Thank you!!! The centerists have been the problem for decades. FDRs New Deal policies pissed off Wall Street so much they attempted a coup. There has never been a true progressive president since Jimmy Carter. I voted for Biden. Did we get voting rights back, nope. Filibuster. Abolish the filibuster? Biden, "nope". Universal healthcare, nope. Filibuster. The centerists are the Dixiecrats. Biden's new border order is IDENTICAL to Trump's, why aren't the Democrats calling Biden racist for doing exactly what Trump did? Is it only racist when Republicans do it🧐 Same with Trump's wall that Biden is building. Crickets from the Democrats.
Yup. The big concern now is that Trump is so blatantly fascist, but a secondary concern is how effective Trump has been at moving the Overton window to the right. The DNC is Republicans "light" and even when they win we lose... just to a lesser extent. It's frustrating. Thanks for the comment!
Precisely! It's incredibly frustrating because it's intentional. Campaigning for Henry pro forced birth, Koch money taking, now indicted criminal Cueller against a true progressive made me, loathe Pelosi 🤬
I work from home, and after reading your remarkable piece, I just sat through a virtual meeting, thinking about your perspective and the comments in response.
While detached from my meeting I was struck by another realization; the media can be perceived to be on the same straight line, supporting red and blue at the extremes, but a great deal of obstruction of the truth happens in “news”, the news today is more opinions, predictions, and possibilities than a straightforward reporting the who, what, when, where, and why of an event, situation, or circumstance.
Reporting both sides is commonly thought to be fair by today’s news “readers.”They give people a choice of what to believe, which has more to do with creating ratings because they don’t offend one group or another. Centrist news is the same manipulation as centrist politics. Our news provides “alternative facts” on almost everything it broadcasts. This, I would wager is the real reason so many people don’t watch the news—they find the firehose of ambiguity and intentional confusion too stressful to take in.
Being forced to always hear both sides of a story, is a construct which results in knowing nothing, calling that fair is nothing of the sort. Lost between the story of both sides is the truth, the facts, and the reality that humanity needs to know to make a rational choice, to make an ethical choice, the make a decision about what they want and what they don’t. Most people hate having to make a choice, more than they hate being lied to.
The red side drives everyone to the far-right of conservatism and the result can be abortion laws from 1864 becoming law in Arizona.
IVF is being outlawed, by people who want higher birth rates, but will deny infertility treatment, because they believe fertility of the egg is a person, and IVF doesn’t turn every fertilized egg into a Jack or a Jill.
The blue side drives everyone to the far-left of progressiveness, and the result can strangely bring government oversight to focus on convenience store soda size regulations.
Or the left advocates and legislates unachievable or unenforceable environmental regulations like plastic recycling—the myth that convinced us that using and recycling plastics was better for the environment. Now nano-plastics are in our bodies, and the plastics we believed were being recycled are endangering our oceans where they’ve been dumped. Paper grocery bags decompose plastic grocery bags kill marine life. Go figure.
These are examples of beliefs and opinions being made mandates or laws. Beliefs are not facts, and are used to justify determination of RIGHT or WRONG, when trying to impose a personal preference to force others to adhere to your preference.
I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite broadcast the news—he rarely smiled and never laughed, the news was not a laughing matter. Every weekday for 30 minutes he told the truth, about an event, a speech, a tragedy, a success. He gave a report of the facts as that could be verified, he never speculated, never gossiped, never expressed his judgement or opinion.
Walter Cronkite was an honest broker, if he said it, it was true, if a correction came to light after the fact, he corrected it. He was a serious, trustworthy presenter of information about our world.
Now there are very few reporters of his stature, I’m not sure when I last saw a news report that I thought “I could take to the bank”.
Journalism still has heroes, and even though a journalist is essentially a scribe/historian, it is nearly impossible for a journalistic writer or commentator not to have a style that conveys the impact of what they are documenting. It’s hard to write, even about facts, without expressing feeling. Some journalists are better at it than others.
