Alt-Center, Moderate extremists of the world unite

[Pete at Home]

A plague on both the houses.

With right and left spiraling in a race to the bottom in terms of lying, mind-numbing and violence-affirming rhetoric, it's time for moderates to stop being lukewarm, to stop looking left or right for the least hateful alternative.

[rightleft22]

Amen

The moderates are at a disadvantage as they must rely on reason and if they express themselves to forcibly will be accessed of being intellectual elitist bullies. 

Personalty I think the pendulum has swung and the time of the moderate is over.
This is the time of the Shadow

[D.W.]

The Shadow?  Are you starting / joining a secret shadow government that gets *censored* done while the extremists play house in D.C.?  Where do I sign up?

[TheDeamon]

The moderates are at a disadvantage as they must rely on reason and if they express themselves to forcibly will be accessed of being intellectual elitist bullies. 

Personalty I think the pendulum has swung and the time of the moderate is over.

This is something Conservative Talk Radio figured out back in the 1990's. The issue with moderates happen on 2 fronts:
1) They usually need much more than 20 second sound bites to make their point. (The more sane Conservatives also generally share that problem)

2) Moderates are "boring" and don't make for good ratings, as they don't cause (much) controversy. As such, the media will normally ignore them, unless they have something to say that furthers a narrative they're pushing at the time. (see: "Token Republican or Democrat" speaking out against their own party calling them unreasonable on something)

[Pete at Home]

What the world needs now is moderate terrorism

[TheDeamon]

What the world needs now is moderate terrorism

Or thanks to YouTube, a political moderate with an (prepared) Oratory Gift on par with Obama, who isn't afraid of spending time in front of a camera doing YouTube video blog posts actually explaining their positions. Written statements/transcripts would be good too(and preferred by me), but I'm well aware of the TL;DR crowd out there now.

While they might be able to read the thing in under a minute, they're more likely to be bothered to pay attention if you have a human sit there and spend 4 minutes presenting it in front of a camera.

[scifibum]

The most leftist primary candidate with any kind of shot was pretty centrist by, say, NATO standards.  We've evidently convinced ourselves that it's a short hop from government involvement in medical coverage [or insert barely progressive Democratic plank of choice] to communist hell. 

To be "moderate" you have to reject extreme positions like "let's not destroy the environment all at once", "full time workers should earn a living", and "corporations kind of need some regulation". 

Compare to "privatization is nearly always good", "imprison more people for longer to protect families and stimulate the economy", "the bible has good information on geology and biology", and "Kansas is definitely better off now". 

I don't know what it means to be a moderate in this country.

[Pete at Home]

To be "moderate" you have to reject extreme positions like "let's not destroy the environment all at once", "full time workers should earn a living", and "corporations kind of need some regulation". 

I hope not.

Maybe instead of a centrist we need an uppist or downist.

[scifibum]

Admittedly part of the problem is that sensible ideas are distorted and maligned by pundits and news outlets until they sound dystopian.  But as others pointed out, nuance is hard to sell. 

I'm pretty discouraged right now, since Trump is appointing people with terrible, terrible ideas to his cabinet.

[Pete at Home]

I think that with some minimal effort one can dance between oth leftist and rightist fallacies, without being dull.  A sense of humor helps.

[D.W.]

Admittedly part of the problem is that sensible ideas are distorted and maligned by pundits and news outlets until they sound dystopian.  But as others pointed out, nuance is hard to sell. 

I'm pretty discouraged right now, since Trump is appointing people with terrible, terrible ideas to his cabinet.

My running theory is he's "trolling" USA as one would take ridiculous exaggerated positions online for one's own amusement... 

I'm not sure what worries me more, that I'm right about that (mostly a joke?), that he's ONLY rewarding loyalty to Trump, or that he honestly believes he's going to be doing what's good for the country with these picks. 

Obviously I've got heavy partisan bias going against my ability to see these as anything but joke/disaster choices so far.  So I can't tell.

If you had to write a manual about how to lose after winning the nomination, without actually backing out so you would have to give up "victim status"; what would it look like?

[Pete at Home]

I'm not sure what worries me more, that I'm right about that (mostly a joke?), that he's ONLY rewarding loyalty to Trump, or that he honestly believes he's going to be doing what's good for the country with these picks

Or he's pacifying his tea party allies until after the electoral college meets.

