bipolar politix

January, 2006: The S.O. seemed torn. She had just had dinner with her grandparents and had been discussing politics with her grandfather, always a questionable pursuit. They had discussed the Alito nomination, and she said it seemed like Democrats were bringing up a lot of old things that didn't matter, especially since Bush wasn't going to nominate any judge to our liking. She said he had tried 4000 cases and was therefore at least a qualified judge. I tried to explain why the CAP membership mattered, and that those 4000 cases demonstrated contempt for individual rights and an aconstitutional subservience to the executive branch.

And then she said it: I was telling her what I believed to be true based on the sources I read and her grandfather was telling her what he believed to be true based on the sources he read. Surely, she asserted, the truth was somewhere in the middle.

This—the truth is somewhere in the middle—is the great fallacy of our time. We should give it a Latin name and stick it on the list next to post hoc ergo propter hoc, and ad hominum. It's used all the time in discussions by perfectly rational people and extremely smart people (like the S.O.) and it's completely untrue. Truth is an elusive concept that sometimes lies in the middle, sometimes lies at the extremes and sometimes lies off the chart. You can't find it by simply dividing the difference between extremes.

Slavery is a perfect example. I hesitate to bring it up because I really don't want to spend days in the comments arguing about states’ rights and northern hypocrisy. Frankly, I find it amazing that I should have to spend time in history graduate classes down here begging certain people to acknowledge that slavery was even a peripheral issue in the Civil War.

But, whatever. That particular grudging acknowledgment is all I need, anyway. I'm perfectly willing to admit—for the sake of argument—that the North was full of closet racists and that all the kids in the south just loved their black mammies and really only wanted their lifestyle to be left alone by that mean mean Mr. Lincoln way up in Washington. Even if all that were true, human slavery was still one-hundred percent dead wrong and the closet racists and mean federalists who used it a wedge issue to destroy the southern way of life were absolutely, completely and utterly right about that one issue.

One side was right right right and one side was wrong wrong wrong. And attempts to find the truth somewhere in the middle led to monstrous notions like the three-fifths compromise. Furthermore the veritas in medias res fallacy (correct, if you can, my broken Latin) benefits the right wing more than it does us. Because the ideologues on Fox News and in this administration have steadily learned how to move the center farther and farther to the right.

Then there is the adversarial nature of boomer politics. Boomer activists on both sides grew comfortable with being at each other's throats during the Good Old Sixties. Younger net-roots progressive tend to believe that our philosophies benefit the most people and that they will realize this if we only find the right way to approach them.

Recent events on this site illustrate the dangers of bifurcated politics with a center rail that passes for “truth”. Larry Kilgore, gubernatorial candidate, advocated that homosexuals should be executed. I was appalled—and, yes, offended—by Kilgore's candidacy for the Republican nomination. He received fifty thousand votes, and I posted about his candidacy. My initial post assumed that most Republicans were not that radical and would kick Kilgore out from under their big tent.

I was disappointed.

Curious Texan— our most reasonable troll by a country mile—weighed in first by pontificating about our system’s tolerance for dissent and reversing the numbers (90% didn’t vote for him!). But then CT negated that last point by admitting to surprise that Kilgore had done so well, and asserting that he’d considered him a “side show”. But he stopped short of repudiating Kilgore entirely.

The real fun was yet to begin.

Celtictexan popped in with a demand that this “abnormal lifestyle” stop being “crammed down [his] throat”. He then proceeded to rant for two solid days. Curious Texan defended him at first, but then stated that celtic's racism had no place in today’s Republican Party. I kneejerkingly, reflexively (and wrongly) grafted celtictexan’s opinions onto the entire Republican party.

Both of our initial reactions were based on party extremes. Both were wrong.

I believe that Curious Texan and I are both reasonable people who could agree on many things in less charged environment. But in this world we have to defend our dawgs: and, in doing so, we both say things we don’t mean. You could split the difference between us, but where would that get you?

Look: Panhandle Truth Squad is a Liberal site. Not Leftist, not necessarily, not all of us, not today. But we’re always liberal, according to the old Age of Reason definition. And so are you. If we could all let go of the stereotypes and the hate, the kneejerking and the reactionism, we could find answers not in some ridiculous, trumped-up middle but in our minds and in our souls. If we could only—somehow—let go of Left and Right.

spacedark