Ranking the Super Bowl halftime performances since last we saw Justin Timberlake

The Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show sucked.

Seriously, it was terrible. It was a famous halftime show, because of the comically oversized controversy surrounding people who weren't me seeing Janet Jackson's right breast. But it was bad.

You may be asking yourself, "Wait, John, you're a sports fan. You didn't watch Super Bowl XXXVIII?" Of course I did! I even started watching the halftime show but my attention drifted because it was a boring hodgepodge of musical mediocrity. Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake were the least of the show's problems, with P. Diddy, Nelly, and Kid Rock (seriously, the NHL was getting roasted last weekend for having to settle for him for their All-Star Game, and 14 years ago he did THE HALFTIME SHOW AT THE SUPER BOWL) taking the stage. So I got bored and played a handheld Tetris game instead.

A lot has changed since then. Janet Jackson became a musical pariah for reasons I do not understand beyond sexism (this is probably most of it) while Justin Timberlake's next single was a "House of Jealous Lovers" homage. What a world! But relevantly, the Super Bowl halftime show became more focused on one specific artist rather than a medley of popular artists past and present. Of course, if the NFL had considered how popular the U2 halftime show two years prior had been, they perhaps could have realized this was the direction to go, but the NFL has never exactly known for being cutting-edge.

Here is a ranking of the thirteen mini-concerts held during halftime of the Super Bowl since the last time Justin Timberlake took the stage. It remains to be seen where JT Part II will slot. He's apparently not actually going to have a Prince hologram on stage with him, so that's a start.

13. Super Bowl XLV: The Black Eyed Peas featuring Usher, and Slash
For about a year, the Black Eyed Peas were HUGE. They were popular longer than that, but for a while, they were the biggest band in the world. And while "Let's Get It Started" fits the Super Bowl aesthetic in a fairly obvious way, their intergalactic 2009 hits "Boom Boom Pow" and "I Gotta Feeling" did not. And was anybody really asking for Fergie to cover "Sweet Child O' Mine"?

12. Super Bowl XLIV: The Who
The entire point of The Who was relentless energy. They are a necessary touchstone in the invention of punk rock. Prime Who would be perfect for this spot. But by 2010, Keith Moon and John Entwistle were dead and Roger Daltrey's once-legendary voice had clearly deteriorated. They stuck to their 1969 and later discography, which was a mostly good idea (does anybody really want to hear a man in his mid-sixties saying "I hope I die before I get old"?) but it meant they were stuck with a fairly monotonous performance. And the less said about Daltrey's "Won't Get Fooled Again" scream, the better.

11. Super Bowl XL: The Rolling Stones
For rock and roll dinosaurs, the Stones have aged relatively well and they covered over forty years of music with their three songs. "Start Me Up", the last truly major Rolling Stones hit, was a logical choice, and their next choice, the months-old single "Rough Justice", was a surprising pick, but it is one of the better Stones singles of their decidedly post-peak era. They closed out with "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", with Mick Jagger acknowledging a fact that was abundantly obvious given the "energy" of the performance--that they could have played the song at Super Bowl I. While the Rolling Stones are one of the great rock and roll bands of all-time, this performance was not one of their highlights. Their lethargy was understandable given their age, but unlike the previous year's performer, who could hide behind a piano, energy is their game. And it was lacking.

10. Super Bowl XLIX: Katy Perry featuring Lenny Kravitz and Missy Elliott
There were nine songs performed. Nine! Six were Perry's, and dancing sharks were the most iconic part of it. The song selection was mostly good--she performed the only two Katy Perry songs really worth ever listening to ("Dark Horse" and "Teenage Dream") and it's kind of hard to not close out with your hit called "Firework", even if it's not a very good song. Lenny Kravitz was a bizarre addition to the show, especially considering he didn't perform any of his own songs (to the extent that Lenny Kravitz songs are "his own")--presumably, the NFL didn't want Perry herself singing "I Kissed a Girl", lest the diversion from the Human Demolition Derby that is an NFL game be sullied by lesbian undertones. Missy Elliott was fine but her pop culture moment was so brief that there were absolutely no surprises about what would be performed.

