For the past few months I’ve watched something that has made me sad as an American. Not because of politics, but because of how we treat each other.

The outrage over the Super Bowl halftime show didn’t start when the performance happened, it started the moment that Bad Bunny was announced as the performer. Before a single song was sung, before a stage was built, before anyone saw what the show would be, Americans were already fighting about it.

And that’s the problem.

The NFL made what was pretty clearly a business decision. Bad Bunny is one of the most popular artists in the world and the league wants global audiences. That’s not political, that’s just simply marketing. But instead of accepting that reality, people immediately turned it into a culture war.

Some on the left framed the performance as a political or cultural statement. Some on the right treated it like an attack on America itself. Then Turning Point USA announced they wanted to create their own “American halftime show”, in response. Not because the game needed two halftime shows, but because everything now has to be a political counter punch.

And suddenly the Super Bowl wasn’t about football anymore. It was about us fighting each other again.

That’s what makes me angry, not the performers, not the NFL, not even the organizations reacting to it. I’m angry at us.

We’ve become addicted to outrage.

Everything is political now. Music is political. Sports are political. Movies are political. Even moments that used to bring Americans together, like the Super Bowl, now feel like political battlegrounds.

And the worst part is, both sides think they are victims.

The left accuses the right of intolerance. The right accuses the left of cultural takeover. Meanwhile, regular Americans are just watching the country tear itself apart over things that shouldn’t divide us in the first place.

We didn’t used to be like this.

We used to be Americans first.

That doesn’t mean we always agreed. We didn’t. The founders argued constantly. Political parties formed almost immediately after the constitution was written. Division isn’t new.

What is new is the way that we see each other now. Not as neighbors or fellow citizens, but as enemies.

That’s exactly what the founders warned against

George Washington warned against political factions becoming more important than national unity. He feared Americans would start choosing party loyalty over country. He worried that political divisions would grow so strong that Americans would stop seeing each other as part of the same nation.

That fear feels real today.

Now it feels like we’re Americans second and partisans first.

We don’t try to understand each other anymore, we try to defeat each other. We don’t debate, we mock. We don’t disagree, we cancel. We don’t listen, we assume the worst.

And honestly, it’s exhausting.

The halftime show was never the problem, it was a symptom. The real problem is that Americans can’t even watch a football game together anymore without it turning into a political argument.

This should break our hearts.

Because the Super Bowl used to be one of the few things that united us. For a few hours, none of that other stuff mattered. Republicans, Democrats, Independents, it didn’t matter. We were just Americans watching the same game.

I’m not writing this because I’m angry about a performer or political organization. I’m writing this because I’m angry that we’ve forgotten how to be a country.

We are becoming exactly what the founders feared: a nation divided into tribes that care more about winning an argument than preserving unity.

And if we don’t stop, we’re going to lose something bigger than politics.

We’re going to lose each other.

America was never supposed to be a country where we all agree on everything. It was supposed to be a country where we disagree but still see each other as Americans.

Somewhere along the way, we forgot that.

And that scares me more than any halftime show ever could.

One day, we may look back and realize we didn’t lose our unity all at once. We lost it in moments like this, when we chose sides instead of each other. And when that day comes, the question won’t be who was right. It will be whether we remembered we were Americans at all, and how long we had been forgetting.

And maybe the harder part of admitting this is realizing it didn’t happen overnight. There wasn’t one election, one news story, or one halftime show that divided us. It happened slowly, piece by piece, argument by argument, until division started to feel normal.

We stopped giving each other the benefit of the doubt. We stopped believing people we disagreed with could still love this country. We stopped listening to understand and started listening to respond. Over time, that changes a nation in ways that are hard to see in the moment but impossible to change later.

The truth is, America doesn’t fall apart if people disagree. Disagreement has always been part of this country. America falls apart when people stop seeing each other as worth understanding. When winning matters more than belonging. When identity replaces citizenship.

That’s what makes moments like the Super Bowl feel different now. They remind us what we’re missing, not agreement, but togetherness. Not silence, but shared experience. Not uniformity, but unity.

Being American was never about thinking the same way. It was about believing in the same country.

That idea feels fragile right now, but it isn’t gone. You can still see it in small moments, strangers helping each other, communities showing up after disasters, people standing together when it really matters. The instinct to care about each other hasn’t disappeared, it’s just been buried under the noise.

Maybe that’s why this matters so much. Not because of music, or football, or politics, but because shared moments remind us who we are when we’re not arguing.

If we want the country to feel united again, it won’t happen through one election or one leader. It will happen when Americans start choosing each other again in small, ordinary moments, the ones that used to bring us together without effort.

Maybe the next time something like a halftime show happens, we don’t look for reasons to divide. Maybe we just watch it together.

Because before anything else, before politics, before parties, before outrage, this is still our country, and we still belong to it together.

And that only changes if we let it.

So will you keep dividing or will you start remembering what it means to be American?