Echo Chamber Nation
A lifelong moderate, I moved as far away as possible from Trump. Here’s a centrist’s view from inside the liberal bubble.
I was never very political … until Candidate Trump came along. I was a political news junkie, and a reader of social and political books and blogs, but rarely took an extreme political side and remained very quiet about any strong views that I held. I was, and am, a lowercase-holy-trinity independent, moderate and centrist. I’ve voted for both parties’ presidential candidates over my past 20 voting-age years, and overall have gravitated more toward the middle than thefringes when following and agreeing with politicians and commentators.
I could continue describing my upbringing and influences, but I will save that for another time and get to my specific point: The last 8 years and especially the recent 18 months have been challenging for centrists. Everyone talks about the divide in this country between the left and the right, but I see it as a three-way division. The moderate middle has become just as much an enemy to the left and the right as they are to each other. We are not so much polarized as we are triangulated. Centrists are the enemy of both sides. The Obama-opposition Tea Party in 2009 and today’s burgeoning Trump “resistance” (looks like that identifier may stick) viewed the moderate elements within their party as antagonistic as the opposition party. “We’ll primary you” was a common threat to the centrists who didn’t take their more extreme positions.
For the first time in my life: A political villain
So I never really had much of a political “enemy” as I matured. I remember sitting in the break room at one of my first jobs out of college, listening to a group of suburban dads spend the entire 15 minutes, day after day, complaining about Bill Clinton. I found it curious why they cared so much about hating someone so much. Maybe they’re still getting together on break to this day, having weathered Obama’s presidency and Hillary’s candidacy. Perhaps now with Trump they have found peace.
Mr. Trump’s candidacy finally made me understand, I suppose. To label Trump as a populist or nationalist would be an injustice those segments. On its face, his was a “break all the rules” approach that his following publicly claimed as his main appeal. He bewildered Republicans and Democrats alike, taking traditionally left-leaning positions on trade and the Iraq War, while veering far right on just about everything else, careening past the Buchanans and Huckabees into pernicious territory: His “right” was alt-right; his “nationalism” was white-nationalist. His Ross Perot-style populist/centrist “businessman-reformer” maintained every last trait that defined his real estate mogul/reality TV star/ornately crappy lifestyle brand: Bullying, self-absorbed, egomaniacal, sleazy, misogynist, scandal-ridden, opportunistic … that’s over half a dozen attributes and there are dozens more like them. They all delve even further into the darkness of xenophobia, bigotry and worse, all carrying the enduring stench of the racist Birther movement he he launched against our first African American President.
Few centrists embraced any of this garbage, but were left confused where to go. Some right-leaners turned a blind eye, picking and choosing ways to justify waiting-and-seeing up until the election. Left-leaners found some comfort with some of Bernie Sanders’ populist positions despite his overall progressive-socialist agenda. Me? I ran as far away from Trump as possible, and that meant hiding out in the “left echo chamber,” allowing myself to be pinned against that side of the centrifuge. From there, I became more vocal, expressing myself in conversation, on Facebook, here on Medium, like I never had before. Trump unleashed something in me that I had never seen fit to give so much voice. I concede that I should give Trump credit for that: He crystallized my belief in what it meant to me to be an American. In simplistic terms, it‘s’ whatever Trump isn’t. There is no “Again” in Trumpism’s red-hat-embroidered mantra. There is no going back to an imaginary “Great” America. Our true greatness has been our crushing intolerance for decades. We have never been authoritarian. Nor theocratic or ignorant. We are not a walled community.
America is equality. It is checks and balances. It is separation of church and state. It is innovation. It is a global beacon.
A visceral reaction
So into the media echo chamber I went. I couldn’t stand to hear the sound of Trump’s voice, or to look at his face. His bloated mannerisms, his childish petulance, his incoherent rants. It was visceral. Nor did I have any tolerance to hear anyone defend the man. I treated Kayleigh Macenaney, Katrina Pierson and Scottie Nell Hughes as a three-headed Medusa with whom I could never make eye contact. Instead, all I wanted to consume were follow-up reports of Trump’s missteps, his blunders, his scandals. The evenings that the Khan Family or Access Hollywood stories broke, MSNBC was must-see TV, followed by a full absorption of the Washington Post morning-edition opinion columns. I became an Apple News junkie, checking the feed constantly in anticipation of the next moral atrocity that might finally bring him down.