9. Super Bowl XLVI: Madonna featuring LMFAO, M.I.A., Nicki Minaj, and Cee Lo Green
The closest post-Janet halftime show to a pre-Janet ensemble, this show would have been better as a more Madonna-centric endeavor--the world did not really need to hear "Music" as a medley with the instantly-forgotten LMFAO nor did "Give Me All Your Luvin" need to be included at all, other than as an excuse to trot out M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj. I assume Cee Lo was there as a way to market The Voice, which airs on the same network broadcasting the game. Bonus points to Madonna for not playing "Like a Virgin", a song she correctly dislikes.

8. Super Bowl XLVII: Beyonce featuring Kelly Rowland and Michelle Williams
Her halftime headlining came at a transition period in Beyonce's career--she had cultivated the Sasha Fierce stage persona but didn't quite have the songs that matched it ("Run the World" matched it a bit, but not quite to the level of songs from her self-titled album or Lemonade). "Crazy in Love" was a given, but the reunion with Destiny's Child was mostly unnecessary (who was going to really complain if Beyonce had just done "Bootylicious" on her own?) and I will remain on my "Single Ladies" is one of the worst pop songs in recent memory soapbox regardless of how many people don't agree. That said, Beyonce could sing the phone book and it'd be an acceptable show.

7. Super Bowl XLII: Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers
It was Petty's nature to be workmanlike and his M.O. for Super Bowl Sunday was a solid performance and this is precisely, no more and no less, what he offered. He focused a bit more on big hits than perhaps would have made for the most energetic show--"American Girl" and "Runnin' Down a Dream" were correct picks, but opting for "Free Fallin" rather than something which more captures the energy of the Heartbreakers or the Super Bowl was playing it a bit too safe. Still, it was a good performance by a good band, even if they were a bit too conservative for my cantankerous liking.

6. Super Bowl XLIII: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Jokes about sportswriters being infatuated with The Boss aside, there isn't a Baby Boomer rock star who has aged quite as immaculately as Springsteen. He mixed obvious ("Born to Run", "Glory Days") with less obvious (the album track/concert staple "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out", his new album's "Working on a Dream"). Like Petty's performance the year before, it was more or less what one would expect from a Springsteen halftime show, though I'm giving Bruce, an artist whose music I generally like less, a slight edge for better capturing the energy of the event.

5. Super Bowl XXXIX: Paul McCartney
To avoid controversy following Nipplegate (a stupid term I will only use once here), the NFL went with Paul McCartney, the Living Dean of English-Language Popular Music. Because he is arguably the most popular songwriter of the rock and roll era, Sir Paul had countless hits from which to choose, opting for a fairly simple concert of two big but not overdone Beatles hits ("Drive My Car" and "Get Back"), a Wings hit ("Live and Let Die"), and "Hey Jude", a song he is obliged thanks to a pact with Satan to include in all of his setlists. He could've gone more adventurous and I might have enjoyed it more but it's hard to argue against his largely upbeat, solid performance.

4. Super Bowl LI: Lady Gaga
The modern (fill in name of whatever eclectic, talented as all hell musician you want--I'll go with David Bowie but this is your call), Lady Gaga brought back the solo show and it paid off. Following a pre-recorded "God Bless America" and "This Land Is Your Land" intro, Gaga went through six of her biggest hits, with her somber "Million Reasons" interrupting the dance-pop of the rest of the set. It sticks out like a sore thumb, but I suppose it's unreasonable to expect a non-legacy halftime act to not do some self-promotion by playing their newest hit. Claims of political overtones, I believe, were highly overstated if not totally invented--this was just one of her era's most provocative performers performing provocatively. As you were.

3. Super Bowl 50: Coldplay featuring Beyonce and Bruno Mars 
Man, the NFL really wasn't sure about Coldplay, were they? Chris Martin and company were partnered with two recent previous Super Bowl headliners, and while Coldplay, a band whose live identity is built on trying to be U2 but without nearly the track record of songs, seemed like a risky choice, but they were fine. Bruno Mars only had one hit since his last halftime performance, but it was everywhere, so performing "Uptown Funk" with Mark Ronson was a given. Next, Beyonce performed "Formation", a song released the day before. The three acts joined forced for a mini-Coldplay medley; unlike previous, mediocre medleys, the three acts (essentially co-headliners when all was said and done) had established themselves on stage and the whole thing worked.

