The National Football League announced last month that rapper Bad Bunny, who is Puerto Rican, will headline the halftime show at the Super Bowl next February. This got MAGA in a tizzy – as everything nowadays must of course become poltically partisan.

Trump lackey and chief Congressional obstructionist Mike Johnson claimed that someone with a “broader audience” would be a better choice. He suggested an 82-year old country singer named Lee Greenwood (I had never heard of Greenwood until I saw the clip where Johnson mentions him). Doesn’t Johnson know that Bad Bunny holds the record for the most streamed album of all time? Clearly he has a very broad audience!

OK, I’ll be nice. Maybe MAGA missed that Bad Bunny has broad appeal because they don’t stream music, they still listen to Lee Greenwood albums on their old vinyl collection. They’re just a bit behind the times, is all.

But I don’t think that’s where Johnson’s mind was. MAGA’s problem with Bad Bunny is that they don’t think of him – a U.S. citizen, of course, like anyone else born in Puerto Rico – as an American. From the MAGA perspective, Bad Bunny’s broad audience is the wrong audience.

His audience is the Spanish-speaking part of America, the people they are trying to exclude. The people current acting President Stephen Miller is actively trying to remove from the country, and that scatterbrained Homeland Security boss Kristi Noem promises to sic her ICE-troopers on at the Super Bowl itself.

Look behind the headlines to see how MAGA is really behind the times. We all know it’s true: America is becoming more racially diverse. The Spanish-speaking population has grown significantly in my lifetime. This is the trend that MAGA’s policies are trying to somehow reverse, returning us to the great again Golden Age the Boomers grew up in, when America was all white and all Christian.

Never mind that the only way to do this is illegally, outside of the bounds of the Constitution, and at great moral cost. They’re fine with that. White supremacist America has ethnically cleansed the continent before, and they are trying to do it again.

I don’t think this will be possible, given the geographic expanse and huge population of the United States, compared to previous centuries. But I could be wrong. I don’t really know how bad it will get.

In an earlier post, I reviewed a book by Michael Lind called The Next American Nation. In the book, Lind argues that we have gone through other periods of resistance to newcomers to America, leading into eventual assimilation and expansion of the definition of who counts as an American.

First it was just Anglos, the original “Mayflower stock”, so to speak. Then Germans and other Northern European Protestants. With some fuss, the Irish. The freed African slaves following the Civil War. And, early last century, Eastern and Southern Europeans.

We had taken a long journey from being a Protestant offshoot of England to becoming a “Judeo-Christian” melting pot nation. In this melting pot recipe were certain ingredients that give America its distinct cultural flavor. Our unique Thanksgiving holiday, with all its traditions. Our way of celebrating Christmas, including our version of Santa Claus. Our two big major league sports – baseball and American football.

In my generation’s lifetime, the challenge has been assimilating Hispanics, Asians and Muslims, adding them to the melting pot. Hispanics, being the largest population, are bearing the brunt of a backlash that seeks to flip back the calendar to somewhere in the 1950s. The huge irony, of course, is that Spanish-speaking people have been on this continent for longer than English-speaking people have.

Welcoming Latin Americans as part of the broader United States of America is the true expression of American values, the true fulfillment of America’s destiny to become a land of freedom and opportunity for all, regardless of race, creed, or national origin. So kudos to the NFL for inviting Bad Bunny to the Super Bowl – an iconic annual event that helps define America – because that clearly moves the country in the right direction.

The assimilation of Latin Americans into the U.S. is already happening in many ways, of course, no matter what anyone does. I’m just glad that the NFL is embracing this instead of fighting it, unlike the backwards-thinking MAGA regime. Even if the NFL is only doing it with their profits in mind. To show my appreciation, I will probably watch the Super Bowl, even though I don’t normally follow sports.

Shame on MAGA for trying to take us backward in time, in such a cruel, repressive, and un-American way.

See y’all at the No Kings marches this weekend!