The fight isn’t between left and right, but whether the center can hold out against the extremists in both parties.
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by Shaun Kenney
COLUMNIST
Congratulations, citizens!
Now having nearly endured the bulk of the elections of 2023, you can now rest assured that it is all over but the shouting. Of course, there’s another solid three weeks of shouting one radio airwaves, television screens, and even social media designed to squeeze the very lifeblood out of the electorate — and perhaps well-heeled and hopefully out of state donors.
Of course, I have my predictions as to where things are headed.
Not that it matters if I share those prognostications or not. To those who think I am capable of independent thought based on that mythical and magical weapon known as math? You will agree with my sound and rational analysis. To those who believe me to be one step removed from Atilla the Hun? Whom would I ever convince?
Why We Can’t Talk About Politics Anymore
One of the great experiments when Marty Davis and I started talking about what was broken in the media today was whether or not Republicans and Democrats could even speak to one another anymore.
Cass Sunstein — certainly no man of the right — wrote about precisely this phenomenon in his book Republic.com back in 2001 where he worried openly about the problem of voters siloing their information.
Mr. Republican wakes up in the morning, reads the Wall Street Journal, turns on FOX News, listens to Sean Hannity on talk radio, flips through a copy of The Economist, comes home to get yelled at by Bill O’Reilly and meets his neighbor that evening.
Likewise, Ms. Democrat wakes up in the morning, reads The Washington Post, turns on MSNBC, listens to NPR on the way into work, flips through a copy of The Atlantic, comes home to get scolded by Rachel Maddow, and meets her neighbor that evening.
Not only can these two people not have a conversation, but they aren’t even working from the same set of facts.
Tempers flare, arms are folded, and both go back into their kitchens wondering why there are so many stupid people in the world. If only they were informed and rational consumers of information, we seethe under our breaths, then the other side would finally see things the way they are.
Sunstein’s solutions were quite rigid and heavy-handed at the time, and far different from his 2008 book Nudge which he published while working for the Obama administration — the so-called avuncular state as opposed to the nanny state. Sunstein had little hope for the center in the face of personalized news and information, believing that forcing Mr. Republican and Ms. Democrat into interaction was the only grand solution for saving democracy.
Boy, was he wrong.
Can The Center Hold? Is There a Center to Hold?
Of course, we all know how the story ends. The steady diet of old school journalism which had for far too long blurred the lines between editorialized news and outright propaganda was finally vanquished with the arrival of digital and social media. The personalization of news grew worse, ratcheted up by tech apparatchiks who drove consumers in self-sacrifice towards a trio of secular gods: engagement, viral media, and memes. Talking heads discovered that sneering could replace confidence, witticisms could be a substitute for thought, and worse discovered that if something could be funny then it must be true.
So we find ourselves in a sort of dumbed down trench warfare. Both camps have discovered the power of magic words to stop meaningful debate. Groomer is the new racist. Pedophile is the new homophobe. “My Body, My Choice” is good for abortions and vaccines now. Rioting is bad — unless it is a “mostly peaceful protest” in front of ______________ (insert location here) because of ______________ (insert just cause here).
Which is where my beef with how we talk about politics — and especially local and state politics — sits at present. Borrowing from William Butler Yeats’ all too abused Second Coming:
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
To some degree, our forefathers read this during the 20th century and suspected it. One fears that we are coming to know this truth all too well. Can the center hold? How is mere anarchy ahead? The best seem to have given in to cowardice; our worst seem so certain and sure and fanatical
Lacking horses, our donkeys trot.
Not Left and Right, but the Center vs. Extremes
Yet the real division isn’t so much Mr. Republican and Ms. Democrat, as if the opposition were that of left and right, red and blue. Rather, consider for a moment that the opposition is between the extremes and the center — the ones who in the name of some higher good attack the common good.
One can go through a very long list of offenses on the right and the left, I’m sure. Too often, that’s precisely how our discourse pans out. For every January 6th, there’s three dozen unanswered BLM/Antifa riots. For every Roe there is a Dobbs. For every Obama there is a Trump, for every Bush there is a Clinton.
Yet how does it devolve? Two camps of idiots screeching at one another over things that don’t matter to an audience which has already made up their minds.