2. Super Bowl XLVIII: Bruno Mars featuring Red Hot Chili Peppers
Bruno Mars, despite a number of hits, felt like such an underwhelming headliner that the NFL seemed to threw the Chili Peppers in there at random, but it was Bruno Mars who stole the show. In many ways, Bruno Mars is the ideal halftime show performer--he has hits, yes, but he also has pure energy and multi-instrumental talent while also being middle of the road enough to not upset older viewers. Bruno himself was awesome--it was just completely unnecessary to have Anthony Kiedis anywhere near his stage.

1. Super Bowl XLI: Prince
The gold standard. Prince focused on the spectacle of the event and highlighted the things that made him an icon: his eclecticism (who the hell expected a Foo Fighters cover?), his incomparable wail, and his jaw-dropping guitar shredding. It is pure, dumb luck that it started raining in Miami just as Prince segued into "Purple Rain" but the Super Bowl is all about the greatest the game has to offer hoping to line up their talents with luck in a bid for immortality. Prince did that.

What we're really saying when we talk about Donald Trump's weight

Donald Trump is a proudly ignorant bigot who believes in limiting immigration from countries he deems undesirable (the word "shithole" in "shithole countries" is not the loathesome part; the sentiment is) and who responds to criticism by telling his supporters--declining in number but still strong by per capita passion--that there is a media conspiracy against him. Donald Trump is certainly at least one of two things--very stupid, or (much more likely) cynically exploiting semi-reasonable criticisms of subliminal media bias and turning the narrative into "they're out to get us." He is, of course, a born-on-third-base-wealthy white man, but it's nothing new for people in such a position to want to play the underdog.

Donald Trump is also overweight. According to his personal physician, Dr. Ronny Jackson, Trump weighs 239 pounds. Trump is relatively tall, at 6'3", and thus he falls one pound shy of being categorized as "obese".

Mockery of Trump's physical appearance is more deserved than it is for, say, Chris Christie, not because Trump is politically awful (though he is), but because he has specifically attacked others based on appearance. Just over two months ago, Trump tweeted a (STRONG) implication that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is "short and fat". Trump joked about referring to Rosie O'Donnell as a fat pig during a Republican presidential debate. 

Donald Trump speaks to a very basic urge to mock on appearance. He doesn't actually care if Rosie O'Donnell is overweight--he cared that she is an outspoken liberal. The same Republicans who would mock Hillary Clinton for having short hair and wearing pants suits didn't mind the look from Elizabeth Dole because their criticisms of Clinton were actually about who Clinton fundamentally is. One might think they should, you know, stick to the subject at hand, but people really enjoy personal attacks. Were Republicans crass for exploiting that bit of humanity? Perhaps, but they're also really good at politics.

Of course, the left isn't innocent in this matter. Today proves that.

Is Donald Trump actually 239 pounds? Maybe! It does seem a bit convenient that he comes ever-so-close to obese, but does it really matter?

Donald Trump weighs more than I do and has a Body Mass Index higher than I do--this is going off the measurements he has supplied. He does not have a higher Body Mass Index than I've had at my peak weight. He does not have a higher Body Mass Index than either of my parents. He does not have a higher Body Mass Index than many of you.

Obviously, the reason Trump is being mocked for his weight is because he sucks on levels beyond his physical appearance, but when this mockery is broadcast on social media (and since virtually nobody has a direct line of communication with Trump, any criticism of his weight is being done as a matter of public grandstanding), the wrong message is being sent to those who are overweight and/or obese and, say, don't want to ban Muslims from entering the United States. Particularly with Trump, none of this is coming from a position of concern--calling him fat isn't a way of convincing him to adopt more healthy habits (encouraging healthy behavior is fine in ways that body shaming is not). We are correlating being bad and being overweight. This may not be our intent but it is what we are doing.