So your line of liars vs the circle of realism (or hell), depending on your view really reached in and opened my mind with both hands. I’ve known for almost all my life how illusive the truth can be. But everyone can be fooled by what they desire to hear. But the really dangerous part is when we are convinced that truth isn’t real. That there is never a black or a white, gray keeps everyone guessing, wondering, and thinking they don’t care to know.
You're very right. Imagine if we lived in a world where the news had the courage to say, "That is a blatant lie." Instead, they waffle and allow awful republicans to babble and babble about how January 6th was a "demonstration that got out of hand" rather than a terrorist assault.
Thanks for that thoughtful comment. You've given me a few more things to think about and perhaps a new angle to approach my activism. I appreciate that! I'll have to ponder it for a while!
Adding to the noise and disreality: here comes AI!! Now nobody will know what's real and true because what you see and hear may not be real or true. Wow, great job of ours screwing ourselves to high heaven for "convenience".
This is an excellent piece. Drilling down under the crust of nonsense to expose where our attentions need to be. The circle diagram is going to be on my mind for a good while. This helps me figure something out, esp re Hillary. Wow! I just terminated a friendship with an avowed centrist, I found that the poison of that centrist stinkin' thinkin' ran all through his personal choices and it's disturbing.
Yes, I've had to block a lot of them. They refuse to budge on their positions, and then they accuse you of "being part of the problem." They aren't really centrist at all or they'd have a little humility and recognize they might be wrong. Thanks for the comment!
Wonderful!! I agree 100%. In life the ones in the middle are the fiddlers, and I mean fiddling while Rome burns. Joe Biden wants to defeat Trump to save democracy, but he hugs Netanyahu tight because American foreign policy in dangerous places always needs a “strong man” to do the job no one wants to claim. The center isn’t moderate, they’re ambiguous, contradictory, finger to the wind manipulators. Their self-interest of the moment is what they toss into the mix. We could see the trouble Manchin and Sinema created, disguising themselves as democrats was their trick.
Manchin’s self interest was his wealth from coal, but in the midst of the poverty of his state he needed to be a democrat for show.
Sinema’s Achilles heel was her funders, big pharma, so she mostly said nothing of substance, when pressed provided a word salad of homilies to bipartisanship, and to get what she had to have, she just said “NO”.
Dick Durbin is the latest centrist to make doing nothing the enemy of good. He is fiddling while the Supreme Court is burning down.
Thank you for making the straight line to nowhere fast into the circle of hell we all have known was sucking the good out of everything.
I will vote for Biden, but his centrist tactics have always made me mad. My reasoning
Is obvious, Biden isn’t insane.
I worry about the people who will not vote at all, it’s going to happen on both sides of the “line” those who refuse to vote for insane may be the most important non-voters of all.
Yes, we absolutely have to vote for Biden and I will as well. But it worries me when the irritating so-called "centrists" start bleating about how the DNC can't embrace popular ideas like universal healthcare or universal education. Centrists are the reason the Democrats lose, and even when Democrats win, they become obstructionists that prevent any progress. Sigh...
Obstructionism is a human condition, doing nothing, or making sure nothing gets done, is the devil on our shoulder—the angel on the other shoulder is always whispering, “You’re not perfect, just try to do your best”. Neither shoulder sitter has much to say about taking constructive action to change things for the better.
I’m not religious, but the other lying straight line is good on one side and evil on the other. In the middle is where nearly all the human iniquities are done.
Yes, the centrists are the obstructionists and the conservatives are deliberately working to implement evil. Progressives are outnumbered, but we have the truth on our side.
I've always referred to them as Corporate Democrats properly bribed by Monopolies. When Pelosi ignored voting rights, women's equality and reproductive rights among other crucial issues when she had complete control during Obama, I was furious and that's how they lost afterwards. The attacks on the few Progressives by Pelosi and now the funding of counter candidates like against Jaamal Bowman shows their hostility. I was shocked when the Party went all out to support corrupt Henry Cueller, who's also anti abortion, against Jessica Ciscernos. This is typical and they will even support MAGAs over a genuine popular Progressive. Their current method is for a pseudo Progressive as was Sinema to win and reveal that they are Republican instead. Your article clarified this.