Does it get boring? Do we even feel just a little bit ashamed over how we talk about things? Are the stakes really that high? Or are we watching two sets of extremes try to out-leverage one another in pursuit of what? Libertopia? Star Trek?
In my not-terribly-long years on this planet, I have yet to discover the Democratic way to build a road or a Republican way to build a school.
Yet what I have discovered is that beyond the extremes who seem to besiege our public square is that there exists a fundamental majority of people — the honorable middle — who doesn’t see every political question as an open invitation to blood sport, but rather is sick and tired of watching the extremes vindicate themselves over and over and over. They care — but only up to a point.
The problem is that decent people don’t want to be called racists, bigots, groomers and pedophiles just for raising a thought in public. So they stay home, watch sports, wrestle with the kids. How few are the good people willing to get slandered by bad actors who simply want to win arguments rather than advance the common good?
What is this common good? It’s not hard. Most people just want good schools, good roads, honest pay, education worthy of the name, decent health care, and a vocation — not mere employment — in a career they don’t hate — and someone who will listen to a citizen complaint and act upon it as if their children lived in this same community. Most people want to work hard and keep what they earn. Most people don’t need a handout; they want what we all want — an equal chance at the Four Freedoms: of speech, of religion, from want, from fear.
That is the American center, folks. That’s why people come here.
The extremes in both parties would rather have us at sixes and sevens fighting over a pile of absolute nonsense. There is a cottage industry making a bloody fortune getting us to turn on our neighbors, and if you’re lucky, you might win out — at least until the next election. Yet things keep getting worse, don’t they? Know why? Because we really don’t give a tinker’s damn about the issues (so called).
We just like arguing. About nothing.
Our Responsibility to Deal More Kindly
For myself, I am far more interested in why people believe what they believe. That’s the more interesting part — the part our politicians deprive us when they game mock debates (if they attend them at all), the part we reduce to slicks and memes and 30 second advertising, and how we talk to one another about anything.
Social media has conditioned us to be cruel, witty, performative and boring actors — and easily swayed. Sunstein was right about the silos with one alteration. We didn’t silo ourselves into two informative camps. We siloed ourselves into one uninformed morass where nuance is punished and brevity for its own sake — especially the cruel and dehumanizing kind — rewarded.
Take a taste of the political advertisements you will be swamped with over the next three weeks and tell me I’m wrong. Because I don’t believe my Democratic friends and neighbors are either evil or stupid. Nor should my friends and neighbors believe I am evil or stupid because my values — for the moment — are best expressed in the Republican Party.
Carl Sagan had a great observation about the Pale Blue Dot — this little place we call home. I share it every Christmas and with good reason:
Consider again that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every “superstar,” every “supreme leader,” every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
. . .
Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.
. . .
It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we’ve ever known.
But you’re not interested in that.
As of right now, Virginia Republicans are set to win the House of Delegates with 55 seats, and the Virginia State Senate with 22 seats — with inflation, parental rights, and outrage over the Hamas terrorist attacks driving conservatives and independents to the polls.
Now there’s something to argue about. Have at it.
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Kudos for the Sagan quote. Loved the book and show as a kid.
Shaun, many salient points here. I’ll zero in on two lines from Yeats: “the centre cannot hold” and “the best lack all conviction.” You’re right, we’ve been chased from the screeching fight.
But that surrenders our agency. We’ve allowed ourselves to be chased. We don’t see the power the center has, at this moment. Gaetz showed what a tiny faction can do in evenly-divided times.
What if you and Martin went from starting a newspaper to also forming a political movement? Not a party, more like a “caucus” of citizens. It wouldn’t take much to be a formidable block in local elections. Where else can you find a couple of hundred votes that are actually up for grabs.?
Paul —
I hope that we are starting a conversation more than a movement. Or at the very least, an editorial perspective. One of the more frustrating — yet expected — things that we have bumped into is that no one on the left wants to hear from the right; no one on the right wants to hear from the left.
I agree with you that the center is stirring. The more we point at the problem editorially (and I think this is a good thing) the more we might put into words what others are already thinking? Maybe then the “best” will find a bit more conviction knowing they aren’t alone.
Once again, Mr. Kenney’s comments are long on presumption, thin on facts.