This is a problem we have as a culture, particularly online. When we want to criticize Gamergaters who targeted female video game developers and reviewers, we call them ugly virgins. But is the problem whether they are ugly and/or virgins, or is the problem what they are actually doing? In addition to shaming those who feel unattractive or sexually inexperienced who don't target women demanding to be treated as equals, are married Gamergaters (which very much exist) immune from the criticisms? When similar criticisms are levied at the alt-right, would a leader who, say, is married to his third model wife, be part of it?

If the worst thing you can say about Donald Trump is that he is fat, you aren't trying hard enough.

The Christmasization of classic rock

It is December, which means it is the time for the “genre” of Christmas music.

Although categorized as a unique genre, it is really more of a lyrical motif. And despite the fact that Christmas standards are ubiquitous and eventually become viewed as timeless, they are generally very much of their time.

Many of the genre’s staples came from post-World War II, pre-rock and roll traditional pop from the likes of Bing Crosby, Dean Martin, and Andy Williams, and Christmas songs did not deviate musically from non-Christmas music. “Run Rudolph Run” bears a resemblance to Chuck Berry’s most famous song, “Johnny B. Goode”. Paul McCartney’s “Wonderful Christmastime” is drenched in New Wave synthesizers. Run DMC’s “Christmas in Hollis” is very much golden age rap-rock, and while perhaps the most recent addition to the Christmas zeitgeist, Mariah Carey’s “All I Want for Christmas Is You”, does have retro elements, the same could be said of Mariah Carey’s entire brand of pop-R&B.

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” came out in 1994. There have been some new compositions since then, some moderately successful commercially, but the doors seem to be closed to become a standard. For instance, although Taylor Swift wrote new material for her 2007 Christmas EP “The Taylor Swift Holiday Collection”, her radio success came from covers of Eartha Kitt’s “Santa Baby” and Wham’s “Last Christmas”.

Christmas music is a unique genre, if you want to call it that: its songs are played for a month and disappear for the next eleven. “Summer songs” exist but aren’t nearly as seasonally relegated as “Winter Wonderland”. Additionally, Christmas music is where old genres never die. Rockabilly, a genre which otherwise faded in the 1950s (even revivalists like the Stray Cats were more closely imitating early rock and roll, a genre which was basically rockabilly minus bluegrass), continues to exist in the form of “Jingle Bell Rock” and “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree”. And it will seemingly exist forever, as the appetite for new Christmas music, at least for radio, seems relatively low.

The same can be said for the music genre I’ve spent more time in my life consuming than any other—classic rock. The reason that I would listen to music from my parents’ youth was not because I was trying to be consciously retro or revolt against my own generation—it was because the songs were really good and to my untrained ears, they were new. In 2002, I listened to AC/DC and Guns N’ Roses as much as I listened to the White Stripes because, while I literally knew which ones were older, it didn’t make a difference.

But in 2017, I rarely listen to classic rock radio. I still listen to older music, but it’s usually deeper cuts than the staples of the radio format. Classic rock radio grew stale because it’s the same songs, over and over, and has been for as long as I can remember. The cut-off for “classic” was Nirvana and Pearl Jam in the early 2000s and today, with the occasional exception of the Foo Fighters (who debuted four years after the big grunge breakthrough), it remains the same.

I suspect this ties in to why people hate Nickelback.

To borrow a phrase from Uproxx’s Steven Hyden, hating Nickelback has become “a Default Smart Opinion”, a thing people espouse with such ease that it starts to lose meaning. The problem with Nickelback hate isn’t that those who think they are bad are wrong—it’s that Nickelback is not uniquely bad. And indeed, they are not the first go-to band to fashionably claim to hate. But they’ve been that band for about 15 years now. This is a problem, less because it’s unfair to Nickelback (though it is—Journey and Bon Jovi weren’t still getting heckled in the 1990s and 2000s), but because it reflects a lack of movement in rock trends.