Yup, they're in the pocket of conservatives. The bizarre part is how angry the apologists get when you point out that the DNC establishment is conservative. I don't know why they don't own it. It is the basis of their losing strategy. Sigh...
One flaw in the American political system is that it has not for some time been able to develop a plurality of parties that accurately reflect the interests of voters. You might occasionally get a third party candidate running for President, but there is no permanent long-lasting alternative to the establishment available. This is what centrists have to deal with.
In other countries, in comparison, centrists have parties that reflect their interests. Here in Canada, the Liberal Party has been that party. They have been in office in Ottawa since 2015, but they are far less popular than they once were. The further west you go the less popular they become: they have been persona non grata in my home, Manitoba, for a great many years, and the B.C. unit went so far as to change its name so it wouldn't be associated with the brand anymore. So their stock varies depending on how much competition they have.
But they are very necessary as a buffer between the Trump-impersonating Conservative Party and the radicalism of the New Democratic Party. America needs to get its own buffer.
There's nothing radical about Democrats. They're extremely conservative. I wish they'd lean into this fact because it's obvious. Whenever anyone discusses things like universal healthcare, the majority of Democrats are opposed to it as "too far left." To me, that's an admission that they're conservative, but they don't want to admit that either. Our politics is a giant mess.
I agree. The Corporate Democrats are actually the Conservative Party and you can see the Bush Republicans readily joining which will make them more so. The Republicans are now radical reactionaries attempting to go back if not to the Confederacy then to a Pre-Revolutionary Monarchist Theocracy . The Progressives are the only true Democrats left and as they don't accept corporate donations they need to stress that monied interests will be slamming them with outright lies prior to the elections without the time or money for a response.
Hillary has discussed universal health care and affordable education since Bill was president. Pelosi saved Social Security during Bush, and saved ObamaCare. And their generation of women kept up Roe for 50 years. Until today's progressives arrived.
It is called confidence in a man, and it is called arrogance and hubris in a woman. The “Get over yourself” story is a good example, another excuse for hating her. There are two candidates. One of them is a felon, convicted, among other things, for sex abuse. But why should progressives care, they show a frightening lack of empathy to women’s rights. By the way, progressives these days should probably look at themselves, too, before criticizing others. They abandoned climate change, we barely hear about it anymore. Biden is great on the environment. And who wanted student debt forgiveness? Who creates new jobs in the hundred thousands? Who got insulin prices lower? Unemployment rates are record low, crime rates are dropping. And progressives are complaining about moderates. Then who is confrontational?
You get the stick by the wrong end. Biden was to the right from Hillary all his life, yet he won. He won the swing states where a woman candidate could not win. Hillary WAS leaning toward left-wing values, just as much as Biden, but "progressives" hated her for "flip-flopping," remember?
Countries thrive under centrist parties. Remember Germany during Merkel's time? Now Merkel is out of the picture, and see how Germany is struggling already!
The European Union election proved the same. Left-wing parties and greens were losing ground, centrists won, they will balance the far-right that won several seats.
Biden was not the right from Hillary in 2020 however. Clinton really did her best to insult and dismiss progressives, and that's why she lost. The DNC won't admit it, but it's true.
Biden was the right from her all his life, and around the same place in 2020, guess why he is still in the White House. He is a good, decent, smart man, but Mama is smarter. Hillary was heavily criticized for flip-flopping on important issues, she is “evolving” or “ too flexible.”
See how great progressives are doing in Germany and in the European Union; the recent elections just showed it. Note: Germany’s economy is struggling, people are struggling (unlike in the centrist Merkel’s time) and left-wing parties, greens lost several seats.
Thank you!!! The centerists have been the problem for decades. FDRs New Deal policies pissed off Wall Street so much they attempted a coup. There has never been a true progressive president since Jimmy Carter. I voted for Biden. Did we get voting rights back, nope. Filibuster. Abolish the filibuster? Biden, "nope". Universal healthcare, nope. Filibuster. The centerists are the Dixiecrats. Biden's new border order is IDENTICAL to Trump's, why aren't the Democrats calling Biden racist for doing exactly what Trump did? Is it only racist when Republicans do it🧐 Same with Trump's wall that Biden is building. Crickets from the Democrats.