Maybe there are those in the Republican party who can work to fix the stasis and hatred in our political process. For the same reason that Richard Nixon was the one who opened detente with China. He was the only one who could do so, and not get destroyed by Richard Nixon.
I don’t know of too many Democrats that have to be worried about being primaried out from the left. That is much more of a Republican phenomenon. So you introduce a false equivalency to justify acting like everyone has a problem to fix. Gets me thinking about Matthew 7:5 more than it does Yeatts.
I do know that if I hear one more analogy regarding the halcyon days of yore and our sainted forefathers, whether they be of the 17th, 18th, 19th, and now 20th century – I might hurl. There are always those who look about at their own troubles, and pretend that somehow – it was better earlier.
I don’t want to return to the Republican version of the 1950’s – which is, in and of itself, a rose colored fantasy of those soon ageing off this mortal coil than anything close to reality. Certainly not a reality shared by the majority. I’ll pass on polio, soot filled air, filth filled water, segregation, caste systems, bacon grease gravy, and no air conditioning. You can keep it.
I don’t want to return to the 1890’s, when a man had a 1 in 11 chance of getting killed in a steel mill every year, child labor was rampant, and you couldn’t trust the food you bought as companies focused more on profits than their customers. A time when robber barons ruled over us like lords.
Yet for the last 50 years, as we have increasingly followed the Republican vision – from Reagan, to Gingrich, to Paul, to Murdoch, to the Tea Party, to the Falwells, to Trump, to now Gosars and Boeberts – we ain’t gotta worry about the dumbing down of politics. We’re there.
The results? Instead of balance between investing in the future and paying off debt – on a Republican President’s watch – who took over an economy in a time of plenty – our debt jumped from 19 to 31 trillion dollars. With little in real value to show for it other than inflation. The disparity between CEO pay and worker pay has never been greater. We are falling in longevity, our OECD rankings on things like healthcare, childcare, food security, etc. are at best middle of the pack.
We spend more on our military than the next 20 countries combined. We have more guns per capita than anyone. Incarcerate more of our citizens, including children. And spend more on healthcare.
Is it working? Do we feel safe? Healthy, happy? If you’re in the majority of Americans, following the Republican ideals has not been working out.
Next – the idea that HE is the center. The best. Is he? Everyman considers himself the hero in his own story. I’m more convinced by that 20th century poet and philosopher, Mark Knopfler:
Two men say they’re Jesus, one of them must be wrong…..
There are those of us who can see a difference between expressions of angst from citizens, including those which turn violent, and a cold, calculated – planned overthrow of our Constitution which resulted in the first non-peaceful exchange in our history that was led by the one man who had the greatest duty to protect that Constitution.
And yet, that man led and leads Mr Kenney’s party. His assistant is his chosen nominee to lead the House of Representatives. Those two actions are not the same thing. We’ve had riots before. Never a violent coup attempt. You want your party to lead a form of government which you have no commitment to. Whose ideals you despise. If that’s the center, I don’t want to be there. No matter how decent they consider themselves.
You insist that the most important thing we do is to be more kindly. Which seems to translate into never holding one accountable for their actions. Which makes sense, if your the one gaining from your actions. How’d Desmond Tutu put it?
If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.
I say that, realizing – that if I have to explain to you why I am against torturing children to control their parents – I likely cannot explain it. Not because it isn’t true, but that if you cannot see that on your own, there is little common ground to work with.
So the best I can come up with is the same way I would talk with inmates, back in the day. I would be honest, and do my utmost to be fair, and base my responses upon stated principles and laws. And if respect is mutual, I welcome it. But not to the point of dishonesty.
And yes, off year elections where the billionaire class and corporations have heavily invested do tend to skew Republican – you may very well be right. Isn’t that the point of our continual election process in Virginia? To keep everyday people from voting? I’m more interested in how much early voting is able to offset the effect.
Should it happen, and Republicans do control everything – it will be interesting to see how quickly they abandon the middle to appease their base and what laws they pass unimpeded.
What I am more interest in, based upon your stated desire to rule from the “middle” – is, as a Republican standard, what concessions would you be okay with House Republicans offering Democrats in the House in order to gain some of their votes to offset the zealots which are currently calling the shots?
What would you expect in return?
With Youngkin in charge, VA will be leaning more into partisanship – not less. That’s a given.
