you're talking about the actual guy in the mascot suit some schools have, they're just clowning around to entertain people. Drunk fans appreciate them the most.