Journey received hate because they were viewed as a watered-down version of early Aerosmith or late-prime Rolling Stones. Bon Jovi was stadium rock that couldn’t hold a candle to Bruce Springsteen or U2. And Nickelback was the embodiment of generic post-grunge. For a few years, this was fine. But they are still that band. And that is because there hasn’t been a rock act close to as big as Nirvana since Nirvana. U2 still plays stadiums and releases perfectly fine albums, but they no longer captivate the international consciousness.

But Nickelback is also hurt because they essentially are a classic rock band, just decades too late. They are the 21^st century version of Def Leppard, a band which had detractors but was able to gracefully slide into irrelevance thanks to the rock ecosystem. There hasn’t been a reason to bother hating Def Leppard for decades. Nickelback should get the same treatment.

Classic rock, like Christmas radio, doesn’t want new additions to the playlist because they market not on growth or even quality but on nostalgia. For an impressionable kid who can recognize the sheer joy of listening to Jimi Hendrix or The Who, this makes classic rock radio desirable, but the lack of expansion means it exists mostly for baby boomers who didn’t give such reverence to Glenn Miller but expect millennials to give it to Pink Floyd. And Christmas stations don’t want to upset the applecart, which is why “Baby It’s Cold Outside” will never go away despite the obvious reason it should. It’s not about promoting (heinous) values. It’s about maintaining the status quo.

I’ve never been into Christmas music because I’ve never been into the pre-rock and roll music that comprises most of it, but I have deeply cared about classic rock. And I desperately hope it does not fall into the same rabbit hole, thriving on one selling point until it eventually becomes so unnecessary that it can only emerge from the shadows for one month a year before we all become sick of it.

An attempt to develop confidence in my late twenties

I don't remember how old I was when I started making friends. Like, not "kid you play with at school because you want to play and, hey, there's somebody" but people that I would hang out with outside of a formal setting. I think it was in third grade, though I'm not sure--I think this is probably later than most, but it was never really a thing my parents actively forced (I have no idea if forced socialization of children towards people they might or might not like is a good thing or a bad thing or neutral--just an observation). But I had developed things I liked--I liked sports, I liked video games, I knew other kids from school who liked sports and video games, so hey, let's hang out and play sports and video games. Not that complicated.

One time, when I was about to go to a friend's house, I was getting excited, as little kids do, and probably annoying my dad about it. So he told me something which absolutely crushed my spirit. "You know, he doesn't actually like you. He's just trying to be nice."

What he said was probably not true. If it was true, he would have no way of knowing that it was. And yet, nearly twenty years later, I remember that. It has stuck, sometimes at the forefront of my own personal psyche and other times laying dormant in the back of my mind.

My personal insecurities are something which I have had difficulty overcoming throughout my life. I have lived in a constant state of inadequacy and developed a strong sense that I stand out for all the wrong reasons. And the often-subconscious belief that I am constantly being humored and that I am a social burden remains, no matter how much I try to tell myself that it is all in my head.

To be clear, this is not a reflection on my friends, who are wonderful people and who have given me no actual reason to believe that they invite me to social events as a matter of pity. Some people reading this, I'm sure, are among my truly close circle of friends. Others are people with whom I interact sporadically, maybe "only" on Twitter (while there are certain limits to them, I don't consider Twitter friendships to be irrelevant). And some are people who have read and enjoy my writing, about which the overwhelming majority of comments are positive, or at least constructive or engaging in their usually minor and fair criticisms.

But I constantly try to find ways that I am an outsider. Many of my friends are (slightly) younger than I am, so I internalize myself as the old guy. Many come from more affluent backgrounds, and as a ripple effect, I often find that my life experiences do not put me in a position to relate. Many have significant others or are closer with their families than I am and it's tough to relate to their experiences, as my social structure and motivations are necessarily different.

These were always problems for me, but it was easier at 22 to tell myself that things would change and it wasn't worth worrying about than it is at 28. And I'm still the same shy kid who was insecure about his ability to relate to other people. Because I still will see myself as somebody being patronized, like my dad implied was the norm. I'm the kind of person who will still jump on invitations to do just about anything unless he gets the impression that the invitation was done more out of obligation than actual desire to spend time with me.

