I have just spent the best part of three weeks travelling around the United States, filming episodes for TRIGGERnometry and speaking with people from different sides of the political spectrum. There were many lunches, breakfasts, dinners and walks with people who care where our culture and politics are going. We met conservative friends in DC and Miami and old school liberal friends in NY and LA. And the most striking thing to me is just how much these two groups actually agree on.
Any realistic hope of uniting the shouty anti-woke right with traditional liberals probably depends on people with clear views but moderate modes of expression who are respected by both groups. People like you Konstantin. Don’t worry. I’m not suggesting that you stand for elected office.....yet.
I'm not sure that I agree with your assessment about moderate politicians. True, it may alienate the right and left fringes, but they're just that: fringes. If you sit down with a moderate conservative right now it should become pretty clear that they probably don't want to vote for Trump, or many of the other politicians who are similarly grotesque. However, they WILL pull the lever for Trump again if it's between him and someone who wants to defund the police and "disrupt" the gender binary and the nuclear family.
I think that if there was simply a less ideological politician, even one who labels himself a Democrat, who said very clearly in the face of this craziness, "no, we're not going to do that", this person could have a great deal of support from the common person. I think the more difficult thing to get past is the party apparatus itself which actively tries to reduce the signal for certain candidates and amplify the signal for others.
The problem is that both the 'shouty Right' and the ''quiet Liberals' have no common doctrine, thus they agree there is a problem but how to solve it requires a mix of the two the becomes mutually agreeable. But this 'middle way' if you like would only be a temporary alliance of convenience. It may be as KK says: It creates a space for a moderate unifying politician to come through the middle and unite the two, but this disunity between the two wings who agree there is a problem but not on the methods to solve it could keep us divided and allow the Loonies to run the asylum.
Have you read The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer by Stella Morabito? This is why liberals whisper.
Man! You write so well. Superb article.
Any realistic hope of uniting the shouty anti-woke right with traditional liberals probably depends on people with clear views but moderate modes of expression who are respected by both groups. People like you Konstantin. Don’t worry. I’m not suggesting that you stand for elected office.....yet.
I'm not sure that I agree with your assessment about moderate politicians. True, it may alienate the right and left fringes, but they're just that: fringes. If you sit down with a moderate conservative right now it should become pretty clear that they probably don't want to vote for Trump, or many of the other politicians who are similarly grotesque. However, they WILL pull the lever for Trump again if it's between him and someone who wants to defund the police and "disrupt" the gender binary and the nuclear family.
I think that if there was simply a less ideological politician, even one who labels himself a Democrat, who said very clearly in the face of this craziness, "no, we're not going to do that", this person could have a great deal of support from the common person. I think the more difficult thing to get past is the party apparatus itself which actively tries to reduce the signal for certain candidates and amplify the signal for others.
The problem is that both the 'shouty Right' and the ''quiet Liberals' have no common doctrine, thus they agree there is a problem but how to solve it requires a mix of the two the becomes mutually agreeable. But this 'middle way' if you like would only be a temporary alliance of convenience. It may be as KK says: It creates a space for a moderate unifying politician to come through the middle and unite the two, but this disunity between the two wings who agree there is a problem but not on the methods to solve it could keep us divided and allow the Loonies to run the asylum.
Have you read The Weaponization of Loneliness: How Tyrants Stoke Our Fear of Isolation to Silence, Divide, and Conquer by Stella Morabito? This is why liberals whisper.