Once the center is eroded things will not go well... for centrists. The idea that both 'extremes' are equivalently bad neglects the real differences in worldview that create a sense of political urgency. It's important to remember that this political urgency is a reflection of real social problems--for some people, the consequences are literally life and death.
> It's important to remember that this political urgency is a reflection of real social problems--for some people, the consequences are literally life and death.
That’s true for very few people. At the same time, injecting life-and-death urgency into politics deprives the vast majority of a sane and orderly society, which is extremely important as well.
Look, you’re not the first one to think that “politics is so serious we need to treat it extremely seriously.” I come from a part of the world where politics is “serious.” The Islamists are convinced that society must be dissolved and reformed as the Ummah. Others have dreams of creating a socialist secular utopia out of that same deeply Muslim community. For everyone it’s life or death business. (Especially in a third world country where poverty means that few people have much margin.) Elections are followed by rioting and mass protests. But this doesn’t actually lead to justice. Instead, it’s just animosity, unrest, and bitterness.
One of the things I loved about America, as an immigrant, was that elections were boring. I hate that my kids may never know that America and will have to grow up in this new one.
Wether or not one side is better or worse than the other is besides the point.
"A house divided against itself can not stand."
~ Abraham Lincoln
The centrist who vote with rationality as the primary mechanism of choice are the third leg that holds up the democracy. They are the lifeline connecting the two sides. We can not survive with out them. Once they are gone we are left only with dogmatic ideology.
I agree. I think one way to demonstrate that is to consider a particularly contentious debate. Say, the Palestine-Israel conflict. If you're on the side of Palestine, agreeing with Israel only leads to more death and hate. If you're on the side of Israel, agreeing with Palestine only leads to more death and hate. The center doesn't know what to think-- it's complicated but it definitely needs to end. So the centrist point is almost pointless. If your on either end, then they are simply protecting injustice. Same thing with people who were lukewarm about civil rights. The ones who said "yeah blacks should get rights but there are a lot of people against it that deserve a say" we now look at as wrong. In a task life scenario, necessity sometimes demands a choice be made
Just because someone is centrist doesn't mean they don't know what to think. It usually means they have a nuanced position on an issue that doesn't conveniently fit into a box that is red or blue.
All the people I know who like to think about issues deeply generally hate to be described as left or right and much prefer to reject labels.
Sometimes I'm not sure they actually can't be labelled, and sometimes the difficulty in labelling them comes from an overall lack of coherency rather than a truly uncategorisable position, but, I don't know anyone who calls themselves a centrist and could talk about politics in any depth. Centrism seems mostly, at least where I live, to be what people call themselves when they just support the status quo and wish politics would go away.
As an example, Sweden where I live has 8 major political parties and during elections years there are usually tests where one can compare each parties political program to ones own political views. For me, the lowest rated for me sit at 45% and highest sit around 60% (which wasn't the centrist party).
I would definitively not call myself a centrist, nor left or right. There is some good goals even in the far left and far right, but also a lot of things I strongly disagree with to the point of alienation. Centrism simply just an other political agenda with its own set of prioritized demographics and intentions.
On the I-P and the way you've framed it, there centrist-on-this-question positions that don’t meet that description, e.g.:
“both Israel and various entities on the Palestinian side have engage in, and continue to engage in, actions which are intolerable and not excused by abuses on the other side The international community should cease aid to all offending parties so long as that continues, while engaging in dialogue aimed to a more complete resolution, with readiness to commit substantial resources to support a peaceful resolution.
