I know people are haters, but when I start to really look at polarizing figures from both sides of the fence, the tribalism I experience is insane. I only have ten minutes to dig in, but the hate and conversely the love given to both Deion Sanders and Donald Trump is insane. I’m sure there are others I could have referenced for this talk, but lately the two of them have been lighting up their various worlds.
This post started for me because of a social media post by a media outlet accepted as an ‘expert’ in football. They listed two Colorado players as two of the best in the sport this coming year. The hate those players instantly received was shocking. When I dove into the comments for just a second I realized the hate wasn’t really about them at all. It was about Sanders. Last year Sanders threw for 3200 yards with 27 TDs to 3 interceptions. His PFF rating was 7th among FBS quarterbacks despite being sacked so much that the school changed the entire offensive line. By most media standards he was a top 10 QB last year, yet him being listed among the top players this year (and last) was laughable to anyone who hated Sanders and fact to anyone who loved him. Hunter is even a bigger case. Every news outlet in the nation considers him the top player and likely #1 pick. Yet to the haters, he cannot be good because he plays for Prime.
Some people attribute the hate to media coverage and how it runs contrary to their opinion of the person or how much overexposure it provides. While these things are often true about the two I’ve mentioned, I don’t understand why and where we lose all sense of reason about these individuals as human beings. Prime is going to lose games. Trump is going to make mistakes. These things happen because these people are human. Is Prime over his head playing in the Power 5? I don’t want him to be, but he was last year for sure. They could’ve won 8 or more games, but coaching errors made it losses. Still, he has room for improvement and his honesty about the situation is heartening, because it shows that he is willing to learn and grow from his mistakes–and his fans hear that honesty and recognize the growth curve or trajectory he is on.
Trump was a failure as president in many respects, but he did slam through huge parts of the republican agenda. The difference here is not that I dislike the man, but that he exhibits a failure to see his mistakes and thus a failure to learn from him because as he often says about, well, everything, ‘I did nothing wrong’. As Sanders fans learn about growth, Trump fans learn about invincibility and that creates a rather polarizing dynamic in itself.