Likewise, I waited for Hillary Clinton to break away, to leave Trump in her dust. I sought positive reports from the front lines: How are the polls looking today? Has the e-mail scandal been put to rest? Looks like a fine murderer’s row of surrogates: Bill, the Obamas, Biden, Warren, and Sanders. Tim Kaine seems like a decent guy. This was the more passionless side of my rooting coin, however. Being a Midwesterner, I’ll use a college sports fan’s bumper sticker as an analogy: “I root for Michigan and whoever is playing Ohio State.” I was rooting for whoever was playing against Trump. That happened to eventually be Hillary, and that was good enough. Not my first or third or fifth choice until it became binary after the conventions … In the state of Michigan you need to register for a party to vote in the presidential primary, so for that vote I registered Republican so that I could specifically vote against Trump (I chose Kasich). After every interview he did, I regretted that Bill Weld wasn’t at the top of the Libertarian ticket. My centrist stripes were definitely showing.
Summer 2016: Theater of the absurd
As the Trump-Clinton head-to-head matchup got underway, each candidate would take turns screwing up in an exceedingly ugly, yet close, contest. Trump racked up the self-inflicted blows but Clinton rarely did herself any favors either. The terms “race to the bottom” and “lesser of two evils” became well-worn … probably because they were spot on. Either party could have run ANYONE ELSE against the other candidate and the campaign would have been over by Labor Day. The Democrats could not have chosen a worse candidate to contrast with Trump, as the Clintons occupied only slightly higher ground. Through one lens, you could say Bill and Hillary’s secretive, sordid dynasty gave Trump the idea that forthrightness was no longer a prerequisite for the presidency and decided to go for it. Through another, the Clintons seemed to be trying to literally out-Trump Trump at times. Bill’s check-in with Loretta Lynch on a Phoenix tarmac; Hillary’s refusal to release the transcripts of her Goldman Sachs speeches; the unforced error that was the “basket of deplorables” comment just as Hillary was settling into some momentum while Trump melted down. Clinton never seemed to have the race in the bag, sending me to my mobile device during any moment of downtime to “refresh, refresh, refresh” and — to continue that college sports analogy — check the score of this nail-biter. By September columnist Andrew Sullivan had had enough and summed up the way I was also feeling: “I used to be a human being.”
So this is what it felt like
Election night was, of course, an upset. Shortly afterward I wrote a post titled “Why So Surprised?” about the many failings of not only Hillary Clinton but also Barack Obama. I have always been a supporter of Obama, but there was also much to criticize during his administration. That’s the life of a centrist: Highlighting the good and the great without blind faith; questioning the bad without devolving into hate. Until now. I took the electoral results with a shrug and shook my head at the Clinton collapse, but I did know one thing for sure: For the first time in my life, I despised the President.
So this is what it felt like for the Right in 2008? Those break-room-dwelling Clinton-haters? Especially the far-extreme Right, watching a black man with the middle name Hussein become president? Afterward, did they feel the same sense of dread, like they “didn’t recognize their country anymore”? It seems they did, regarding Obama, the same way the Left now views Trump? Both sets of opponents viewed Obama and Trump as demagogues. Both as extremist. Both as incompetent. Both as “out to end the American way of life.” Obama as a foreign agent of some Arab Illuminati, Trump a Putin patsy. For the previous eight years, were right-wingers, tea-partiers and “2nd Amendment people” living in their own version of the hell that progressives are facing now? Obama was “turning a blind eye to Islamic influence in the U.S., going to come after our guns, siding with thugs and protesters and against police and law and order.” Trump is now dismantling women’s reproductive rights, refugee programs, environmental protections (notice I only put Obama’s accusations in quotes, denoting that none of this was ever credible; Trump’s agenda, however, is playing out before our eyes). To their opponents, Obama and Trump each represent the anti-Christ.
Our nation is now like a planet that orbits its star in such a way that one side remains in darkness for eight years. Trump is the rising sun to the right while the left has felt itself plunge into eternal night. The Right “lived in fear, lacking hope” during the Obama years; now it’s the Left’s turn.
Make it stop.
Shouting over the top of the people that matter
Political “debate” (if you can even call it that) in this country often seems to be comprised of one polar outpost criticizing the other without presenting a plan or any ideas of their own. Cable news pits pundits from the left and the right against each other on noisy “panels.” Meanwhile, these nightmarish “mom and dad are fighting again” scenes—embodied by the Trump and Clinton debates—have sent the moderate middle scrambling: Some to huddle with the Left (like me), many to actually vote for Trump (in those Obama ‘08/Obama ‘12/Trump ’16 counties throughout the midwest that Clinton inexplicably couldn’t hold), and most to hold their nose voting for either candidate, grin, and bear it. And more still, did not bother to vote at all. In the end, the Left and the Right are shouting over the top of them, at each other.
