Centrism: Not an Embrace of the Status Quo But of Pragmatic Solutions That Reject Rhetoric
As David Himmel will be the first to point out, I am a contrarian by nature and nurture.
I'm the guy who hated Ms. Pac Man in the 80s for no other reason than that everyone else loved it. I refuse to watch a second episode of Arrested Development because I watched the first and didn't laugh once. Hell, I co-created a live lit show in Chicago (and eventually Chicago and Vegas) that thrived on the idea of the Devil's Advocate.
I suppose it's no surprise, then, that in times when polarization and partisanship is at an all-time high (maybe not since 1970 have things been this broken) I am inclined to take the middle ground on many of the hot button issues of the day.
Let me be clear: this is not the centrism Rebecca Solnit castigates in her Guardian piece. This is not the centrism of the status quo nor the centrism of most of us in the vast middle in between hardcore Partisan Warriors on either side of the fence.
Centrists in the antebellum era were apathetic or outright resistant to ending slavery in the US and then in the decades before 1920 to giving women the vote. The civil rights movement was not nearly as popular in its time as moderates who like the more polite quotes from Martin Luther King Jr think it was. King himself famously declared, “I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice …” As King notes, the status quo is always changing, and the centrists are often resistant to change that expands rights and justice, more mild about efforts by the right to shrink those things in favor of more inequality and more authoritarianism.
The sad truth is, for those on the fringes, any deviation from their ideological worldview is tantamount to complete and utter fealty to the Other Side. It is a "with us or against us" proposition. Solnit's perspective on those of us in the middle of the divide is that we're fine with how things are and are happy as assholes in diapers ignoring those problems she sees as Original Sin. That's a plastic bottle full of weasel shit, friends.
I'm in the middle of:
"Biological sex is a myth" and "Transgender people are unnatural."
"Abolish the Police" and "Call 911 on Black Kids Swimming."
"Open the Borders" and "Build a Wall."
"The Wealthy are Evil" and "The Poor are Lazy."
"White People are All Racists" and "Racism is Over in America."
"Equality of Opportunity" and "Equality of Outcome"
Perhaps in King's time, a moderate was someone too busy enjoying the fruits of life to care much about those on the margins. The polarization between the hippies and their parents, the pro-Nixon and anti-War, the young and the old, was characteristic of a massive transition in the values of the country catching up to the values of the Constitution. Not so today.
Today, we're pretty much fine with war on both sides of the aisle. As long as there isn't a draft, we're all comfortable with Obama drone-striking our perceived enemies and, overall, pretty OK with staying out of the Middle East (except for a series of phone calls, of course). We're mostly fine with rampant capitalism because to curb it too much would mean we wouldn't have smartphones, the internet, or the ability to order tube socks and anal lube via Amazon and Etsy.
Today's centrist is, according to the billions of fucking surveys done in an attempt to explain how a failed real estate trust fund baby and has-been reality TV star managed to be elected president, more Left than Right and more inclined to disagree with tactics than goals. Hardly the Silent Majority and more like the Exhausted Middle. Less the white moderates of the late 60s and more like the parents of children raised to believe that their comfort is the single most important issue on the table.
Speaking only for myself (because like so many of our most strident citizens including Rebecca S., the tendency to attempt to paint one's opinion as the monolithic viewpoint of a whole range of individuals lumped into a fictionalized tribe is the sign of reductive propaganda):
It is not the goals of my Wokester friends that I disagree with; it is the angry, ham-fisted manner in which they pursue these goals.
Calling cops racist might feel good and seem like progress but
Decriminalizing all drugs use, sales, and purchase with retroactive sentencing
Eliminating property taxes as the method to fund public schools for a equal playing field for every public school regardless of location
Increasing the training window for police by five times with emphasis on deescalation techniques
Eliminating qualified immunity for police departments nationwide
all address the the issues surrounding black people and how they are treated by the police in substantive and progressive ways without ever getting into the bizarre tribalism of identity that undermines any sense of unified purpose required for forward momentum.
Protesting Big Oil and Energy Conglomerates and screaming at people to recycle feels like serious activism but
Financially subsidizing Big Oil to invest in green energy
Adding a tax on gasoline to make automobile travel more expensive for families with more than one car
Creating incredible tax incentives for building owners (specifically low income housing) for switching to solar energy on a building-by-building basis
Increased government investment into nuclear energy
all help solve the issues while eliminating the shame associated with Rage Profiteering.
The two act drama we go through every time we see another mass shooting in the country is pointless but
Increasing legal liability to any business that sells firearms and ammunition should the product be used in violence
Requiring significant firearms training for every citizen who purchases one
Requiring firearms liability insurance for every weapons purchase (like we do automobiles)
Establishing DMV-like licensing facilities for gun ownership that require periodic registration and licensing
all move the needle toward safely controlling the use of firearms and helps prevent their use for unnecessary violence rather than demonize those who feel strongly that guns make them safer.
In her takedown of centrism, Solnit quotes a study confirming that hyper-partisans are cursed with an "intolerance of certainty." As I've written before, this correlates with the study indicating cognitive closure and cognitive complexity. She establishes exactly what her quoted study proves and then completely subverts it with "who is more intolerant of uncertainty than those who want to believe that authority is trustworthy, no secrets need sunlight, and urgent change is unwanted?" The study demonstrates exactly who is more intolerant and her characterization of centrism is skewed only to ignore the study.
While the two extremes are not symmetrical, the Woke seem to have decided that the bullying, the anger, the politics of Otherism are the collective strategy that has worked for the Right, so let's do that. And it isn't working.
"We beat a world-class buffoon, I mean, I mean, world-class, historical buffoon. And we lost House seats at the time, and we came within 42,000 votes, of not winning the presidency, that we got to learn to talk to people better, and clearer, and more distinctly, about things that are relevant to their lives. And that's what I'm trying to do.
And I don't - like I say, this whole thing is, is about language. And I think the best language is the most direct simple language of people. And that's what I think we need to engage in."
Centrist perspective in the last century may very well have been "...positions [] seen as radical not long ago, when this country supported segregation, banned interracial marriages and then same-sex marriages, prevented women from holding some positions and queer people from others, and excluded disabled people from almost everything."
Centrism in the 21st Century is about ignoring the noise and actively trying to solve the problems rather than trying to bury the very people necessary to support the solutions.
He who embraces the status quo is not centrist. He is conservative. As the Right gets nuttier, the genuine conservatives are becoming more centrist.
He who embraces progressive change is not centrist. He is liberal. As the Left gets more tribal, the genuine liberal becomes more centrist.
A centrist in 2021 recognizes that with half the country espousing one thing and the other half barking the exact opposite, finding pragmatic solutions that address real need is the only way forward.
