The Virtuous Middle?

By Timothy P Holmberg

This is a message to my Centrist friends. I feel the time has come for us to talk. Full disclosure, I am one of those lefties that, along with my counterpart right wingers, are ostensibly responsible for the downfall of our politics and our country along with it. As gospel has it, I represent one of two extremes, and luckily, all you have to do is contrast me with my ill begotten brethren on the far right, and there,  smack in the middle is . . voila! Truth! 

It’s so easy. 

You may not believe this, but I too was once a Centrist. “What happened?”, you ask. Not much really. I haven’t gone anywhere. I’m still standing roughly where I have been for most of my adult life. 

“How can that be if you are a lefty now?” You ask. 

Pretty simple actually. To twist a phrase from someone I almost never quote, as Ronald Reagan once said, “I didn’t leave the center, the center left me.” It slid off to the right somewhere in the 1990’s. Oh, it was a longer and more complex process that tilted our politics rightward, but for reference it will do. 

By the look on your face, you don’t seem to believe me. 

Well, in this truthless world, I understand your suspicion. I offer as proof to you one Richard Nixon, 37th President of the United States. 

(also in book form: The Last Liberal Republican - An Insider's Perspective on Nixon's Surprising Social Policy)

Nixon helped create the EPA and sought to bring about a national healthcare system. To really jolt you, he even supported the equivalent of a universal basic income through a program called FAP which was a goal of his Democratic predecessor:

But wheels set in motion in the 1960’s (see Civil Rights Act/Voting Rights Act) began a tectonic realignment in American politics. That shift particularly threatened the viability of the Democratic Party in the 1980’s as “Dixiecrats” fled to the Republican side and became “Reagan Democrats”. The result of these changes has altered what we know as the left and right in our politics. So too has it altered what we know as the middle. 

There may have been a time when finding the middle between extremes worked fairly well, what Bill Clinton called “triangulation”. To me, it was always a lazy persons way to find a path that wouldn’t tear the country apart along ideological lines. Of course you had to accept a level of injustice, exploitation, and certainly a deference to the wealthy as perennially virtuous. But the arc of history, as Martin Luther King said, was bending towards justice (right?). In reality, hewing to the middle meant that major fissures in our society were only left to fester. 

That was then. It’s fair to say that arc of history is no longer bending towards justice. The past bargains that underpinned centrism were far from perfect, particularly if you were black, or gay, or a woman trying to break glass ceilings thicker than polar ice of the day (polar ice used to be thick back then). But the theme was not to let perfection, be the enemy of a steady march of “good” towards something better. 

Somewhere along that march, things took a turn. After less than a decade of affirmative action, we decided to start walking it back. We declared war on drugs (minorities), we imposed three strikes to get tough on crime (minorities), we stopped and frisked (minorities). Greed became good, unions bad. Media consolidated (into the hands of corporations and hedge funds), pensions were raided, jobs outsourced, regulations gutted, schools starved, and the climate supercharged. And wars. Big, bold, expensive, and preemptive wars complete with grifting contractors and torture.  

I feel it’s important for you, as a centrist, to understand where we are now. At the beginning of our political seismic shift,  Barry Goldwater was the face of right wing extremism. Today he’d be a RINO (Republican in Name Only). On the left, we have a mitten wearing Bernie Sanders on a folding chair. 

I and my fellow lefties, are shamelessly urging a nation to its destruction through universal healthcare, condemning genocide, promoting unionizing, regulation, the environment and peace (gasps!). The yin to the right’s yang of insurrectionists, racists, fascists and sexist book burning mobs. 

According to our corporate media, somewhere between those “extremes” lay virtue itself. That apparently would be some measure of healthcare for fascists, war for minorities and burning books that offended “Christians”? 

But I’m here to tell you that the premise of virtue in the middle of today’s politics is BS. Compromise always has its drawbacks, of course, but when it involves letting a rightwing mob invade our Capitol and blow up portions of our freedoms and social institutions, that’s where we, as rational beings must say “STOP!” 

We can reasonably debate the roll of police and the punitive posture of law in our society. We can question, rationally, whether penalties imposed are delivering the intended outcomes. We can debate the morality of feeding a rightwing Israeli government as it “mows the grass” in Gaza. We should absolutely discuss money and influence in our government. Or regulating Pharma, AI and stock buybacks. But we can only have rational discussion with rational constituencies, and the right wing has no one left that qualifies. 

We are in the grips on an absurdity. A bizarro universe specifically designed to prevent democratic action unless it meets the approval of the wealthy and corporations. This universe is enabled by a castrated media that rarely strays from its duty to treat our politics as a team sport. Those who question their own team are cast as some eccentricity that needs to be boxed up and placed in a corner. And so, a lefty like me is placed in the same corner as a foaming at the mouth Marjorie Taylor Green, or a groping Lauren Boebert. 

In reality, we have a Democratic Party that eschewed its left wing to attract corporate money. And Republicans that, in order to differentiate themselves, gave in to being taken over by a lunatic fringe and an orange Anti-Christ. The vaunted “middle” in this creepy funhouse is only half insane, and still potentially as destructive to a functional and sustainable society. Much less a just, or exceptional one.