The Center—including a an unprecedented number of registered independents—is ducking its head below these volleys of vitriol between the two extremes. When they do rise up to make their voice heard, the fire from the left or the right is targeted at them. There is a large swing-voter segment of the electorate that may have grudgingly swung the election to Trump due mainly to Clinton apathy, but is now ready to hold him accountable—if anyone on the Left would care to reach out and listen. The February 18 New York Times essay below was an effective reality-check for a centrist who has retreated to the far left. Two of the questions implied by this piece: “Is stewing in the Left Echo Chamber the most effective way for a moderate centrist to defeat Trump?” and “Is the far left and Hollywood driving many centrists into the Right Echo Chamber?”
This ain’t no way to live
I want to see Trump resoundingly defeated in 2020, but that article and many other observations had me quickly realizing that the Left Echo Chamber is not going to defeat him. The Center, the middle, the “swing” voters are as disinterested in the messaging of the extreme right as they are of the left. Don’t care much for Ashley Judd or Michael Moore re-runs. Trump benefited from a perfect storm of voter sentiment in the key Midwest swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania: Exasperation with a lesser-of-two-evils choice at the top of the ticket; a tepid following for Hillary Clinton; a vacuum where a true Obama successor was supposed to reside; his own passionate following mirrored by voter apathy on the left.
The Trump Administration’s stammering start is an early indicator that the storm may not be so perfect for his re-election bid in 2020 — but that’s of course no guarantee. We learned all too well in 2016 that nothing ever is. Yes, outside of Trump’s most loyal, fanatical supporters, many Americans are anywhere from skeptical to embarrassed to disgusted by Trump. But that was the case during the entire election, and Trump got his votes. 40–42% of voters are essentially entrenched into conservative, evangelical and nationalist camps. You can see this in Trump’s current 42% approval rating: It’s basically that locked-in segment and (uniquely for a newly-elected president in a “honeymoon” period) nothing more. However, there are polls that also indicate that the Democrats aren’t really all that popular, either. Hillary and her entire campaign staff could stand to take a five-year vacation and ask Pelosi to join them. New blood is needed and some exciting voices have started to be heard. Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who stepped up to bat against Pelosi for minority leader is one example. But they’re not all Democrats. Republican Senator Ben Sasse and Rep. Jason Amash have taken refreshingly strong and smart stands against Trump.
Revised marching orders
I’m as opposed to Trump as ever, but I’m climbing out of the Echo Chamber, into the middle again, and it feels like ascending to the surface for fresh air. I believe joining the discussion as an independent, centrist voice is the best way to engage in the fight against Trump’s dangerous agenda and incompetent administration. How effective will I be? That remains to be seen of course. I don’t expect to change minds or flip votes but I do hope to set an example of independent thinking, shared ideas and innovative solutions through my tweets, posts, articles and essays. I’ll develop my own “agenda” as I continue to write follow-ups to this article, but for now I’ll conclude with two additional pieces that made me strangely sad and hopeful at the same time.
The first is this somewhat “old” article (it dates all the way back to last July where it was obscured by the 2016 campaign). I recommend it for its view of how the Right and the Left will never work together to develop innovative, bipartisan solutions to some issues primarily because they refuse to surrender any ground that would be perceived as a victory, however small, for the other side. This piece focuses on abortion, and other controversial issues also suffer from this type of divide. Gun control is another, where neither side will give an inch, so as not to be the first to do so.
And this more recent research report from the AP attempts to draw a clearer picture of what Americans believe it means to “be American:” what are its values, what do we stand for. Unsurprisingly, it reveals a lot of division—but hidden in the numbers there is also a lot of unity. I could write an entire new post on these findings but what stood out the most to me in these findings was this: The American “values” that are the focal point of our most polarized arguments these days also happen to be our least-shared values. There are a large number of values that we more commonly share.
For example, look at the results of this question. The four lowest-ranked values represent the two polar opposite sides of the multi-faceted immigration debate. That a value-clash between a progressive, multi-cultural, agnostic culture and a Judeo-Christian-European culture. Are we simply two different nations now, with these values as the divide? Or could we all just focus our attention a bit higher on the list, to those values that are more important to more people? There are additional layers to this study and this one chart is perhaps an over-simplification … but simplicity is always a good place to start.
I am heartened by the chart-topping values. Donald Trump should focus his childish obsession with popularity polls and crowd sizes onto these “ratings” that really matter. His tweets, actions and appointments are eroding the pillars of our democracy and society that are reflected in these responses: Separation of church and state, checks and balances, an independent judiciary, a presidency that is not influenced by foreign emoluments or business interests.
I will do my part to fight for these central values.