[Pete at Home]

The most leftist primary candidate with any kind of shot was pretty centrist by, say, NATO standards.

True, but HRC makes Kissinger and Reagan look like simpering Russophiles.

[TheDeamon]

The most leftist primary candidate with any kind of shot was pretty centrist by, say, NATO standards.  We've evidently convinced ourselves that it's a short hop from government involvement in medical coverage [or insert barely progressive Democratic plank of choice] to communist hell.

It isn't really "the commies" that is at issue here. It is the initial form of Liberalism as practiced in the 1780's. It established one hell of a stronghold in the United States of America c/o the founding fathers.

And that form of Liberalism expressed "power to the people" by way devolving power away from the government and to the individual rather than the collective. So anytime you start talking about government programs that remove or displace individual rights in favor of anything else, you see a massive cultural backlash get unleashed against it.

Sure, whatever is being peddled may benefit the individual in question if they agree to cede some of their individual rights, but they're not going to surrender them casually all the same. Sometimes even more so in that case, as they know that if they're benefiting, someone else is probably losing, c/o the magic of government, and a LOT of people in the U.S. will reject such an exchange as a matter of principle--as they wouldn't want to be the person on the (government enforced) "losing side."

Edit to add: Or to frame it another way...

"Liberalism" in the United States remained essentially "frozen" in the late 18th Century because we achieved a stable working, liberal representative republic that has worked reasonably well without much in the way of major problems up through the 20th Century. It worked, people were happy with it, so it remained and remains as the defacto status quo.

Meanwhile, "Liberalism" as practiced in the rest of the world, continued to morph and adapt to the various changes that came with Industrialization, the Steam Engine, telecommunications, etc. That everyone else, bar the British Empire, failed to remain stable throughout all of that just enabled the concepts and practices to continue "to evolve."

They also likewise never had the strong impetus towards Individualism like happened in the United States. The British Empire and now, the members of the British Commonwealth, also never developed "major problems" with the idea of a powerful central government. While the idea of a Strong Central Government still causes people to freak out in the United States thanks to rhetoric from the Revolutionary War against the Crown and Parliament of Great Britain.

[Seriati]

1) They usually need much more than 20 second sound bites to make their point. (The more sane Conservatives also generally share that problem)

2) Moderates are "boring" and don't make for good ratings, as they don't cause (much) controversy. As such, the media will normally ignore them, unless they have something to say that furthers a narrative they're pushing at the time. (see: "Token Republican or Democrat" speaking out against their own party calling them unreasonable on something)

I think the issue is that its impossible to identify a consistent "left" and a consistent "right" let alone a consistent "moderate" position.  What does it really mean?  A compromise position?  A middle position?  A neutral one?  What's a moderate position on abortion?  On the environment?  On healthcare?

What does an extreme environmentalist have in common with an extreme Black Lives Matter activist or radical feminist?  What does a religious fanatic have in common with a gun rights activist?  Is an environmentalist with extreme gun rights belief a moderate, because they have strong right and left tendencies?

Is a moderate a real "conservative" (as opposed to the radicals we label as conservatives, or the conservatives we label progressives), in that they don't want change just for change's sake but only if its rational, tested or verified?

Middle positions are often tough to defend, compromises aren't really a moderate position they're more like the gun toting environmentalist.

[Pete at Home]

"What does it really mean?  A compromise position?  A middle position?  A neutral one?  "

A moderate position is based on reason rather than partisanship.

"What's a moderate position on abortion?"

Personhood based on brainwaves, not birth or "conception," and a woman's right to her body is based on a rational limit on court jurisdiction rather than on denying personhood to a class of human beings based on a technicality.

"On the environment?"

That obviously stopping deforestation and the destruction of coral reefs should be the focus rather than emissions. That ethanol is a boondoggle.

"On healthcare."

That we should start by determining what we are willing and able to spend as a nation, then determine how to spend that money to provide the greatest amount of benefit for the greatest number of citizens as a single-payer basis.  Let charity and the private sector do the rest, dice we can only do what we can do.

[Pete at Home]

compromises aren't really a moderate position they're more like the gun toting environmentalist

You can't stop deforestation or the killing of rhinos without guns.

Arm the natives and spike the trees.

[TheDeamon]

compromises aren't really a moderate position they're more like the gun toting environmentalist

You can't stop deforestation or the killing of rhinos without guns.