Yup. The big concern now is that Trump is so blatantly fascist, but a secondary concern is how effective Trump has been at moving the Overton window to the right. The DNC is Republicans "light" and even when they win we lose... just to a lesser extent. It's frustrating. Thanks for the comment!
Precisely! It's incredibly frustrating because it's intentional. Campaigning for Henry pro forced birth, Koch money taking, now indicted criminal Cueller against a true progressive made me, loathe Pelosi 🤬
I work from home, and after reading your remarkable piece, I just sat through a virtual meeting, thinking about your perspective and the comments in response.
While detached from my meeting I was struck by another realization; the media can be perceived to be on the same straight line, supporting red and blue at the extremes, but a great deal of obstruction of the truth happens in “news”, the news today is more opinions, predictions, and possibilities than a straightforward reporting the who, what, when, where, and why of an event, situation, or circumstance.
Reporting both sides is commonly thought to be fair by today’s news “readers.”They give people a choice of what to believe, which has more to do with creating ratings because they don’t offend one group or another. Centrist news is the same manipulation as centrist politics. Our news provides “alternative facts” on almost everything it broadcasts. This, I would wager is the real reason so many people don’t watch the news—they find the firehose of ambiguity and intentional confusion too stressful to take in.
Being forced to always hear both sides of a story, is a construct which results in knowing nothing, calling that fair is nothing of the sort. Lost between the story of both sides is the truth, the facts, and the reality that humanity needs to know to make a rational choice, to make an ethical choice, the make a decision about what they want and what they don’t. Most people hate having to make a choice, more than they hate being lied to.
The red side drives everyone to the far-right of conservatism and the result can be abortion laws from 1864 becoming law in Arizona.
IVF is being outlawed, by people who want higher birth rates, but will deny infertility treatment, because they believe fertility of the egg is a person, and IVF doesn’t turn every fertilized egg into a Jack or a Jill.
The blue side drives everyone to the far-left of progressiveness, and the result can strangely bring government oversight to focus on convenience store soda size regulations.
Or the left advocates and legislates unachievable or unenforceable environmental regulations like plastic recycling—the myth that convinced us that using and recycling plastics was better for the environment. Now nano-plastics are in our bodies, and the plastics we believed were being recycled are endangering our oceans where they’ve been dumped. Paper grocery bags decompose plastic grocery bags kill marine life. Go figure.
These are examples of beliefs and opinions being made mandates or laws. Beliefs are not facts, and are used to justify determination of RIGHT or WRONG, when trying to impose a personal preference to force others to adhere to your preference.
I’m old enough to remember Walter Cronkite broadcast the news—he rarely smiled and never laughed, the news was not a laughing matter. Every weekday for 30 minutes he told the truth, about an event, a speech, a tragedy, a success. He gave a report of the facts as that could be verified, he never speculated, never gossiped, never expressed his judgement or opinion.
Walter Cronkite was an honest broker, if he said it, it was true, if a correction came to light after the fact, he corrected it. He was a serious, trustworthy presenter of information about our world.
Now there are very few reporters of his stature, I’m not sure when I last saw a news report that I thought “I could take to the bank”.
Journalism still has heroes, and even though a journalist is essentially a scribe/historian, it is nearly impossible for a journalistic writer or commentator not to have a style that conveys the impact of what they are documenting. It’s hard to write, even about facts, without expressing feeling. Some journalists are better at it than others.
So your line of liars vs the circle of realism (or hell), depending on your view really reached in and opened my mind with both hands. I’ve known for almost all my life how illusive the truth can be. But everyone can be fooled by what they desire to hear. But the really dangerous part is when we are convinced that truth isn’t real. That there is never a black or a white, gray keeps everyone guessing, wondering, and thinking they don’t care to know.
We are in dangerous times.
You're very right. Imagine if we lived in a world where the news had the courage to say, "That is a blatant lie." Instead, they waffle and allow awful republicans to babble and babble about how January 6th was a "demonstration that got out of hand" rather than a terrorist assault.