But there’s a real chance for non-partisanship rather than Trump’s choice in the House. How would you make that happen, o’ wise one at the center of the Earth?
Ohmmmmmmmmmmmmm…………
It’s not a question of concessions, but rather how we talk about these things and understanding where people are coming from on questions that matter.
Listening more than talking. The reason why God gave us two ears and one mouth — yes?
Texans call that all hat and no cattle.
You say you want to talk, and the problem is no one talks to you as they should. And yet, on multiple occasions, including now – you deign it beneath you to engage in a conversation regarding the core problem holding up any attempt to “move on”, or “work together”.
The leader of your political alliance made a serious attempt to overthrow the Constitution that we all agree to live by. The one, where if you are a combat veteran, as you claim – not only he, but YOU, swore an oath to defend.
Against all enemies. foreign and domestic. Was there an asterisk on your oath when you swore? I didn’t see one on mine. So why and how can you look away?
Not only how dare he, but how dare YOU not do your duty? Did you consider yourself free of it, once you no longer got a paycheck? What 30 pieces of silver have you accepted for your soul? A 15% corporate tax rate? “Owning” Democrats? Just being welcome at the club?
What?
And rather than hold him accountable, or acknowledge your part in enabling him – your party leaders, though they initially said what everyone else already knew – that he WAS accountable, and he WAS unfit – they went home, listened to you, your media, your polling – and meekly went to Mar a Lago and bent a knee in service to him rather than our country.
And your party supported them all the way. Not only have you not rejected that, nor challenged it – you proclaim your obedience to be the Republican Standard.
Your party runs out anyone who would dare question the narrative. They did after the riot, and they still do. With the only people willing to say different are the ones who know they are leaving anyway. And yet, when they are freed from the need to appease you, they do say it.
Time and again. Not only why do you consider me a liar for saying it, how do you reconcile THEM saying it?
Mattis, Kelly, Romney, et. al. – all of those lifelong Republicans are liars, but the man with over 30,000 public lies in a 4 year period is somehow a fount of truth?
You presume to speak of God with Hallmark card sayings.
I’m more moved by words from the Bible itself, such as 2 Timothy 4:3: “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears;”
And yet, after punting on holding him accountable at an impeachment trial on the matter, and saying it was not their business, but rather for the voters and the courts to decide – they now studiously ignore the findings of a bipartisan hearing regarding the matter and the pending charges which show his unfitness, with the most outrageous defenses of his actions coming from the man they would now make Speaker of the House – after he has received Trump’s blessing.
As 90% of your “moderates” supporting him.
90%.
Now that’s a mandate, as compared to the 4 measly votes you lead by in the House overall.
And rubbing salt in the wound, not only did you as a party refuse to hold him accountable then, with 90+ felony charges looming, many coming from that bloody day and his actions and your party leaders actions leading up to it – you have made him the leading nominee, with a majority of your members supporting him – as he promises to do even worse this time around. An existential threat of your making, lining up to happen again.
And the best you can do when asked how someone should trust you to not try to kill us again, or destroy the Constitution and rule of laws again that we too have taken an oath to defend – is to get offended that anyone would dare to ask those questions. Somehow, noting reality is deigned to be “extremist”.
Or you studiously and repeatedly refuse to answer those questions for the most part. Or if you do, to minimize the actions committed, or engage in the whataboutism that you complain is the problem with the discourse of others.
BLM wasn’t at the Capitol that day. The reason 140 cops got beaten within an inch of their lives wasn’t because they forgot to lock the door. You insult them and their service by saying otherwise.
God also gave you two eyes with which to read, billions of brain cells to use, and 10 fingers to type.
But the best you come up with is platitudes and New Age adages in lieu of facts and accountability.
In such an atmosphere of denial; talking for its own sake seems more like a way of placation and appeasement of entitled children who would again do us harm, than anything of merit.
Your leader tried to kill us and overturn our Constitution. He is lining up to do it again.
Let’s talk about that when you’re ready.
Until then, think I’ll spend the day listening to Natalie Merchant. She does a soul touching take on Florence Reece’s “Which Side Are You On?”.
A song written in other times when Republicans thought might made right, and attacked those who questioned it.
Turns out that some things are fairly simple.
Just not the ones you mention. But rather, the ones you ignore.
