The Patriot Post® · Partisan Bruce Springsteen's Call For 'Unity' Falls Flat

If you watched the Super Bowl this past Sunday, chances are you saw the Jeep commercial featuring Bruce Springsteen titled “The Middle.” And if you know anything about Springsteen and his politics, chances are this ad might have come as a slap in the face.

In cowboy boots and cowboy hat (because what else would you wear to evoke middle America?), Springsteen wastes no time in proselytising and regurgitating the tedious tenets of the Woke Elite Liberal. From a chapel in Kansas that is quite literally in the middle of the country, he performs a monologue saturated with misplaced biblical imagery that contains a plea for reuniting the nation and meeting in the center. The result is a half-baked sermon filled with pretty words that are at once completely void of feeling and reek of hypocrisy.

With his call for unity and sudden eagerness to find some common ground, you’d never think that this was the same man who spent the Trump years fueling the flames of partisan fire and, before that, proudly vocalized opposition to Republicans and Republican leaders.

But even if you don’t know much about Springsteen and his politics, you only have to possess a small amount of sensitivity to and awareness of the times in which we are living to understand just how tone-deaf and obnoxious the ad really is.

Don’t get me wrong–I am all for finding common ground and treating everyone with kindness and respect despite our differences. But the problem with Jeep and Springsteen’s exhortation for unity is that it assumes all Americans are and should be on the same page. It glazes over very real grievances about the way this country is run and the way we have mistreated each other. It’s a call for healing that seeks to move forward without any intention of undergoing the growing pains that are necessary for true reflection and reconciliation. It’s far too neat and tidy a message.

In addition to promoting a reductive, inadequate healing process, the ad exposes the hypocrisy of Democrats’ current call for unity. During the Trump era, elite liberals like Springsteen scorned the possibility of unity. But now that safe and boring Uncle Joe has taken Donald Trump’s place, Springsteen and the likes are ready to “heal” and for Americans to be “decent” again.

If only it were that easy.

It’s apparent that Springsteen is suffering from the same ailment that plagues many of our nation’s leading Democrats, including the current commander in chief: a tone-deafness that can only be bolstered by a life lived so far removed from those whom you claim to represent.

For one, Springsteen and Biden romanticize the blue collar, factory life of times past, but neither of them have spent time experiencing it. Springsteen might have grown up in a working class family, but he has spent the majority of his adult career in the limelight. Biden’s been in politics his whole life with little to show for it. And no matter how much pandering he extends to the working class and how relatable he pretends to be, his hands will never be calloused. He’d sooner kill jobs before he’d do any work to create them, as we’ve already seen just weeks into his presidency. Biden and Springsteen have taken it upon themselves to be the mouthpieces of the working class man–but as it stands now, they are both failing miserably.

So yes, let’s get to the middle–let’s strike a deal for the sake of reunification. But only when elite liberals like Springsteen and Biden tell us to do so and are ready for it.