Making Your Whole Life About Hate or I Didn't Like Bad Bunny Either

I didn’t like the Bad Bunny halftime show.

This is not surprising. I don’t like a lot of things — Hemingway is awful, Beyonce overrated, the NHL’s point and playoff format both need to die in a fire, and cheese tastes bad outside very specific contexts. Additionally, I am the whitest person you know. I love show tunes, I generally don’t like rap, punk is my favorite music even though I was too young to have experienced it, mayonnaise tastes good, and I have strong opinions about hockey. If I were any whiter, I would be a member of the House GOP caucus whether I wanted to be or not. Honestly, the only thing saving me from that fate is my deep and abiding hatred of country music (Johnny Cash excluded, of course). I don’t like Bad Bunny’s style of music and I prefer lyrics in English (I like 99 Red Balloons more than 99 Luftballoons even though they are literally the same song) so I didn’t get much out of the performance.

The wedding in the middle of it was awesome, though.

And all of that is fine. No one likes everything, and not everything speaks to every person to the same degree, or even at all. Even among families and friends, the people you are closest to, you will have disagreements about taste. And that is good and proper and the sign of a healthy personality and culture. What is not good and proper and the sign of a healthy personality is thinking that because you do not like something that you must build your entire identity around hating it. And yet, we have an entire political movement that seems to be built around just that.

The right wing had a meltdown over Bad Bunny. Part of this is pure racism — parts of the current right wing has elevated ethnic cleansing to a core principle, and the fact the Bad Bunny is Puerto Rican inflames them. Part of it is political — Bad Bunny, as is the overwhelming majority of Americans, is outraged at the behavior of ICE. But part of it seems to be fundamentally a fear of others, of people who are not exactly like them.

This specific fear is not, I think, largely driven by racism, at least not of the Stephen Miller/JD Vance/Donald Trump variety. It is probably colored by it, but it really seems to be driven by the idea that different has to mean attacking. Too many people react to the trappings of a culture, to its decorations and costumes, rather than to the people in that culture. A lot of people genuinely seem to think that if they encounter a culture different than their it is an indication that they are going to be run out, that they will not be able to express their own culture. This is nonsense, but its the kind of nonsense that makes people define their lives as against something rather than as living for something.

Some of this is natural. Humans are tribal, and encountering the markings of a different tribe than yours can trigger some of our baser, more frightened instincts. Much of it is created — when Congresspeople go on about investigating a halftime show they didn’t understand and Fox news repeats lies about Haitians eating pets, people are primed to fear. And there are real differences that have to be navigated. I do wonder, sometimes, when I see a hijab if the woman was pressured into wearing it or if it is a symbol of her heartfelt devotion. But no culture is perfect — I am generally a fan of western culture (Hemingway excepted), but you would have to be blind not to see the racism and sexism embedded in it. Navigating those issues is a part of life, in the same way as navigating a world filled with people who are Red Wings fans or like country music is. No one is exactly like you, and every society is a constant flow of compromise and grace for others.

Here is where I am supposed to say that diversity is good because it enriches us. And, sure, yeah, that’s true. My favorite form of music — rock and roll — couldn’t have existed anywhere but America. Only America had the different styles of music that blended to create rock and roll. Hip hop can largely say the same. Our scientific discoveries were unmatched in the era when different people with different perspectives came together. Our cuisine is improved by the fusion of different traditions. You can see the obviousness in your interactions with people close to you. My wife and I’s music and book and film tastes do not perfectly overlap, nor would I want them to. She has introduced me to things I enjoy now that I never would have encountered had I not known her, and my life is richer for it. The same process applies as well to cultures as it does to friends.

Nor is this an argument that all values are the same, and that every value from every culture should be respected. Of course not. But, as noted, every culture has good and bad mixed in it and every culture has things to teach others. The list of reasons diversity is good goes on and on and on and really doesn’t matter to me. The reason you shouldn’t build your life around hating something different than you is because the people doing the different are, well, people.

People are people. I have lived all over the country, in rich suburbs and poor inner city neighborhoods and little hollowed-out industrial towns the modern era abandoned. Some of the people were monsters. More were saints. Most were like the rest of us — muddling along, trying to get by in a world more difficult than a just God would allow. The place they came from, the language they spoke, the music they listened to had absolutely nothing to do with where they fell on that spectrum. It is meaningless in the larger picture. Living is hard, especially in this day and age. We all need a little grace to get through it, and as human beings, we are all entitled to that grace. Building your life around insisting that people with different tastes in food or music don’t deserve that grace, don’t deserve the same respect you do, is wrong.

Bad Bunny performing at the Super Bowl does nothing to you. Not a single, solitary thing. You can still listen to whatever music you like. You can read what you want. You can dance or not dance however you please. You can eat the same foods as you did the day before the halftime show, and you can enjoy the same TV shows, movies, and sports. Your life is not changed in any meaningful way because a musician you don’t enjoy is popular enough to headline a halftime show. But your insistence otherwise, your demand that all bend to what you prefer in all places and times, does change the lives of those you spend your hate upon. It makes them afraid and denies them the simple pleasures, the basic grace and understanding that all human beings are entitled to by the virtue of being human beings.

Taking that basic grace away is wrong under almost all circumstances. Taking it away because you don’t like a song on the radio or the language of a conversation in the line ahead of you trips over the line into evil. You may choose to live your life in that sad, exhausting, monstrous way. But the rest of us are not required to pretend it is anything other than horrible.