Where are we supposed to stopping this deforestation at? I presume you're probably meaning to talk about destruction of Tropical Rain-forests, not "global deforestation" as by that metric, it isn't happening.

We have more trees today than we've had at any point the past few centuries. And ironically, some of that is due to land-use change due to modern agricultural practices and transportation improvements. A LOT of unproductive farmland has been abandoned and has reverted to forestry. Which doesn't even get into deliberate forestation efforts, or commercial "Tree farming" operations. And the trendline at present is for more trees, not fewer.

[Pete at Home]

What does an extreme environmentalist have in common with an extreme Black Lives Matter activist or radical feminist? 

Dogma. Living in a narrow echo chamber except when one marches out to do battle with the world.  A tendency to cower away from any reasonable question with pee-prepared catch phrases like "it's not my job to educate you.". A fierce sense of entitlement to "respect" which they don't show anyone who disagrees with them.

Not true of every BLM or RadFem but nearly always how they act when others of their cult are watching.

[Seriati]

"What does it really mean?  A compromise position?  A middle position?  A neutral one?  "

A moderate position is based on reason rather than partisanship.

That's misleading, positions on the right, the left and by moderates can all be based on reason. That's a function of whether the person that holds them adheres to reason.  There's nothing special about the moderate position on that front, in fact, you'd be actively deluding yourself to believe that all moderate positions, and only moderate positions are based on reason.

The difference in the positions between one rational person and another are tied to differences in their fundamental axioms, beliefs and assumptions, not to a lack of reason. 

"What's a moderate position on abortion?"

Personhood based on brainwaves, not birth or "conception," and a woman's right to her body is based on a rational limit on court jurisdiction rather than on denying personhood to a class of human beings based on a technicality.

So "moderate" = Pete's position.    Glad that's cleared up.

"On the environment?"

That obviously stopping deforestation and the destruction of coral reefs should be the focus rather than emissions. That ethanol is a boondoggle.

Really?  I'd think the moderate position would be to balance the costs and the benefits, ie pragmatism, but without the finger on the scale that both the environmentalists and the hard capitalists always add.

"On healthcare."

That we should start by determining what we are willing and able to spend as a nation, then determine how to spend that money to provide the greatest amount of benefit for the greatest number of citizens as a single-payer basis.  Let charity and the private sector do the rest, dice we can only do what we can do.

Pragmatic, but what makes that moderate?  Sounds like you've going to the left position (single payer) and declared it moderate.  Is it not moderate to believe (rationally as it turns out) that free market forces act to efficiently drive down medical costs when they are allowed to do so?  Is it not moderate to believe that no one is owed medical care paid for by the community, or that we would have to amend the Constitution to allow it?

Would it not be moderate to advocate for baseline preventative care, and no more on the public dime?

Not seeing how collectivism is clearly moderate.

[Pete at Home]

Where are we supposed to stopping this deforestation at?

Brazil, South Pacific, American northwest, Central Africa and Madagascar, primarily.

Old growth forests are a more effective Carbon sink than tree farms. 

Political correctness and Obaman meaculpaism has channelled the treaties towards economic redistribution without stopping systematic deforestation.

Ironically a Trump Trade war with China might do more than Kyoto to slow the global warming that Trump supposedly doesn't believe in.

[Pete at Home]

That's misleading, positions on the right, the left and by moderates can all be based on reason.

Can be and often are at the onset before dogma and collective stupidity set in.

As for your personal blather, I answered what I thought "a " moderate solution would be, not what "the" moderate solution is.

[TheDeamon]

What does an extreme environmentalist have in common with an extreme Black Lives Matter activist or radical feminist?

They both are being "Repressed" by "conservative ideals" within the United States, as represented by the Republican Party. This is a Dynamic that I recall Rush Limbaugh talking about at various points in time, going back into the 1990's. It isn't so much that the Democratic Party is homogeneous in it's make up, even Rush will acknowledge they have a very "big tent" and they all have agendas that when taken on a individual basis are often self-contradictory. (We kind of witnessed this in 2009 with the Affordable Care Act(ObamaCare))

So long as the Republicans are the ones calling the shots, the Democrats and the various coalitions that shelter under that banner do have common cause: "Defeat the Republicans, by any means necessary." Once that objective is attained, they can then pursue dividing the spoils.