In the last month, I've deactivated my Twitter account twice, and I've taken a few additional brief hiatuses in which I would still check the app but would not actively tweet. I did so because I was in a fairly depressed state, and while some are believers in the "tweet through it" method of dealing with anxiety or depression, I try to avoid it--mainly, I worry that it will add to the unhappiness of others, particularly if somebody perceives me as having less reason to be unhappy than they do.

At the moment that I am typing this sentence, I am in a fairly good mood, but as recently as five days ago, I was barely getting out of bed. I'm not naive enough to pretend that I'm "cured" of whatever insecurities drove this in the first place. It's not that sad thoughts don't enter my brain--they do a few times a day on even the best days, but on the best days, they don't last long. I hope that I'm done with Twitter breaks, because as much as I complain about it, I really do enjoy Twitter by and large and think it is a useful tool. But if I'm not, this is probably why.

I don't know if I'll ever be truly confident. There's a reason I refuse to read comments section on things I write. There's a reason I will avoid opening Twitter on days when I write something I wasn't especially proud of. But my hope is that every day, every week, and every year, I can get a little bit closer.

Ted Cruz did not own Deadspin

On Tuesday evening, noted internet sports tabloid Deadspin ran a link to a post from Monday entitled "Send Us Proof of Ted Cruz Playing Basketball." I don't understand why. If the worst thing you can say about Ted Cruz is that he might be lying about or embellishing his basketball acumen, you might literally be police. He's just absolutely godawful in ways beyond the typical, "member of party that is lining up behind the dumbass whims of Donald Trump".

Again, I don't understand the post or why anyone cares about these things. I don't care if Paul Ryan dabs, because the problem I have with Paul Ryan isn't that he's trying to a Cool Dad as much as the whole "condemning tens of millions of poor people to death and/or suffering so that he can get a tax cut" thing.

But Cruz responded, and it was pretty good. He sent a picture of Grayson Allen, the wildly unlikable star of the wildly unlikable Duke basketball program, who also happens to look a shocking amount like Ted Cruz. See, if Deadspin had done this to Trump, it would set off a Totally Not Mad Online tangent the world is not yet prepared to face. But Cruz poked fun (a small amount of fun, but still) at himself and it was fine.

Ted Cruz did not own Deadspin. He did not dunk on Deadspin. He basically did the Twitter equivalent of appearing on SNL.

And Deadspin did not own Cruz by responding "Go eat shit." But this wasn't even kind of funny. It was essentially the direct-to-video sequel to when they told Donald Trump "Go fuck yourself", the latter being one of the ten greatest tweets in history.

The key is context: Donald Trump was basically engaging in entry-level starfuckery. He saw Deadspin getting a ton of (deserved) kudos for breaking the too-weird-to-believe Manti Te'o story and Trump decided to make things all about him. He didn't even bother to get all of the names to credit correct. He couldn't have given less of a shit about that. He wanted to make Deadspin's crown jewel in actual tabloid journalism all about himself. He deserves to be mocked.

Cruz just made a semi-clever and ultimately benign joke. He then proceeded to respond to Deadspin's shit-eating reply with a decade-plus out of date Anchorman joke, because he's actually the least funny person alive. But the first reply was good. It just wasn't an own.

Inter-political friendship in the era of Trump

Growing up, my parents were not overtly political. Throughout the 1990s, I didn't view the government as a large Us vs. Them battle over the soul of anything in particular.

The first presidential election I remember to any degree was in 1996 between Bill Clinton and Bob Dole (I also knew Ross Perot was running but that he had little chance of winning). I don't remember caring who won, though I think I probably preferred Clinton because I knew that he was the incumbent and, I don't know, the previous four years had gone okay for me (I started school, I hadn't contracted polio, and I got Christmas presents every year; kids in the 1930s couldn't necessarily say that). 