Thanks for that thoughtful comment. You've given me a few more things to think about and perhaps a new angle to approach my activism. I appreciate that! I'll have to ponder it for a while!
I do some of my best pondering on large group zoom meetings— work requires I go, pondering is often the best use of my time.
That's a excellent expansion to this article.
Adding to the noise and disreality: here comes AI!! Now nobody will know what's real and true because what you see and hear may not be real or true. Wow, great job of ours screwing ourselves to high heaven for "convenience".
This is an excellent piece. Drilling down under the crust of nonsense to expose where our attentions need to be. The circle diagram is going to be on my mind for a good while. This helps me figure something out, esp re Hillary. Wow! I just terminated a friendship with an avowed centrist, I found that the poison of that centrist stinkin' thinkin' ran all through his personal choices and it's disturbing.
Yes, I've had to block a lot of them. They refuse to budge on their positions, and then they accuse you of "being part of the problem." They aren't really centrist at all or they'd have a little humility and recognize they might be wrong. Thanks for the comment!
FELICES
Wonderful!! I agree 100%. In life the ones in the middle are the fiddlers, and I mean fiddling while Rome burns. Joe Biden wants to defeat Trump to save democracy, but he hugs Netanyahu tight because American foreign policy in dangerous places always needs a “strong man” to do the job no one wants to claim. The center isn’t moderate, they’re ambiguous, contradictory, finger to the wind manipulators. Their self-interest of the moment is what they toss into the mix. We could see the trouble Manchin and Sinema created, disguising themselves as democrats was their trick.
Manchin’s self interest was his wealth from coal, but in the midst of the poverty of his state he needed to be a democrat for show.
Sinema’s Achilles heel was her funders, big pharma, so she mostly said nothing of substance, when pressed provided a word salad of homilies to bipartisanship, and to get what she had to have, she just said “NO”.
Dick Durbin is the latest centrist to make doing nothing the enemy of good. He is fiddling while the Supreme Court is burning down.
Thank you for making the straight line to nowhere fast into the circle of hell we all have known was sucking the good out of everything.
I will vote for Biden, but his centrist tactics have always made me mad. My reasoning
Is obvious, Biden isn’t insane.
I worry about the people who will not vote at all, it’s going to happen on both sides of the “line” those who refuse to vote for insane may be the most important non-voters of all.
Yes, we absolutely have to vote for Biden and I will as well. But it worries me when the irritating so-called "centrists" start bleating about how the DNC can't embrace popular ideas like universal healthcare or universal education. Centrists are the reason the Democrats lose, and even when Democrats win, they become obstructionists that prevent any progress. Sigh...
Obstructionism is a human condition, doing nothing, or making sure nothing gets done, is the devil on our shoulder—the angel on the other shoulder is always whispering, “You’re not perfect, just try to do your best”. Neither shoulder sitter has much to say about taking constructive action to change things for the better.
I’m not religious, but the other lying straight line is good on one side and evil on the other. In the middle is where nearly all the human iniquities are done.
Yes, the centrists are the obstructionists and the conservatives are deliberately working to implement evil. Progressives are outnumbered, but we have the truth on our side.
Power mongers are killing us.
I've always referred to them as Corporate Democrats properly bribed by Monopolies. When Pelosi ignored voting rights, women's equality and reproductive rights among other crucial issues when she had complete control during Obama, I was furious and that's how they lost afterwards. The attacks on the few Progressives by Pelosi and now the funding of counter candidates like against Jaamal Bowman shows their hostility. I was shocked when the Party went all out to support corrupt Henry Cueller, who's also anti abortion, against Jessica Ciscernos. This is typical and they will even support MAGAs over a genuine popular Progressive. Their current method is for a pseudo Progressive as was Sinema to win and reveal that they are Republican instead. Your article clarified this.
Yup, they're in the pocket of conservatives. The bizarre part is how angry the apologists get when you point out that the DNC establishment is conservative. I don't know why they don't own it. It is the basis of their losing strategy. Sigh...