What does a religious fanatic have in common with a gun rights activist?

A LOT of the religious fanatics also tend to be gun nuts. I doubt there is a causation there, but there is a pretty strong correlation between the two.

Is an environmentalist with extreme gun rights belief a moderate, because they have strong right and left tendencies?

That just goes into arguments about the political spectrum not running on two dimensions, it runs on multiple axis. This is on par with a lot of Homosexuals who are big into having personal firearms for self-protection, so while they may tend to vote "left" due to issues revolving around homosexuality, they're also still big into gun rights.

Middle positions are often tough to defend, compromises aren't really a moderate position they're more like the gun toting environmentalist.

Agreed, compromise for the sake of having a compromise isn't always a best practice. Although going to King Solomon route on some things could net entertaining results in a Roman Gladiatorial Arena sense. (The story of the two women claiming a baby as their own, his solution ultimately being to tell them to cut the baby in half, and based on how the women reacted, the one that deferred at that point won) However, I think most would say that option is totally horrific.

The other options are things like pursuing a compromise with a determinedly extremist Islamic Terrorist. Sure you might find a deal they'd take(because you're going to be giving them stuff), but they're not going to honor it, and all you ultimately did was literally buy a brief respite before hostilities resume again. Many of them will not be happy until we bow down and submit to Islam dark ages style.

[Pete at Home]

A LOT of the religious fanatics also tend to be gun nuts. I doubt there is a causation there, but there is a pretty strong correlation between the two.

Rurals have always been more pro gun for obvious reasons.  At this stage in history, rural happen to be more religious than Urbans. In the 19th Century, Urbans were more religious than Urbans.

There's also the factor of subversion-containment.  One party adopts a position (abortion, for instance) for no they reason than the opposing party has taken an opposing position.

[Pete at Home]

As for so called Islamic terrorism, a middle position is recognize that the roots of the problem include IslamISM, and we need to stop bending over for Islamist's like CAIR.  OTOH, steer clear of phobic terms like "radical Islam" and Trump's lumping of the whole Ummah. Most importantly, come out in strong solidarity with Islamic secularism.  And stop pretending "Democracy" overrides , say, not murdering people for "blasphemy. Democracy is a joke and a farce when you are murdering those that disagree with you.  Remember bloody Kansas?  Democracy turns into a detriment when ethic or ideological cleansing becomes the rule.

[Pete at Home]

Pragmatic, but what makes that moderate?  Sounds like you've going to the left position (single payer)

Look again.  I said that SOME things should be single payer, where it benefits all.  Most notably, we ALL benefit from others having preventative vaccines and the like.  And Republicans who claim to support the Second amendment should grasp that it's in EVERYONE'S interest to see that everyone gets psych meds and treatment. 

Think about it.  You really going to take the position that a plan to identify and treat infectious and crazy people , and thus preventing most mass shootings without curbing gun rights, is a "collectivist" view rather than one that protects individual rights and interests?

I specifically said that most medical care should be left in the private sector. 

[TheDeamon]

The issue with psychological treatment is how, well, "fuzzy" the field itself is. While I certainly see the benefits of treating the potential psychotic types. The ones that are just neurotic and "need counseling" as a consequence of a catering mistake triggering a minor life crisis for example, are perhaps a bridge too far.

[Pete at Home]

Easy to draw limits like than. Like I said, we look at what we want to spend then allocate it for treating the specific maladies where the greatest number of people get the most benefit.

[Seriati]

Pragmatic, but what makes that moderate?  Sounds like you've going to the left position (single payer)

Look again.  I said that SOME things should be single payer, where it benefits all.  Most notably, we ALL benefit from others having preventative vaccines and the like.

But does that make it a moderate position for vaccines to be paid for by the government?  Is it moderate to make them mandatory?  To allow opt outs? 

I've never been opposed to paying for certain types of medical care through tax revenues, but where do you draw the line?  I don't see vaccines as an issue that conservative have a "must oppose" position on, does that mean its apolitical rather than moderate?  Vaccines are something that protect the group directly as well as the individual, your initial post seemed to go well beyond that kind of distinction.  I'm not aware, for instance, that anyone opposes the CDC in pursuing its primary mission to combat infectious disease (plenty oppose the deliberate mission creep to redefine things as diseases to add them to the CDC's mandate).  But that's a far cry from agreeing we should be single payer to treat the ravages imposed on an individual because of their life style choices - why should I have to pay for services solely attributable to someone eating McDonalds every day and ending up with a weight over 600 pounds?

