The Road to Trump is Paved With Bad Bunnies

The NFL’s decision to make a “gender non-conforming” star who doesn’t sing in English the halftime performer is not important to world events. But it is a symptom of a big problem in how we deal with our big problems.

I never watch the halftime show. Well, that’s a lie — I watched it when Prince, and later Coldplay, performed. Come to think of it, I did when Lady Gaga headlined out of sheer curiosity, too. Generally, though, I have no interest in who they bring in and, apart from a small hope it might be Taylor Swift this time around, I had no expectation this year would be any better.

But picking Bad Bunny shows how deeply unserious the progressive world is. I am sure those picking a Super Bowl headliner who doesn’t sing in the native language of most of the audience and sometimes performs while crossdressing think they are really sticking it to the MAGA Man by doing so.

Is the goal social media kudos from those in ideological lockstep or building a strong, broad opposition? Running to the fringe undermines the latter, alienating moderate and conservative folks, despite shared concerns over President Trump.

There are plenty of pro-immigration stars whose attire is entirely uncontroversial and are at least bilingual. Even ones who think immigration policy should be generous without being so anti-immigration law enforcement as to refuse to perform in the continental United States (outside of the Super Bowl).

If the point they want to make — many of Trump’s policies are problematic — is taken seriously, making it without snubbing the values of most Americans would actually go a lot further towards getting results. When something important needs to be said, you don’t bury it in a bunch of distractions.

Like many Trump skeptic to outright Never Trump conservatives, I find the president’s flouting of norms and standards alarming. I see corrupt dealings that feel akin to those of the third world — gifted jets, favored deals for friends of the president and the like — and I feel uncomfortable. I see bellicose rhetoric used to speak of our (real) need to bring crime under control alongside mafia-quoting threats to media outlets and I get downright unsettled. I see our free markets being upended and the government taking stakes in private companies and I want to scream.

I want the Trump era to end. If this is the golden age, give me the anodized aluminum age or something. Most average Americans would really like a less flashy, but more reliable government. Yet, instead we have this.

If most of us want something more normal, whether we are progressive or conservative, how did we get here? It’s through a thousand Bad Bunny choices. Not Bad Bunny himself, but the progressive impulse that can never resist a chance to jab traditional mores.

The opposition says we are at a crisis point with the president and then decides the most important issue is celebrating men wearing skirts and high heels, rather than standing against a president skirting due process. Progressives insist that standing against the president’s excesses requires accepting their own — nothing less than the complete upending of traditional human society.

Yet, most of us Americans really do think it’s fair, for example, to leave women’s restrooms to biological women. If you insist normal people be twisted into pretzels for the sake of every tiny interest group’s idiosyncrasies, guess what? People will choose the Trump Administration’s distant, almost abstract irregularities on American governance over the alternative’s irregularities that intrude into the concrete, day-to-day basics of being human.

It won’t kill anyone to call “birthing persons” by the novel name of “woman.”

As my colleague Jason noted previously, Kamala Harris sank her campaign by running to the extremes instead of grabbing onto a consensus-building middle. Championing men in women’s sports and turning radically available abortion — instead of “safe, rare and legal” — into the cause célèbre of freedom are two prime examples. Be it environmental policy, border control or any other, Harris ran for the extreme and burnt any bridges of coalition with more moderate voices.

A few moderates and conservatives sold their principles and bought into her whole program anyway, just to stop Trump. But for many, it was a bridge too far. If you’re mad that we have President Trump again, blame Vice President Harris and her political allies. She asked social conservative Trump skeptics to set on the back burner their cultural issues to stop MAGA, but she wouldn’t reciprocate a single jot.

No, Trump didn’t win an “overwhelming mandate” for every wishlist item of his MAGA playbook. I’d wager a significant portion of his voters would quibble with at least some of his plan and a lot of his style. They simply didn’t want to live in a world where questioning the seriousness of “ze” and “zir” as pronouns calls in the thought police.

Which is why I say progressives need to get serious. Progressive friends, I cannot take seriously your cries that Trump is a genuine threat if you are unwilling to compromise on your agenda of upending of millennia of human societal functioning. When the stakes are highest, the opposition does not insist on conformity to a small niche’s predilections.

A 1990s-style Clinton campaign would have resoundingly defeated Trump, something I think the president understands better than the Democrats do. After all, the 2024 Republican National Convention sounded more New Democrat in tone — whatever the reality of MAGA governance is thereafter — than the Democrats do.

Progressives chant that we are facing latter-day “Nazis.” Do they really believe what they say? When facing Nazis, you don’t figure out how to add more letters to the LGBT alphabet, you try to figure out how to add more individuals to your “resistance.” I for one am glad the Allies were able to stand together against Nazis without first saying, “I’d sure like to find others who want to stop them, but they better support every item on my dream list of changes to society or I’d rather just let Hitler win.”

Time and again, when real threats happen, wise leadership moves to a big-tent middle. Clear-eyed leaders set aside wish lists and focus on the challenge. You don’t need perfect ideological partners to oppose a major problem; you simply need people of basic goodwill who are willing to work together.

I don’t personally think MAGA is Nazism reincarnated; I just think it is ill-advised and potentially damaging to the American Republic. But one would expect that those who do think it is 1930s Germany all over would be those most anxious to form every partnership across the ideological spectrum possible to stop it.

A simple emphasis on getting back to a government that hews to the constitution meticulously and treasures — not flaunts — norms is a unifying plank of responsibility in face of a serious challenge. Post-MAGA, progressives and conservatives could resume the usual debates on spending levels and even cultural conservation versus reform, having recognized that these debates are all predicated on us having a free and functional system.

This would be an enormously popular tack that calls for a culture war ceasefire, not cessation of principles. Yet, for a group that loves fluidity over “binaries,” they act as if there are only two groups: those with perfect conformity to their full agenda and might-as-well-be-Nazis.

When one gives equal priority to standing against constitutional abuses and liberating women’s restrooms from the burden of being for only biological women, expect to be ignored.

If glorying in every deviation and upended moral is more important than building a unified opposition, you aren’t seriously worried about Trump. No, you actually provide him cover by making opposing him appear as unserious as an adult in a bunny costume.