The Halftime Show Was Literally About Erasing ‘America’
An opinion piece by Brianna Lyman at The Federalist analyzes Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show, focusing on the moment he framed the performance with the idea that “together we are America.” Lyman argues this was a purposeful political statement intended to redefine “America” as the entire Western Hemisphere rather than the United States,effectively challenging national borders adn U.S. nationhood. The piece contrasts the widespread praise from celebrities and commentators with a critique that the message signals open borders and a shift away from a distinct American identity.
The article contends that nations are defined by shared laws, traditions, language, and civic culture, not merely by geography.By broadening “America” to include North, Central, and South America, Bad Bunny is portrayed as endorsing a continental identity over a sovereign American nation, which the author views as undermining sovereignty and the preservation of American culture and language. The piece presents this as a subversive political stance rather than a worldwide celebration of unity, and it closes with author data and related tag context.
Puerto Rican singer Bad Bunny ended his abysmal halftime performance by rattling off dozens of Latin American countries before holding up a football that read: “Together we are America.”
The move was praised by celebrities and leftists alike.
“That made me feel more proudly American than anything Kid Rock has ever done,” Kacey Musgraves said on X.
Robert Griffin III said that even though most people couldn’t understand a word of what Bad Bunny said, “it was iconic because you could feel the love of people and culture. Puerto Rican culture is American culture. Together we are America.”
Complex said on X: “Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime show highlights unity with ‘Together, We are America.’”
Co-host of Scoop City, James Palmer, said “‘TOGETHER WE ARE AMERICA’ Bad Bunny for the win. Outstanding.”
Even former Republican Gov. John Kasich said “Love the halftime show which celebrates the wonderful Latino culture. Great pick and great show. Bad Bunny hit a grand slam home run!”
But Bad Bunny’s subversive message was obvious to anyone capable of critical thinking.
Bad Bunny wasn’t trying to make a feel-good statement about unity. He was making an inherently political claim that the left has been pushing for years, which is that the United States of America — colloquially known as America — isn’t for Americans and that national borders are arbitrary at best but illegitimate at worst.
By naming nearly the entire Western Hemisphere and declaring “We are America,” Bad Bunny was endorsing the idea that North, Central, and South America constitute a single political entity. The United States of America is not a country with a distinct identity, people, or history. Instead it’s just a piece of land inside a continent. If that’s true, then our borders mean nothing because we are all “American.” And if we are all “American,” then our distinct and unique American culture and our English language and our way of life is not something to be preserved, instead it’s something to be molded and reshaped by an ever-changing medley of foreigners and their culture and language and customs.
This redefinition of “America” is why Bad Bunny’s earlier declaration of “God Bless America” was not patriotic but deliberately vague. Some commentators seized on this line as proof that the performance was pro-America. But “God Bless America” is not a generic blessing for the entire hemisphere. It is inseparable from the song of the same name, which was written explicitly about the United States of America. By redefining “America” to mean every country in the Western Hemisphere, Bad Bunny wasn’t saying God bless the United States (which is what the phrase God Bless America relates to), but rather he was saying God bless all of it — North, Central and South America alike. It was another subversive effort to take a distinctly American cultural phrase and empty it of its meaning so that it doesn’t belong to Americans at all.
But sharing a hemisphere does not make any of us countrymen. By that logic, India, Saudi Arabia, and China should all be interchangeable because they’re on the same continent. But they’re not. You’d never hear someone declare that Tehran and Seoul are all “Asia” because that would be recognized as absurd.
Nations aren’t merely geographical confines on a map. They are defined by shared laws, traditions, language, and civic culture. America is not “America” just because it exists somewhere on this particular continent. It is America — and we are Americans — because it stands for our specific set of principles, our people, our language, and our culture.
Bad Bunny naming the entire Western Hemisphere as one America was an open endorsement of open borders and the implicit rejection of nationhood.
Everyone knows “America” refers to the United States of America. And everyone knows being “American” belongs to the United States of America. But if everyone is American — as Bad Bunny implied — then no one is. If the label applies equally to citizens and non-citizens, then the concept of an American nation collapses. And once that happens, then the case for borders and sovereignty collapses.
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