Easy to surmise from the onslaught of vitriol and rhetoric that “The middle” in politics is for weak, nerveless sheep.
Not true.
The Middle, at its finest, is one of the most difficult and beautiful things a society can attempt.
Can a nation of opposing appetites, classes, regions, faiths, creeds, generational wounds, ambitions, and all the ordinary human absurdities that show up whenever wherever people gather still be made into a common life? …one that actually serves? Pretty sure that’s the point of all this.
Easier said, but that it is the real work of people who actually want to thrive. Maybe the only work that effectively matters.
The problem is: “The Middle” is hard to sell. Always has been.
It is not sexy. There is no clear villain, no John McClane. Yippee ki yay mu’…what are we rooting for? Where’s the drama, Chalamet? The aspirations of The Middle are far less cinematic and more difficult: a society sturdy enough for ordinary people to live in it ordinarily without having to worship anybody (not a religious statement) in order to have agency over one’s own experience.
Extremism sells a messiah. The middle offers working plumbing, and workers to plumb it. One has rollercoasters; the other has street lights.
It’s a branding issue. Bad publicists perhaps. People swoon at celebrity. Union contracts don’t merit prime time, no fads about functioning transit, tax code fan-fiction (hot to me) hasn’t taken off. But those are the things that make ordinary life possible, and ordinary life, when broadly dignified, is what makes a whole society exceptional. The drab miracle of things working the way they’re supposed to.
The hero and the worshipers lose me right around “I’m/he’s/she’s/they’re going to fix this.” A country is not saved by the one. It is bolstered by the many.
I am romantic about the idea of a people learning, however badly, to remain a people. A common life with space enough for contradiction and productive argument. Civility strong enough to survive not despite disagreement, but through the disciplined management of it. Listen instead of waiting for your turn to talk. Don’t chew angry.
A little self-investigation is in order almost all the while. Yes, you too. Ballast against the keel when the outrageous is proposed as wisdom, no matter where you sit on the spectrum. Everyone is in the same rainstorm and no one gets to own the rainbow.
The machine fails when the cogs refuse to turn together. Right now it feels like a rotary engine and a sewing machine are trying to strangle each other while falling down a fire escape. I gotta million of ’em! *POW!
Likely, you are just as afraid as I am. Afraid of losing status, security, identity, control, the world you thought you were promised. The strongman, the ideologue, the cultural prophet, the frothing pundit, the billionaire with flag-pinned morality and a grievance, all of them know this. Fear is easier to organize than patience. Easier to monetize than nuance. Easier to turn into a movement than competence ever will be. History has made no secret of such things.
Back to sexy: the middle does not offer ecstasy. Only civilization. Which, frankly, should be enough. But here we are, panting at an empty water dish. *ZING!
Where’s my house sweater? Gather round… There was a time in this country, and in a few others, when the steady locomotive middle was stronger not because everybody agreed (boring) but because politics remembered its obligation to ordinary life. Wages meant something, housing was imaginable, work had bargaining power behind it and education opened doors instead of just debt portals back to Mom’s basement. The state, labor, and business (big and small) were not in a ménage à trois, but they were forced into a rough settlement, safe word included, that made room for millions of people to build lives that felt more stable than doomed.
It was imperfect. Unequal; holy hell – often outright unjust in who got left out of the promise – but it was still proof of concept.
When a society spreads dignity widely enough, fewer people go hunting for saviors. False idols indeed. New people, you probably saw this on the list in your classroom. It is much easier to think about your chess move or your drink order when your chair is not on fire. Probably it is.
It’s not only the middle class thinning as a statistic, but The Middle as a civic imagination. A great ideal. Extraordinary regularity. The belief that the point of politics is to make a livable country instead of winning a permanent holy war against your domestic enemies/extended family/talking-head.
Now everything has to be a revelation, a purge, a collapse, One Battle After Another for the soul of the republic, in theaters now, sponsored by your very own custom algorithm. Everybody wants to be a Kardashian Real Bachelorette Survivor. Nobody wants to be the zoning board, even though I suspect they have the kinkiest parties (everything is permitted…).
The importance of your politics is that it’s not the only conversation worth having. It is one necessary force among others that holds the bridge up.
Your view, convictions, and probably some of your rage matter. But they matter as part of a larger, grown-up balancing act. Your politics should be strong enough to argue, principled enough to resist, and humble enough to bargain without feeling like you need dual citizenship.
Point is: not everyone is right, and no one person, group, party, or idea gets to become the whole country. Once that happens, both sides are just drowning in a righteous river, clawing and choking for a glimpse of themselves while trying to drag the other down; narcissism pretending to be patriotism.
Cheer for The Middle.
The alternative is more saints, Caesars, and ideological purists so enchanted by their own divine clarity that the very concept of decency makes their empathy itch. No thanks. I’m full.
Bring me the rough choir! I want the broad-backed republic. Give me the daily, unglamorous, grubby, stubborn work of making a place where contradictory people can still drink the same (drinkable) water, drive the same roads, worship their God (or not), send their kids to school (safely), bury their dead (should be unrelated to the school thing), argue over dinner, and wake up the next morning inside the same unfinished country. Repeat; grow.
That’s the stuff and it’s a million miles from mediocrity – it’s a magnificent aspiration. A nation in the thrum. A beautiful, difficult ideal – not a deal ghostwritten as art.
Cue Miss Turner: We don’t need another hero.
We need a country whose ordinary life is good enough that people can stop pleading for one.
Step one: stop killing each other. Worshiping conflict is against whatever book you’ve chosen.
I don’t have the answers. Neither do you. My guy doesn’t. Your guy doesn’t. We get nowhere buying lottery tickets instead of talking to each other.
The great Experiment continues.