Even if it was a relatively boring game with disappointing numbers at Nevada sportsbooks, watching the New England Patriots lose to the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX should have been a unifying experience for a nation laden with cultural and political disagreements. 

Alas, for the perpetually offended peddlers of partisan outrage, nothing is free from petty politicization. 

The incessant whinging from conservative politicians and pundits about Bad Bunny’s halftime show demonstrates the degree to which certain segments of our population have become hopelessly addicted to the grift of culture war absurdity. Indeed, roughly 6 million people fled to an alternative performance organized by Turning Point USA — a safe space for members of the MAGA movement to escape the supposed indignity of watching a Puerto Rican sing entirely in Spanish. 

The mere fact that millions of Americans felt it necessary to indulge in a politically pandering alternative, however, is sadly emblematic of where we are as a nation. Apparently we can’t even play nicely together for a few hours without an entire class of pundits, commentators and politicians manufacturing outrage. At least one politician is even calling for formal government inquiries into Bad Bunny’s performance. (I wish I was kidding.)  

However, such overpoliticization of virtually everything shouldn’t be surprising. After all, as we saw at the Feb. 1 Grammy Awards ceremony, people from all sides of the aisle like to hijack cultural happenings for their own political grandstanding or to promote their own personal agendas. 

As George Orwell once noted, it’s for that reason every issue is inherently political. However, Orwell also noted “politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia.” 

And that’s what’s so dangerous about our era of needlessly and unnecessarily politicizing everything that happens to crawl across our news feeds. Fomenting the sort of “folly, hatred and schizophrenia” Orwell described inevitably injures our ability to agree with one another on even the most basic facts or share even the most benign cultural moments together. It trains us to retreat to our own echo chambers rather than engage with the diversity of opinions that populate the world around us. 

In other words, when we allow ourselves to view everything through partisan lenses, we begin living in entirely different realities from those we disagree with — in much the same way millions of Americans decided to watch an alternative entertainment program on Feb. 8 rather than tolerate a performance that didn’t pander to their ideological biases. 

For a glaring example of how such political blinders can distort our view of the world, look no further than how members of both political camps view the state of the economy.

During President Donald Trump’s first term, Democrats consistently rated the economic conditions of the nation significantly worse than Republicans did. However, the instant Joe Biden became president in 2020, the two sides of America’s political duopoly immediately swapped opinions. While both parties had pretty negative views regarding Biden’s economic agenda, Republicans were nonetheless significantly more pessimistic about the state of the nation than their Democratic counterparts.

Today, with Trump back in the White House, the partisan gap regarding how we view the economy has once again flipped. According to Pew Research Center, nearly half (49 percent) of Republicans say economic conditions are good or excellent, with only 10 percent of Democrats and “Democratic leaners” agreeing. 

In other words, even though we all buy the same groceries, pump the same gasoline and do business in the same economy, our ideological allegiance is a far larger contributing factor to how we feel about all those transactions than any objective economic measurement or metric. 

And for politicians, pundits or social media influencers who profit from such disagreement, no cultural moment is apparently too small of an opportunity to rage-bait their followers into a frenzy by exploiting such distorted views of the world. 

While it’s easy to blame those who peddle such contempt, bigotry and disdain for their own personal gain, the real problem is that there is a significant portion of perpetually aggrieved Americans who are hungry for such overly politicized “hot takes.” 

In other words, there’s a terribly robust market for grifters to sell their nonsense. And the reason such a demand for it exists is easy to understand. As Hunter S. Thompson said, “(P)olitics is a guilty addiction … and when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it.” 

Partisan outrage is the narcotic that contemporary political junkies are clamoring to inject directly into their veins. Frenzied sycophants within ideological echo chambers are eager to reward anyone who peddles such petty politicization with millions of clicks or page views — resulting in public discourse that has become dominated by increasingly unhinged moral, social and political panics.

Fortunately, an increasing percentage of Americans appear fed up with such doomscrolling politics, and are now rejecting partisan labels altogether. That growing swath of Americans is probably part of the reason nearly 130 million people remained tuned into the Super Bowl last weekend, despite the far right’s constant moaning about the halftime show. 

As it turns out, many Americans seemingly didn’t care about the supposed “controversy” of some Latin artist performing — and that’s excellent news. Despite the incessant absurdity that overwhelms our public discourse, it is important to remember that most Americans aren’t accurately represented by those opportunists and grifters who clamor to profit off our political disagreements. 

Indeed, most of us were just trying to watch a stupid football game. 

Michael Schaus is a communications and branding expert based in Las Vegas and founder of Schaus Creative LLC, an agency dedicated to helping organizations, businesses and activists tell their story and motivate change. He has more than a decade of experience in public affairs commentary, having worked as a news director, columnist, political humorist and most recently as the director of communications for a public policy think tank. Follow him on Twitter @schausmichaelor on Substack @creativediscourse.