One flaw in the American political system is that it has not for some time been able to develop a plurality of parties that accurately reflect the interests of voters. You might occasionally get a third party candidate running for President, but there is no permanent long-lasting alternative to the establishment available. This is what centrists have to deal with.
In other countries, in comparison, centrists have parties that reflect their interests. Here in Canada, the Liberal Party has been that party. They have been in office in Ottawa since 2015, but they are far less popular than they once were. The further west you go the less popular they become: they have been persona non grata in my home, Manitoba, for a great many years, and the B.C. unit went so far as to change its name so it wouldn't be associated with the brand anymore. So their stock varies depending on how much competition they have.
But they are very necessary as a buffer between the Trump-impersonating Conservative Party and the radicalism of the New Democratic Party. America needs to get its own buffer.
There's nothing radical about Democrats. They're extremely conservative. I wish they'd lean into this fact because it's obvious. Whenever anyone discusses things like universal healthcare, the majority of Democrats are opposed to it as "too far left." To me, that's an admission that they're conservative, but they don't want to admit that either. Our politics is a giant mess.
I agree. The Corporate Democrats are actually the Conservative Party and you can see the Bush Republicans readily joining which will make them more so. The Republicans are now radical reactionaries attempting to go back if not to the Confederacy then to a Pre-Revolutionary Monarchist Theocracy . The Progressives are the only true Democrats left and as they don't accept corporate donations they need to stress that monied interests will be slamming them with outright lies prior to the elections without the time or money for a response.
Hillary has discussed universal health care and affordable education since Bill was president. Pelosi saved Social Security during Bush, and saved ObamaCare. And their generation of women kept up Roe for 50 years. Until today's progressives arrived.
Let's not start up with alternate history. Hillary was confrontational to progressives and even tried to blame Sanders for her loss (rather than her own hubris). Every time she gets on television she hurts the democrats. Her most recent was her "get over yourself" comment that failed to show any sympathy to the plight of regular people. She would have been light years better than trump, and it's infuriating that she didn't get the win that should have been a layup: https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/4575600-hillary-clinton-get-over-yourself-biden/#:~:text=Appearing%20on%20NBC's%20%E2%80%9CTonight%20Show,Those%20are%20the%20two%20choices.%E2%80%9D
It is called confidence in a man, and it is called arrogance and hubris in a woman. The “Get over yourself” story is a good example, another excuse for hating her. There are two candidates. One of them is a felon, convicted, among other things, for sex abuse. But why should progressives care, they show a frightening lack of empathy to women’s rights. By the way, progressives these days should probably look at themselves, too, before criticizing others. They abandoned climate change, we barely hear about it anymore. Biden is great on the environment. And who wanted student debt forgiveness? Who creates new jobs in the hundred thousands? Who got insulin prices lower? Unemployment rates are record low, crime rates are dropping. And progressives are complaining about moderates. Then who is confrontational?
You get the stick by the wrong end. Biden was to the right from Hillary all his life, yet he won. He won the swing states where a woman candidate could not win. Hillary WAS leaning toward left-wing values, just as much as Biden, but "progressives" hated her for "flip-flopping," remember?
Countries thrive under centrist parties. Remember Germany during Merkel's time? Now Merkel is out of the picture, and see how Germany is struggling already!
The European Union election proved the same. Left-wing parties and greens were losing ground, centrists won, they will balance the far-right that won several seats.
Biden was not the right from Hillary in 2020 however. Clinton really did her best to insult and dismiss progressives, and that's why she lost. The DNC won't admit it, but it's true.
Biden was the right from her all his life, and around the same place in 2020, guess why he is still in the White House. He is a good, decent, smart man, but Mama is smarter. Hillary was heavily criticized for flip-flopping on important issues, she is “evolving” or “ too flexible.”
See how great progressives are doing in Germany and in the European Union; the recent elections just showed it. Note: Germany’s economy is struggling, people are struggling (unlike in the centrist Merkel’s time) and left-wing parties, greens lost several seats.
This article isn't about that. This article is about the specific reality of America's lying politicians. Let's keep it on task.