This would be the time of year that we’d all generally be talking about the Super Bowl and the commercials that they usually run, which are the best and which are the worst.

But maybe it’s just me, but truthfully, I can’t really be intrigued much by the Super Bowl, with everything that has gone on over the past months.

But I did check out one of the commercials because it was the first commercial that Bruce Springsteen ever did. That in and of itself makes it something of note. Obviously doing commercials was not exactly his thing.

Now knowing that Springsteen is a die-hard leftie, I braced myself for the preaching. But it was a bit more subtle.

Now, I don’t know what you thought of it. It had some nice visuals and was working for that homespun appeal. It’s a truly beautiful area of the country that should get more attention, so I’m glad that it’s gotten a little.

But I couldn’t help but think that Democrats and folks on the left have shown again and again they don’t care about the “middle” in every sense of that word.

They don’t really care about what the folks in the middle think, otherwise they wouldn’t constantly be deriding them and treating them like rubes and “deplorable.” A lot of those folks are Trump supporters who media and Democrats right now are intent on painting as evil villains. All 75 million plus of them. Maybe if you want to “meet in the middle” the way you do that is actually start by listening to the people who live there and treating what they have to say with respect?

If the middle means coming together in “unity,” in the words of Joe Biden, or just having the ability to share ideas, the left seems to think that Jan. 6 gives them to the right to demonize everyone on the right and shut down their speech. We’ve seen an incredible amount of censorship and cancel culture since then and it’s more than troubling. That “unity” isn’t about coming together or respecting each others right to hold contrary views. Unity to Democrats means shutting down all political opposition or any of the glaring truths out there that might challenge their narrative.

“Fear has never been the best of who we are,” Springsteen declares in the ad. “We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground. So we can get there. We can make it to the mountaintop, through the desert …and we will cross this divide.”

I’m sure that’s a slight slap at the right because that’s how the left generally views those “in the middle” somehow “fearful” of change (false translation: you’re all racists and that’s why you voted for President Donald Trump).

But it’s the left who has been pushing fear to great effect. Fear of the pandemic to impose greater control over our lives. Would you ever have thought you could have been forbidden from sending your kids to school or going into your church? Fear of your neighbor who holds politically different views, to demonize and dehumanize him, so that you can more easily paint him as a threat. Fear of a whole political party now, painting all the GOP as “insurrectionists” now to politically immobilize them and consolidate more control. Fear of any different thought or speech, so it must be suppressed because just that idea is somehow now a “risk of violence.”

It ends on a positive note.

“We just have to remember the very soil we stand on is common ground,” Springsteen says as he fingers the soil on the ground. “Our light has always found its way through the darkness. And there’s hope up on the road ahead.” The ad ends with the words across the screen, “To The ReUnited States of America.”

Now some might think that was an allusion to Biden as somehow the ‘reuniter’ and perhaps it was, because of his ‘unity’ words. In which case, trying too hard and yeah, no. Although it did seem more prospective to me.

But maybe they should understand that a lot of the folks in “the middle” don’t see that light and they think that those of you in power don’t really care what they think. So that sense makes it pretty hard to feel there’s “hope on the road ahead.” It’s pretty hard to “Reunite” with people who think they are justified in trying to cancel your thought or in trying to destroy you.

Is there hope on the road ahead, despite all that has occurred? I have to believe that there is, because I’m an American. We have forded so many rivers and so many challenges in the past. But if there is to be that hope, it will not come from shutting people up, but finally listening to those “in the middle.”