John Michael Greer says "the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea" and we see that in the extremes you've noted here. The middle ground has been abandoned, but it needs to be reclaimed for sanity to return to this country.
I agree with you here but I also think the real extremists aren't so much the problem as it is normies taking ideas from said extremists and trying to run with them. Democratic leadership used to shit on campus activist types until somewhere in the 2010s and then suddenly the things they were saying became the democratic platform. Extremism is sexy in ways normal politics isn't and in this era of flash over substance, it makes sense why so many people would reach for that.
Reminds me of Weimar Germany where the extreme left and extreme right weren’t all that different from each other and all the politicians were looking for identitarian scapegoats they could make suffer for being born into certain families.
You’re calling for a “normal” that no longer exists, or at least one that needs to be defined by outcomes rather than nostalgia or partisan branding. If one raises concerns about cost of living, housing affordability, and relentlessly rising health-insurance costs, it's not treated as ordinary politics, it's suddenly evidence of communism & extremism. Likewise, supporting reasonable gun policy such as meaningful mental-health safeguards while preserving lawful access to items like suppressors should not invite slander.
There is a workable middle ground, but it requires more than telling everyone to be less extreme. It requires a shared commitment to compromise, democratic rules, and good-faith negotiation.
That commitment is not evenly distributed. When one side treats compromise as governance (Democrats) and the other treats it as weakness to exploit (Republicans), “the center” stops being an equilibrium and becomes a ratchet: one side moves the baseline, and the other is expected to accommodate it.
So the answer is not a vague appeal to normality. It is to defend the institutions and rules that make pluralism possible, then judge politics by whether it materially improves people’s lives: affordable housing, manageable health care, public safety, civil rights, and a functioning democracy. Without enforceable rules and reciprocal restraint, calls for middle ground become a demand that only one side keep yielding.
Just be aware of the thinking trap here. Choosing & delivering the right outcomes is not the same as simply cutting spending or “bureaucracy.” It requires a serious understanding of the problem, credible measurement of whether a program works, and experts with the authority to distinguish evidence from ideology. However, those capacities are increasingly treated as suspect and ideological rather than necessary.
Some goals also cannot be solved purely through private markets: public health, infrastructure, basic research, environmental protection, housing supply and zoning enforcement, disaster response, and the administration of rights all need durable public institutions.
Now the relevant question is not public versus private in the abstract. It's which institution is best positioned to deliver a defined result, with transparent rules, measurable performance, democratic accountability, and consequences for failure.
A capable bureaucracy is not an “infinite unaccountable” one. It should be narrow in mission where possible, staffed for competence rather than patronage, audited, transparent about costs and results, and redesigned or ended when it fails. But abolishing the machinery needed to execute policy does not create accountability, often it just shifts power to private actors who are less transparent and harder for the public to oversee. This is now a position we are stuck in.
This isn't hypothetical. To pull a few examples, weakening the EPA’s ability to regulate and enforce limits on PFAS leaves communities to discover contamination after the damage is done. Weakening beneficial-ownership and suspicious-activity reporting makes it easier to launder money through opaque companies. Permitting unlimited or undisclosed political spending lets wealthy interests exercise influence without public accountability. Stripping consumer protection agencies of investigative and enforcement capacity leaves people to fight banks, lenders, credit bureaus, and debt collectors one at a time.
This is clearly wrong because extremists have been winning for 100 years. If you took the average person today and sent them back to 1900, their views would be considered very extreme.
Few years younger but close enough. I look at Gallup data across a bunch of dimensions when I say this, rather than relying on my own memory. Their institutional confidence data, for ex, shows Americans were much more confident in the late 1990s and early 2000s before settling in the low in the 2010s. So I’m talking about the trajectory of the last few decades, not saying 1900 America was somehow identical to 1990s America
John Michael Greer says "the opposite of one bad idea is another bad idea" and we see that in the extremes you've noted here. The middle ground has been abandoned, but it needs to be reclaimed for sanity to return to this country.
