Nothing In Moderation

In a country with the polarized politics that has been the hallmark of the United States since the dawn of the 20^th century, one would think that eventually there would be another major party forming that encompasses the centrist viewpoint. After all, the Republican party has been hemorrhaging voters ever since Bush and the Democratic party has a lot more unhappy people since Obama was elected. While the differences between the ones leaving their respective parties are striking, the fact is there are a hell of a lot of people who no longer embrace all or even most of the platforms of either party.

In the case of the disaffected Republicans, they, like me, have seen their party steer so far off to the right, they're in an off-the-charts territory cartographers marked with "here be dragons". They don't especially want to be labeled as the terrorists extremists are, and don't exactly know where to go. These are the fiscally conservative socially progressive people like me who understand that both sides have good points, but they're increasingly being smothered by the bad points. They haven't moved to the center so much as the right has moved so far to the right, they're left in what remains of the political spectrum - in the center.

In the case of the Democrats disaffected by their selection of President, it's the opposite thing. Democrats are generally more progressive than I am, but what's happened is that too many of the far-left who oppose anyone who doesn't agree with them (just like the far right) are moving further to the left and outside of mainstream Democrats. The mainstream Democrats - the majority of them - remain behind close to where the disaffected Republicans have been left behind by their party. In the center.

While these might seem to be identical cases, the differences are stark. The right-wing platform - the official GOP party platform - mostly encompasses ideologies that the disaffected Republicans can not embrace any longer. These consist primarily of the religiously-based social agenda. They think it has nothing to do with governing and they're right. The left-wing platform does NOT mostly include the ideologies of the far left (which are those over-the-top positions the far right accuses the far left of trying to do).

So the bottom line is that the Democratic party is becoming more moderate with a lot of disaffected leftist extremists yelling loudly about it while the Republican party is becoming more extremist with a lot of disaffected centrists griping rather quietly about it.

But the former Republicans won't join a moderate party called the "Democrats" while the Democrats probably don't want their name party's associated with a bunch of leftist radicals like the GOP's name has been. While this could be the whole explanation for the lack of rise of a moderate party, it's likely not the actual reason.

In the first place, while the Democrats as a whole have moved to the center, they haven't moved THAT much. Rather than taxing EVERYONE and spending the money, they want to tas the RICH and spend the money. I get the idea, but it's the wrong implementation. They need to cut taxes, too, in order to redistribute the wealth from the top down (which is the only way top-down or "trickle-down" economics works).

I've explained my economic theories before and will refine the economic model in a future blog. Suffice it to say that the Democrats still don't have the idea of how to manage money, even though tax and spend is a fiscally more prudent policy than the spending without taxing that the right-wing did for two wars to the tune of $4 to $6 trillion dollars (added to the price tag) when all the shouting is done. And that was two years ago. Today, reliable estimates for projected costs are anywhere from $4 trillion to over $10 trillion dollars (for Iraq ALONE) .

But all this flies in the face of the fact that more and more Americans are identifying themselves as not belonging to either of the major parties. There SHOULD be enough to create Moderate candidates proportional to the number of Democrat and Republican candidates. But there aren't. Currently, Gallup puts the number of voters identifying themselves as "Independent" at 41%. This doesn't mean they're registered that way.

The problem here lies less with the title of the individuals than it does with their politics.

Independents aren't necessarily Moderates.

If you leave your party because it's become more moderate, you're an extremist. And the Democratic party has lost more members than the Republicans which means more independents from the left are extremists (though not all who leave it are because they think the Democratic party is too moderate. Some think it's not moderate enough).

The Republican party has seen fewer people leave it than the Democrats, but their losses are almost entirely moderates. So if you split the Democrats out by whatever percentage you want and you have a lot of people who are more center, left of center and far left. With Republicans you have those who have left it being center or right of center with the rest being far right.

Of course, you will always have party members who will vote howsoever they feel (more moderately in this case) because they don't necessarily want to leave the party. This is less advocacy than it is a failure to get off one's ass and declare where they stand.

But the point here is that while we have, obviously, millions of moderates in the United States - and most likely far more than the poll numbers would indicate - we don't have a Moderate party. Moderates would be anyone with a "center-something" designation. Be them a center-right, a center or a center-left. This describes those of us "in the middle" where our differences aren't so great that we can't work them out. We have overlap. We have ideas and ideals in common. We can work together.

You know, like civilized people and completely unlike our current Congress. Coincidentally, it's also from where every workable idea that ever came out of congress has come.

So why isn't there a Moderate Party to vie for the attention of disaffected Republicans and disaffected Democrats and the rest of us in the middle? The country wasn't always one of extremes, even if it seems like it.

Well, when asking why these days, the answer is almost always, "Money."

If one assumes for the moment that our democracy is entirely controlled by those who have money and under almost no control by those who don't, then it becomes easy to see why there is no money in moderation. (A substantial argument in favor of this is who decides who runs for office in America these days. It's almost always someone rich and always decided by the wealthy - either the millionaires on the left or the billionaires on the right. Their organizations, the RNC and DNC decide who will be their next choice and they fight it out in the election, both sides knowing that no matter who wins, it will be business as usual because that's how they've rigged the game.)

The "middle" isn't a political force because they're not composed of millionaires (who are mostly on the left) and billionaires (who are mostly on the right). The millionaires want to get richer, so they do things like tell their supporters that "things should be better for them" and sound all altruistic and then go off and try to take from the wealthy and give to the millionaires who are entrenched in philanthropic organizations that pay them way too much money.

