The Luxury of Arguing About Nothing
Useless arguments for entitled people.
When I returned home from my deployment to Iraq, I remember thinking about one thing more than almost anything else.
I wanted to poop on a real toilet. Not a plywood box. Not a hole in the ground. Not something sweltering in the heat that you tried not to think about too much. Just a normal, clean, quiet bathroom. A door that locked. A toilet that flushed. A moment of privacy that did not involve dust, noise, or urgency.
That was the luxury I was craving.
Not entertainment. Not comfort. Not opinions. Not arguments.
Just dignity in the most basic human sense.
That memory comes back to me every time I watch people lose their minds arguing about halftime shows. Who performed. What they wore. What it meant. Who it offended. Who it represented. Who it failed to represent. Whether it ruined the game or saved it. Whether it signaled the downfall of society or the triumph of culture.
We argue as if it matters.
It doesn’t.
During that deployment, I saw people who were tired in a way most of us will never experience. People who were hungry. People who were afraid. People who lived with uncertainty every single day. People who worried about water, safety, food, and survival before they worried about expression, symbolism, or entertainment.
They did not have the luxury of outrage over a performance.
They did not have the mental space to dissect meaning in pop culture. They were too busy trying to make it to tomorrow. Too busy protecting their families. Too busy enduring conditions that strip life down to its essentials.
Perspective changes you when you witness that.
In much of the Western world, we are so comfortable that we have the bandwidth to argue about nonsense. Our basic needs are met so consistently that we forget how fragile those things are. When survival is no longer the daily concern, we fill the void with manufactured conflict. We turn preferences into moral battles and entertainment into identity tests.
That is not a sign of a thoughtful society. It is a sign of a pampered one.
Arguing about halftime shows is not passion. It is boredom masquerading as importance. It is the luxury of having nothing truly urgent to worry about. When the worst thing in your day is that you did not like a performance, you are doing remarkably well, whether you recognize it or not.
None of this means people cannot enjoy music, sports, or culture. Those things matter in their proper place. They bring joy. They bring connection. They bring moments of shared experience.
But when we treat them like battlegrounds, we lose something important.
We lose gratitude.
We lose humility.
We lose perspective.
I have stood among people who would trade everything they own for the chance to argue about something so meaningless. People who would welcome the privilege of being offended by art instead of threatened by violence or scarcity.
The ability to argue about halftime shows is not a burden.
It is a luxury.
And maybe the most telling thing is not which side of the argument someone is on, but that they believe the argument is worth having at all.