For far too long, the spectrum that represents political ideology in the United States has been informed by lazy, simplistic assumptions about the ideas that divide American citizens. Whenever a pundit refers to the “extreme right” or “extreme left”, the prevailing notion in force is that the “extremes” are equidistant from the “center”.
The problem with the sources of strife between Americans — battle lines that have been drawn in a long, dragged-out culture war — is that none acknowledge the peril faced by the current American standard of living, what was once the envy of the world in the mid-20th century.
While the left vs. right divide has carved moments of clarity throughout Modern history (Enlightenment vs. Monarchists, Labor vs. Owner/Manager Class, Civil Rights vs. States Rights), President Bill Clinton muddied the waters during his first term (1993–1997) as Commander-in-Chief.
To get his administration’s agenda approved by Congress, he compromised on the New Deal legacy institutions like welfare and financial services regulation. His capitulation to elite moneyed interests was given a sophisticated name: “triangulation”. President Clinton was said to have transcended a partisan divide.
Referring to this staked-out ideological territory as centrist, the Beltway commentariat have unwittingly (…probably not) cordoned off a space in the middle of the political spectrum for the donor class to occupy, mostly unobserved. This accounts for the generous financial backing from Wall Street donors received by an organization like The Third Way.
Given Wall Street’s opposition to universal health care, a living minimum wage, and protecting the planet from climate catastrophe, no thinking person should tolerate pundit class mendacity when discerning what passes as moderate or extreme ideology.
Speak of the devil: The Economist recently published an opinion piece entitled, “Democrats in America are realising they must moderate or die,” wherein the uncredited author(s) wield one of the tritest political parlor tricks.
The rhetorical tool essential to any ideological sleight-of-hand is framing. “Must moderate” is a phrase that assumes for the reader that Democrats have been anything but faithful courtesans to the donor class. In real life, not a single finger has been lifted in Congress to advance legislation addressing Medicare for All, Green New Deal or police misconduct accountability.
To build the case for moderation, The Economist cherry-picked an outlier figure like the now-former San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, as a signal of the leftward drift of the Democratic party.
Framing can manipulate a reader’s perspective — not just by what information it includes, but by what information it leaves out.
What The Economist left out of this screed was any mention of the financial force wielded by the donor class to fund the recall effort that ousted Chesa Boudin. You will not find a more insidious example of “astroturfing,” as provided by Neighbors for a Better San Francisco.
Most readers will probably accept The Economist’s dishonest framing; dishonest because it pretends that the donor class hasn’t already spent considerable effort and resources shaping public policy over the last fifty years.
Saving the American free enterprise system from the threat posed by leftists was the rationale given when future Supreme Court Justice Lewis Powell drafted his notorious memorandum at the request of the Chamber of Commerce back in 1971. It has been called the corporate “blueprint” for dominating U.S. public policy. As a manifesto for a movement operating out of view of the American public, the results it achieved were as covert and ruthless as Fight Club.
Smashing unions, cutting education funding, and building business-friendly think tanks are just a few of the initiatives the Powell memo set in motion. What part of this agenda can possibly be judged as centrist except by privileged interests with an ax to grind against the middle- and working classes?
Johnny Silvercloud and I had recently exchanged missives about the ‘centeredness’ of centrists. He quite rightly called centrism “a performance of political narcissism” given the self-conviction that their beliefs comprise the ideology of reference. His psychoanalytic critique of centrism was as clever as it was damning.
To reiterate, my objection to ‘centrism’ owes to the coverage it gives to the donor class; a pass for the unjustified privilege of their obscene wealth and commanding influence over public policy. There’s absolutely nothing ‘moderate’ or ‘middle-of-the-road’ about suppressing hourly wages, privatizing health care beyond affordability, or purchasing political influence that morally belongs to rank-and-file voters.
For ‘centrism’ to truly represent moderates would require ridding politics of the corrupting influence of wealth.
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This post was previously published on Politically Speaking.
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