Facts matter. No matter how much you would prefer we pretend they don’t.
I have no idea what you are actually trying to say here.
Yes, you do appear to have a certain form of illiteracy.
In that somehow, it you fail to either understand or acknowledge that the leader of your party, a party whom you purport to represent, made a serious attempt to overthrow our form of government, never accepted accountability for that action, minimizes the damage caused by your actions, and continues to support the man who was the one charged for inciting those actions.
And that he is the leading nominee, by far, of your party to return to the Presidency, and that he wields so much influence that his hand-picked choice and defender in the House has an overwhelming number of Republican Representatives, including all of Virginia’s Republican Representatives voting for him, to the tune of 90%.
As he calls for executions, and plans to gather more power to himself should he be elected again.
A threat to our Constitution and people.
Whom you swore to defend.
I would say it is unique, but it isn’t. I’ve seen it before. When a fraud does accounting where it is always in his favor, then it’s not a mistake. Much akin to Trump’s accounting, as found by a judge in a court of law.
So, I doubt it’s true ignorance, so much as a fear of admitting a liability which would require responsible action.
I suspect most folks can figure out my point, no matter how strong your claims that you cannot. I’m okay with letting them judge which of us is speaking clearly and honestly, and which is trying to win a debate of semantics.
I’m sorry — who are you talking to? Clearly it isn’t me.
In other news, Sidney Powell just pled guilty in Georgia to the crimes whose very existence Mr Kenney refuses to acknowledge, much less is willing to discuss, as he slowly wraps himself in his Socratic semantics instead.
And in another thread today, he provides an excellent example of his idea of courteous, meaningful, respectful discussion of the issues of contention in Spotsy.
Compare his discourse with the others you regularly find on here from Mr Davis. See which ones you consider to be more fair, balanced, and substantive as compared to pejorative.
Yep. Hard to figure out why there’s so much lack of civility.
Real conundrum, it is.
Real conundrum.
…because this is civility? Speaking for other people? LOL.
You choose to create a vacuum, then complain and mock as it is noted.
As you again, refuse in anyway to acknowledge the core problem of you being an active participant in a political party whose leaders are charged and/or have pled guilty to attempting to overthrow the very Constitution which is the core contract of our nation.
Other than providing pithy little bon mots rather than discussing or nay, even acknowledging that problem exists.
You only engage in discussions/debates where you decide the rules, topics, facts, and outcome?
Again, real conundrum why that isn’t working out. I suspect its everyone else, right?
Moving on, class to prepare for.
Again — you demand a monologue. Hard to have a dialogue when only one person gets to set the rules.
Be well and good luck with your class.
Once again we get a drawn out effort suggesting a false equivalency. Not a good place to start if trying to generate credibility. There are not, nor has there ever been, two set of facts.
And there it is.
The ones screaming “whatabout” and “false equivalency” are the extremes, whether they admit it or not.
There most certainly is such a thing as two sets of facts — I show this to my students all the time by holding up an open black notebook to the class. What color is it? White with lines, they say. WRONG. Not only wrong, but totally wrong, and it is a moral failure to admit that this is anything other than black. In fact, one would have to be stupid to argue otherwise and better still — everyone who said “white with lines” is indeed stupid, ignorant, immoral, etc.
Then the notebook is turned around. “What color is in now, ladies and gentlemen?” Black… with a series of “oh…” coming from the students. No — it is white with lines, with the same degree of invective and disagreement.
There is one truth. Facts are an aggregation of what we know of the truth, and facts can be distorted and incomplete. Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, if you want to read more.
Really? How so?
Because you’re confusing a monologue for dialogue.
If the one being asked questions refuses to provide answers, explanations, or clarifications, who controls that difference? The one asking, or the one who refuses to explain?
Have I been asked questions? Or merely harangued?
Your sense of aggrieved victimhood when challenged does help me to understand today’s Republican party much better. For that, I thank you.
Again, moving on.
Didn’t see a question in that. Right on.
This reader just wants to add that the “cottage industry making a bloody fortune getting us to turn on our neighbors” is actually a long-established, well-developed, multi-faceted, multi-billion dollar industry – apolitical at its heart – that continues to grow and tear society apart.
Susan —
I could not agree more.
w/r