Interesting if desperate reading. There’s nothing like having my breakfast and reading a Jeremiad. By and large you had me at hello, but there’s one side issue that I would like to raise.
I read many interesting articles and blog posts, but what often balks me is the point where I get to a the-left-is-as-bad-as-the-right statement. Now, when I get to that point I have to accept that it is impossible to include in a short article an in-depth analysis of every term used. I suppose a footnote might help, but one might end up with as much in the footnotes as there is in the main text — Kiss of the Spider Woman territory. But I always have to stop and ask myself the question, “What does this writer mean by ‘the left?” William Blum or Noam Chomsky? The vaguely-liberal wing of the Democratic Party or your local pacifist-anarchist neighbour who hangs out Tibetan prayer-flags? Antifa or The Guardian? Jeremy Corbyn or Kim Jong-Un. Each pairing I have made there is not simply of opposites, but of apples and oranges. Nevertheless, each successive writer makes me stop and cudgel my brain. In your case you mean people who shout at Donald Trump on Twitter. That’s one more definition of ‘the left’ I’m going to have to file alongside all the others, and bring out the next time I read a the-left-is-as-bad-as-the-right statement.
What I never see from anyone — unless this is embedded in your post, and I think it might be — is criticism of the extremism of the Centre. To me, the extremism of the Centre is more insidious than that of ‘the right’ or ‘the left’ (see, I’m even having to put those in quotes now, to show that I’m not convinced by them as labels!). The Centre is the bloc of people who are, at a basic level, comfortable with the way things are, and consider that light-touch meliorism will moderate a system, society, and culture which is fundamentally sound, but which is spoilt by a handful of rotten apples — let’s say Donald Trump for sake of argument — who can be exposed and driven out at the next vote. The Centre feels that democracy consists of putting an ‘X’ on a piece of paper, even if that throws up a rogue, because after all we have to have leaders. The Centre is complacent, the Centre is complicit, the Centre accepts the neat stuff capitalism provides and wears a Pride badge to feel good about itself. The Centre is extremism in a polite mask. Actually, now I come to think of it, ‘the Centre’ covers as much in the way of apples and oranges as the other labels do. Maybe I ought to write a post about that.
Anyway, thank you. I’m about to go and read some more of your material.
