The middle of America exists only on maps
Springsteen’s Jeep ad reminds us of the road to unity
The middle of the United States exists only on a map in the heartland, not in the hearts of its people.
All it took was a twominute commercial from Jeep, featuring rock ‘n’ roll legend Bruce Springsteen, to drive home the point that Americans will never agree on their version of America. Immediately after the commercial aired during the second half of the Super Bowl, all hell broke loose in our country, or what Jeep marketed as the “Re-United States of America.”
“Really, Jeep?!” one reader posted on my Facebook page. “Where was this harmonic call for national unity when Trump was president? This is nothing but bull(expletive) leftist posturing with Biden in office.”
After watching the video, I wrote on my social media pages: “My vote for best Super Bowl commercial goes to Jeep and Bruce Springsteen with their ‘Re-United States of America.’” Critics immediately labeled the commercial as hypocritical tripe from an iconic U.S. corporation prostituting The Boss for economic and political gain.
“I’ll never buy a Jeep again!” one reader commented.
The video opens in a small Kansas town that no one has heard of, focusing on a tiny church called U.S. Center Chapel. It’s located in the exact geographical “middle” of the lower 48. And it’s always open to believers – believers in God, believers in America, believers in commercialism.
“All are more than welcome. To come meet here, in the middle,” Springsteen says as he drives a beat-up old Jeep down a deserted rural road in the middle of nowhere.
“It’s no secret. The middle has been a hard place to get to lately. Between red and blue. Between servant and citizen. Between our freedom and our fear,” Springsteen tells viewers.
“Now, fear has never been the best of who we are. And as for freedom, it’s not the property of just the fortunate few; it belongs to us all. Whoever you are, wherever you’re from. It’s what connects us. And we need that connection. We need the middle,” he says.
We need the middle, I agree. But we’re never going to find it. It’s a shared myth, a promised ideal, existing only in a polished commercial or a symbolic dot on a map. But that’s OK. It’s the quest for the middle – a continual search in the darkness of divisiveness – that makes our country remarkable.
“We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground,” Springsteen says, rubbing his wrinkled, calloused hands in Kansas dirt.
He’s right, in theory. But
the common ground we seek politically is nothing but quicksand, I say, swallowing every generation’s hopes and prayers. Hatefulness suffocates us. Resentment buries us.
Nonetheless, Springsteen’s Sunday evening sermon resurrected a familiar national narrative, one of hope and promise. Music as soft as a snowflake gently rises to a crescendo as Springsteen dons a cowboy hat and drives home gravel-voiced optimism.
“We can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert, and we will cross this divide. Our light has always found its way through the darkness,” he says, lighting a candle in the church for effect. “And there’s hope on the road … up ahead.”
Critics attacked the video as commercialized hype, not authentic hope.
“What a phony. One of the biggest corporate sellouts in music history,” one reader commented on my Facebook post. “And what’s with his voice? He used to have a Jersey accent. Now, he’s all deep and raspy like Moses. Give me a break!”
Another critic said it wasn’t until the end of the video he realized the narrator was “a really old Trump-hating Bruce Springsteen.”
“It was at that point that I became aware the commercial
was indeed an attack on evangelical Trump-supporting Christians, telling us to get over it after years of hate from the left,” he wrote. “Now that Biden is in office ‘we should reunite.’ You divide us, you hate us, you persecute us. Now you blame us for the division. Very enlightening, thanks Jeep.”
I’d share these readers’ names but they fear a hateful backlash from leftleaning critics. And they have a point. When I scan through my social media newsfeed, I see so much hatefulness. Name calling. Accusations. Allegations. Meanness. Anger.
“You lost. Get over it. Biden is your President. Don’t like it? Move. Oh, and (expletive) your feelings. Sound familiar?” one of my readers commented on a post to a Trump supporter.
Her point: this is what liberals heard for four years from conservatives who called Trump critics/ haters “snowflakes.” With President Joe Biden in office, it’s now his critics/ haters who are being called snowflakes. It never stops snowing animosity in our country, regardless where you live. The season of hatefulness is year round and unrelenting.
Unlike Springsteen’s dramatized overture for national unity and political healing, I don’t share such hope for us, not in my lifetime anyway. Maybe in
my grandson’s lifetime. That’s my hope, like every grandparent since the Constitution was penned.
During this historically infamous week, we are the ones who should be impeached for the insurrection of our country. Yeah, you and me. Every day we assault the monument of our ideals and destroy anything in our way to self-righteousness.
Like most of those rioters who assaulted the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6, we’re proud of it. We take screenshot selfies of our hatred and anger to those who disagree with us. We congratulate anyone who agrees with our viewpoints. We condemn anyone who doesn’t.
There’s no middle ground. There’s no common ground. There’s no …
middle.
Springsteen’s pilgrimage to the symbolic center of our nation only reminded us that it will be a thunderous road toward national unity, which at this point boasts a population of zero. Hell, we can’t even disagree with civility about a frilly halftime show over The Weeknd.