And Republicans who claim to support the Second amendment should grasp that it's in EVERYONE'S interest to see that everyone gets psych meds and treatment.

I'm not opposed to treatment, but meds are much more hit or miss than you think.  You have to realize very little medicine is actually test, identify an exact cause and treat.  Virtually all of it is playing the odds on what something can be and treating the "most likely" cause.  Playing the odds works well to treat groups, but can utterly fail with individuals.  When you combine that with medicines that are designed to alter brain chemistry and the way a person thinks and feels, playing the odds may not just be ineffective it may actually cause massively increased danger.  There are benefits, but it's not clear they are as obvious as you seem to believe.  In any event, if you were being absolutely pragmatic, wouldn't you choose the ability to mandatorily detain severe mental health patients while treating them rather than pursing a catch and release program?    What makes free/low cost but optional care moderate?

Think about it.  You really going to take the position that a plan to identify and treat infectious and crazy people , and thus preventing most mass shootings without curbing gun rights, is a "collectivist" view rather than one that protects individual rights and interests?

There are lots of plans that could achieve your goal.  Benevolent fascists might impose mandatory testing and disappear people in pursuit of the greater good.  Does pragmatism make that a moderate view?

You do realize that more than one of the mass shooters have been in the care of mental health professionals?  I'm not aware that anyone has ever seriously done a study that showed that most mass shooters were uninsured or not able to get mental health care.  Is it your assertion that this is the case?  I don't see anyway that adding a costly mandate that is usable or ignorable at the individual's option would have any impact on mass shooting statistics.  Other things more easy to see, but that's one example that you picked because its scary that actually makes no sense.

I specifically said that most medical care should be left in the private sector.

And I specifically asked what makes that a "moderate" position.  This whole discussion is a bit bizarre.  All these concepts are relative, there's no objective measure here.  If you don't define moderate as "between the extremes," which I agree makes no sense, then what actually is it?   It sounds to me like you think its basically pragmatism with a finger on the scale in favor of compassion.

[Pete at Home]

If you were't digging in your heels like Wayward on political correctness, you'd see that I have very carefully avoided coercive means.  Not to mention, forcible detention is obviously not as cheap as you claim to believe. 

Do you really not grasp what makes a rejection of most coercion "moderate?"


There are inexpensive meds for schizophrenia and manic depression.  A number of Republicans have, in response to mass shootings, said the govt should provide mental care.  The moderate looks for such consensus.

[Seriati]

Pete, I'm not trying to bust your balls.  I think defining moderate is impossible.  I think aligning political issues into a "right" and a "left" is a nonsensical pursuit, and actually damaging to the country when we force them into "party" positions.  Why should someone have to support pro life candidates to get candidates who want to reduce their taxes?  Why should one part get to accuse the other of "racism" when virtually no one supports a racist agenda or even thinks we should tolerate racism?  Why should someone who wants more help for the needy and greater focus on urban development have to agree that sexual morals and family values have no place in society?

I hate question formats, which I find myself using a lot on this topic.  It's too mushy to really nail it down.  I feel like anyone saying, "this is the moderate position on ...." is inherently going to be wrong.

[Pete at Home]

I agree there on THE moderate position.

[Gary238]

I agree emphatically with you both. Slapping an artificial veneer of left-right divide over the top of our issues has made actual problem solving much more difficult.

We need a movement of radical pragmatists; let's find some things we can do that rational folks on both sides agree would make things better. Then let's make those things happen. No more obstructionism justified by slippery-slope arguments. I'd rather hang the label on pragmatism instead of centrism.

Pete's argument that we should publicly fund medical treatments that protect the herd is a great example. There are lots of details for the devil to sneak into, but in terms of high level principles I'd hope that most rational people would agree that we shouldn't make the poor choose between vaccinations and the gas bill.

[Pete at Home]

I love your term "Radical pragmatist."

[Pete at Home]

A more controversial idea: government should both fund and tightly control dispensation of antibiotics, creating a policy that better fights the increase in antibiotic-resistant bacteria.  Why?  Because it's a national security issue, plus antibiotics are already highly subsidized in development, so it's regressive to take a heavily subsidized med and price it out of reach for most of the population.