But like most small children, I mostly echoed the sentiments I heard from my parents, and my mom spoke favorably of all three (well, two and a half) major candidates. She thought the first term of Bill Clinton (whom I later learned, after not receiving her vote in 1992, received her vote in 1996) went well and was certainly not horrified at the prospect of his presidency continuing. She admired Bob Dole's longevity and political experience and his track record as a bona fide war hero. She, despite liking the Democratic and Republican candidates, liked Ross Perot's iconoclasm (yes, I know his agenda was essentially just handing powerful business interests a blank check, but I was seven) and his apathy towards the power structure of the major parties.

When I was eleven, around the time my family first got the internet, I took one of those polls where you choose somewhere between "Strongly Agree" and "Strongly Disagree" on a host of political issues. I was not, at that point, a partisan, but I did know enough to have semi-nuanced, if still coming from the mouth of a grade schooler, opinions on things. After completing the questionnaire, I got a ranked list of the presidential candidates--Al Gore ranked near the top, George W. Bush ranked near the bottom, and I decided that I was a Democrat.

I've since re-evaluated my stances on issues, changing some but ultimately reaching the same basic ideological conclusion. But I've always had many friends who disagreed with me on politics. I don't wear that as a badge of honor about my open-mindedness or any other form of self-serving flattery; it is simple a product of my environment. Here's an extremely basic run-down of where I'm from, for the uninitiated: I grew up in a state that voted for Donald Trump in 2016 by over eighteen percentage points, but in a county that voted for Hillary Clinton by over sixteen percentage points, but in a township that voted for Donald Trump by over twenty-four percentage points (my current township of residence voted for Trump, but by less than two percent).

I then went to college in Adair County, which voted for Donald Trump by near 25 percent, which sounds like a blowout until you examine the results of the surrounding counties. It was only that close thanks to college students who registered to vote in the county--like most universities, Truman State leans left (although it is far less of a monolith than the Sean Hannitys of the world would lead you to believe). But I was also in the School of Business. I would occasionally observe that the fraternity for business majors I was in probably had a higher proportion of conservative voters than College Republicans. People thought I was joking.

Most of my college friends are further right than I am politically, but in 2016, things turned on their heads a bit. People who had voted for John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012 hated Donald Trump. McCain and Romney may not have excited them, but neither repulsed them (even at my peaks of resisting their presidential campaigns, I fully acknowledged that I thought the Republican Party made the correct decisions during the primary season, both for their chances of winning a general election by wooing moderates and by picking a relatively palatable candidate). 

Donald Trump represented a boorish stereotype of Republicanism that they, college educated and respectable people, resisted. Liberals tried in the early 2000s to frame George W. Bush, a Yale undergraduate with a M.B.A. from Harvard, as a complete moron, because they viewed Bush's ideas as bad. His ideas were mostly bad, and there were plenty of Democrats with as much or more education than Bush who could make cogent, nuanced cases against those ideas, but that is a lot more difficult to do than just scream about how George W. Bush is a stupid redneck. 

Trump complicates matters because while I disagreed vehemently with George W. Bush's politics, not that much less than I disagree with Trump's, his heart consistently seemed to be in the right place. He, if nothing else, cared about his country and he cared about doing what was best for Americans, even if he was wrong. Donald Trump, however, seems to be focused much more on matters of his own personal vanity. 

The 2000 presidential election was divisive, as most presidential elections tend to be, but I do not once recall the victor spiking the football in front of those who voted against him. There was certainly an Us vs. Them element, but it largely went away once Al Gore conceded defeat. Donald Trump lacks grace to such an appalling degree that just last night, he was citing Vladimir Putin, the war criminal whom the CIA has claimed actively conspired in Trump's favor during the election, about Hillary Clinton being a sore loser. You know what George W. Bush never did? Criticized Al Gore after the election (I could probably cut the sentence off here, because, well, Bush won, why would he bother?) with help from the goddamned president of Russia (in the good ol' days, Republicans accused Democrats of being in cahoots with Russia).

This probably seems like a rant to this point, but what creates a new challenge for reconciling friendships across party lines in 2016 is that bipartisanship is based on believing in the fundamental decency of others. People I liked and respected voted for people other than the people I voted for in years past, but I trusted that, at their core, they truly believed they were doing the right thing. And that's what actually matters. I've told some of my #NeverTrump Republican friends that I look forward to disagreeing with them on politics again, because a healthy democracy needs fundamentally decent opposition as much as it needs fundamentally decent leadership, even if you're on the side that has all of the power. Insert the old "power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely" line here.