Ever notice how charities that have 2 cents on the dollar going to the work and the other 98 cents going to the "overhead" are almost all "liberals"? Much of the reason I call the left incompetent is that almost none of their core policies are ever enacted in such a way that it actually helps their supporters. Usually, it just makes their lives more complicated and doesn't give them a hand-up.

Least ye righties salivate too much over this, you guys have the billionaires at the top who want to get richter. They have orders of magnitude more money and resources at their disposal. They can pay their way into religious groups (like the Catholic Church), buy and sell people's loyalties and get people to think their political ideology is a "religion" that is not to be questioned and to kick people out if they don't toe the ideological line.

To be honest, I don't see any procedural differences between the GOP and the Catholic Church. In BOTH cases, the job is to rob from the poor and give to the rich and quell dissent. This has been done a myriad of different times and way. Read my book if you want to know more about that. The point here is that there is no money behind a push toward sanity and away from extremism.

Or to put it more bluntly, there's no financial incentive THAT THEY CAN SEE to financing a moderate party.

Financing extremism is also a great way to motivate people on the edges. They simply expect everyone else withing range of that edge to go along because the people on the edges make the most noise. (See the campaign of Ron Paul - a way the hell out there libertarian - for an example of a minuscule axel with a very loud squeak). Extremism is motivating. Moderation, by its very nature, is not. It's common sense. It's work (mostly because there are differences even among moderates and it's harder on the brain to work through these differences than it is to stubbornly and thoughtlessly cling to a party platform or talking point).

Despite the so-called American Work Ethic, it obviously doesn't apply to thinking.

In short, it's easier to be an extremist by saying "Fuck Obumtart and the libturds!" and get people to go along with you than it is to say, "Hey, we need to figure out how to deal with this." and hope people go along with you.

Moderation isn't exciting.

Another problem is that moderation doesn't pay very well. At least, not the way politics in America has been paying the millionaires and the billionaires over the last 30-35 years.

As I've mentioned in my book, the fiscal policies of the right-wing have done nothing but enrich the wealthy. The fiscal policies of the left have done nothing but enrich the not quite as wealthy. The problem is, of course, greed (and a large dose of a complete lack of foresight). Moderate policies would put money into actually improving the economy for everyone and not just a select few. Taxes would be based on economic needs and realities rather than for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many as it mostly is today.

The money wouldn't be flowing through the government to the wealthy or through tax breaks for the wealthy. That will directly impact their cash flow into their pockets because that's the way it works today.

But the short-sightedness involved here comes from what happens not during the good times, but when the bad times hit. When the economy isn't working, people aren't working.

That seems self evident, of course, but it has some rather indirect impacts on the wealthy that they are NOT thinking about. The most direct of them is revolution. In good times and bad, the overall health of the wealthy - that is their ability to afford to live a chosen lifestyle - is unaffected. In every case, they recover whatever losses they may have incurred because that's how the game is stacked in their favor. The people get poorer but the wealthy get richer.

So the wealthy opt for a more immediate return on their political purchases (you know, buying a candidate) rather than looking to the long term and seeing what would happen when you keep the people down too long and/or fail to plan for a longer term future which would create benefits for all, albeit in moderation. Their life-styles wouldn't be changed at all. Their balance sheets may reflect some differences.

If they wait for the revolt, their balance sheets may be the kindling for their estates.

Seems to me a little of something is better than ending up with a lot of nothing.

So there's no money in moderation.

But I have an idea about how to at least get some excitement into the moderation issue. It's part of the title of this blog.

Moderates have to become militant.

Keep in mind that "militant moderate" is an oxymoron - a thing that fits in well with the demented psychology being used by the left and the right to promote their ideologies. As long as everyone declaring that they're moderates get in on the joke, it's fine. But to be a militant moderate, one merely defends their point of view - one in the middle - from both the left and the right. They also assail the left and the right on the worst of their policies.

In order to be a POLITICAL moderate, one can't be a PERSONAL moderate. One has to be an extremist at being moderate. Praising right and left wing policies that actually DO work or have some actual benefit for the majority of the country while excoriating those that don't. I mostly excoriate those that don't because they're the things that are making our country crazy.

And that drives me nuts.

Q.E.D.

So we need to create the sexy Militant Moderates who march in favor of moderate policies and a return to sanity in our politics (or at least something MORE sane than the self-destructive bullshit we have today). We need outspoken political moderates. People willing to open up two fronts in a one front war. People willing to leverage their vote in exchange for good behavior from the extremists and workable solutions to our country's problems. We are the silent power brokers today, deciding between two extremes. As power brokers, we should be the ones dictating terms in the first place. That none of us are a majority isn't a problem. The extremists (the 15% on the right and the 10% on the left) both want to dictate to the rest of us. The 75% of us somewhere between the two mostly just want a government that does the job of governing. At least we have that much in common. It's debatable whether the current congress has that much going for it.

If results are what determines motivation, then it's apparent it doesn't want the government to work.

Let the march of the Militant Moderates begin. Let us stand foursquare for reason, sanity and policies that ignore ideologies and face realities. To stop catering to special interests and cater to the common interests. To do extreme things when faced with extreme situations as long as the imposition of those extreme things only inconveniences a few and the eventual outcome is beneficial for all. (We're moderates after all).

All we need now is a way to finance it. Maybe 2012 is too late for the Moderate Party. But the House is up for election in 2014 and the Presidency will be up for grabs in 2016. If we pooled the money we have hiding in our sofas, we might be able to do it.