I agree with you here but I also think the real extremists aren't so much the problem as it is normies taking ideas from said extremists and trying to run with them. Democratic leadership used to shit on campus activist types until somewhere in the 2010s and then suddenly the things they were saying became the democratic platform. Extremism is sexy in ways normal politics isn't and in this era of flash over substance, it makes sense why so many people would reach for that.
Reminds me of Weimar Germany where the extreme left and extreme right weren’t all that different from each other and all the politicians were looking for identitarian scapegoats they could make suffer for being born into certain families.
You’re calling for a “normal” that no longer exists, or at least one that needs to be defined by outcomes rather than nostalgia or partisan branding. If one raises concerns about cost of living, housing affordability, and relentlessly rising health-insurance costs, it's not treated as ordinary politics, it's suddenly evidence of communism & extremism. Likewise, supporting reasonable gun policy such as meaningful mental-health safeguards while preserving lawful access to items like suppressors should not invite slander.
There is a workable middle ground, but it requires more than telling everyone to be less extreme. It requires a shared commitment to compromise, democratic rules, and good-faith negotiation.
That commitment is not evenly distributed. When one side treats compromise as governance (Democrats) and the other treats it as weakness to exploit (Republicans), “the center” stops being an equilibrium and becomes a ratchet: one side moves the baseline, and the other is expected to accommodate it.
So the answer is not a vague appeal to normality. It is to defend the institutions and rules that make pluralism possible, then judge politics by whether it materially improves people’s lives: affordable housing, manageable health care, public safety, civil rights, and a functioning democracy. Without enforceable rules and reciprocal restraint, calls for middle ground become a demand that only one side keep yielding.
Outcomes are very important not simply throwing money at problems and increasing an infinite unaccountable bureaucracy - agree with you fully here
Just be aware of the thinking trap here. Choosing & delivering the right outcomes is not the same as simply cutting spending or “bureaucracy.” It requires a serious understanding of the problem, credible measurement of whether a program works, and experts with the authority to distinguish evidence from ideology. However, those capacities are increasingly treated as suspect and ideological rather than necessary.
Some goals also cannot be solved purely through private markets: public health, infrastructure, basic research, environmental protection, housing supply and zoning enforcement, disaster response, and the administration of rights all need durable public institutions.
Now the relevant question is not public versus private in the abstract. It's which institution is best positioned to deliver a defined result, with transparent rules, measurable performance, democratic accountability, and consequences for failure.
A capable bureaucracy is not an “infinite unaccountable” one. It should be narrow in mission where possible, staffed for competence rather than patronage, audited, transparent about costs and results, and redesigned or ended when it fails. But abolishing the machinery needed to execute policy does not create accountability, often it just shifts power to private actors who are less transparent and harder for the public to oversee. This is now a position we are stuck in.
This isn't hypothetical. To pull a few examples, weakening the EPA’s ability to regulate and enforce limits on PFAS leaves communities to discover contamination after the damage is done. Weakening beneficial-ownership and suspicious-activity reporting makes it easier to launder money through opaque companies. Permitting unlimited or undisclosed political spending lets wealthy interests exercise influence without public accountability. Stripping consumer protection agencies of investigative and enforcement capacity leaves people to fight banks, lenders, credit bureaus, and debt collectors one at a time.
This is clearly wrong because extremists have been winning for 100 years. If you took the average person today and sent them back to 1900, their views would be considered very extreme.
Up until the late 90s everything was trending pretty good, and even the 2000s were fine. 2010s is when everything started getting weird.
Let me guess: You were in your 20s in the 1990s.
Few years younger but close enough. I look at Gallup data across a bunch of dimensions when I say this, rather than relying on my own memory. Their institutional confidence data, for ex, shows Americans were much more confident in the late 1990s and early 2000s before settling in the low in the 2010s. So I’m talking about the trajectory of the last few decades, not saying 1900 America was somehow identical to 1990s America