A new tactic I've seen more and more recently among members of "Left" Twitter is criticizing "liberals" (when you don't make an honest attempt to win elections, you can't be criticized for losing elections, and hence these two are differentiated heavily, particularly by the former group) for speaking favorably (on certain topics) of the likes of Evan McMullin or Matthew Dowd or David Frum, conservatives who are adamantly opposed to Donald Trump. McMullin, for instance, if you look at his political stances, is not that far removed from the pre-Trump Republican mainstream.

But this is completely missing the point, which is that liberals and conservatives can not only co-exist, but can occasionally unite when the stakes are huge (yuge). But they can also scatter once the macro problems (such as the continued existence of our democracy) are solved. I have no intention of ever voting for Evan McMullin for president, because I disagree with him on a lot of issues, but I would cherish the opportunity to disagree with him because he is, by all accounts, a sharp guy who is, and I cannot say this about Donald Trump, willing to learn. He is not somebody who is so caught up in his own sense of superiority that he is not willing to at least consider the possibility that he does not know it all (even if he usually comes to the conclusion that he is right--this is, after all, human nature).

It's weird for me to think that over 60 million people voted for Donald Trump for president. I still can't quite believe it. But while 60 million people decided they wanted him to be president, or at least decided they didn't want Hillary Clinton to be president, this does not represent a lifelong covenant. Nobody is contractually obligated to support what Trump does. Those who voted for Trump in 2016 are not obligated to vote for him in 2020.

And this is where it becomes deceptively easy to maintain friendships with those who voted differently than you. This doesn't mean you should be friends with everybody who voted differently than you: you are not required to reach out to the white nationalist Trump voters whose agenda in 2016 was keep brown people away from them. 

But there is a such thing as a Trump voter who isn't just a miserable bigot--you might disagree with the adamantly pro-life voter who views pro-choice politicians as enablers of murder, but if you work from the basic assumption that abortion is murder (again, you don't have to agree with the premise; you just have to acknowledge that the belief exists), it's easy to see the logic of voting for a scumbag if he at least has that going for him. And if this voter, voting for Trump on the basis of this single issue, then begins to defend positions which seemingly contradict a pro-life ethos (death penalty, excessive police force, semi-habitual bombings of civilians in the Middle East, there's a lot of them here), then you have the right to note the hypocrisy. To them. This is how political dialogue works.

I am pessimistic about just about everything with the Donald Trump presidency, but at the end of the day, there's no reason why the awfulness I anticipate about the next eight years (yes, eight) should extend to my own personal life. And there's no reason it should extend into yours, either. Because if you cannot see the difference in the concerned, compassionate voter who disagrees with you on basically all issues and the alt-right Pepe-ists who incite legitimate fear in the hearts of those whom they consider enemies, then that falls on you.

Fear.

People are absolutely terrified that Donald Trump is going to materially hurt their lives. Just a thought:

Maybe instead of belittling them and telling them to suck it up, you could CONVINCE them that things will be fine.

The problem with treating politics as sports is it's about winners and losers as a zero-sum game, which isn't the case here at all.

People fear rights will be stripped. Afraid they/friends/family will be deported. Afraid they'll die. It could be irrational but it IS real.

So rather than thinkpieces empathizing with the white working class who got what they wanted, we could empathize with the terrified?

I'm a straight white man with health insurance through my employer. I'll be fine. Might even get a tax cut. I don't need empathy.

People are being physically attacked. This is literally happening. And rather than condemn this, Trump focuses on the NY Times being mean.

Hopefully it subsides. Hopefully, decency wins out and the KKK isn't emboldened. But I certainly understand why this scares people.

So if you supported Trump and consider these fears unwarranted--maybe you're right! And if you're sure, point out why.

Don't just tell people they're wrong. Because yelling at them isn't going to help change minds or hearts. And that's a thing you should want