The Big Gooey Center, Part II

There are a number of popular works that treat "the mass" as character...some negative--Day of the Locusts (mass as mob), Invasion of the Body Snatchers(mass as pod people), A Face in the Crowd (mass as suckers); some positive—Spartacus("I am Spartacus" "I am Spartacus" "I am Spartacus") Network ("I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore") It's a Wonderful Life (community action). In modern political speak, the mass is more commonly referred to as the Center, especially since the mass as envisioned by Karl Marx has been largely co-opted by consumerism. And political ideologues of both the left and right have pretty much given up hope on the Center. Check out the various left and right blogs and you find that they both use the same demeaning term in describing the Center--sheeple. This is understandable for the right since its authoritarian underpinnings never had much use for the masses anyway. But it's outright bizarre for the left to be so dismissive of the vox populi. After all, if you're left wing and you’re not a populist, then you're an elitist, right? Marx himself--had he been living today--probably would’ve fallen into the lazy blogger habit of shouting into the deepest valley to elicit the strongest echo rather than toiling away in some library trying to reach an audience beneath his contempt: “Workers of the world, you blight; there’s nothing so loose as your brains.”
For my money, the two best pop culture treatments of the centrist condition are High Noon and On The Waterfront. In High Noon, Gary Cooper cannot get the townspeople—the centrists—to rally to his side to confront the bad guys arriving on the noon train. Like all good metaphors, High Noon is highly fungible. Marshall Will Kane could be Ted Cruz trying to round up his senate colleagues to defund Obamacare. He could be Al Gore trying to motivate the masses to take on global warming. In the end, the hero is let down by those who refuse to do their part out of cowardice, indifference, or conviction that it’s not their job. Brando's Terry Malloy in On The Waterfront gets better results, but not without paying a heavy price. He is out of the classic American hero mold--reluctant and flawed. But he’s out of Christian mythology as well—he has to suffer in front of their eyes before the masses get the courage to act on their own. 
As to which of these versions of the Center will prevail in our current political climate, the Pollyanna in me says that in due time, we will see Ted Cruz, like Joe McCarthy before him and the thuggish politics they represent, broken. And he will be left like strong-arm Johnny Friendly in that clip from On the Waterfront, howling in vain, as the nation turns its back on him, "Where you guys going? Wait a minute! I'll remember this! I'll remember every one of you! I'll be back! Don't you forget that! I'll be back!" It may require a Terry Malloy or two to make a bloody stand to do it, but I believe it will happen.
Paradoxically there is no middle ground in these melodramas of the Center. Our popular culture, at least, is bereft of any stories where ordinary people—centrists, moderates…sheeple, if you must--act prudently for their common good. In our myths and legends they always need a crisis to crystallize their risk and role. In reality, centrists don’t always need to have their hair set on fire in order to do the right thing. All over America masses of ordinary citizens support public education, common green spaces, recycling, Social Security, Medicare. They support these things in large numbers regardless of whether they personally have any use or need for each of them individually. Most people get what a collective effort it is to be a country, and reject the every-man-for-himself ethos that drives The Tea Party. Even that most famous rallying cry of The Tea Party--"Keep the government's hands off my Medicare!"--speaks volumes in favor of commonwealth over selfishness…albeit, ironically.
The innate reasonableness of the center is evident in The New American Center poll that put ideological purists on the left in such a tizzy. Just a casual reading of the poll’s findings reveals these things about our fuzzy friends the centrists: “The Center wants a tax system and an economy that ensures the wealthy pay their fair share and polluters pay for their mess.”“Even though about a third of those in the Center own guns, an overwhelming plurality have no problem with background checks.”“The Center strongly favors government intervention that ensures everyone has their basic needs met (such as food and health care) and has a fair shot at earning a decent living.”“The center would really prefer that the government leave the rest of us alone (especially when it comes to our personal lives).“Religion is not a major part of the Center's life, and it firmly believes that religion has no place in the public sphere."It may not exactly be a portrait of Sweden or Denmark, but that’s a national profile reasonable liberals should be able to live with. There’s plenty to work with there, and as the poll concludes, the Center is up for grabs. With characteristic American pragmatism, according to the poll, the Center is willing to go outside the box to make things work, even to the extent of tweaking the Constitution or twerking the Bible. And ideology be damned. So what is it about this poll that has put my fellow lefties' teeth so much on edge? Well, part of it is this centrist affinity for pragmatism. Hard lefties, like hard righties, prefer ideological purity. Whatever works does not really work for ideologues as political philosophy since it occasionally puts precious principles at risk. Beyond that overriding factor, there are some specific findings in this poll that the left finds hair raising, such as:“Though a clear majority of the Center is strongly in favor of marriage equality, half also registers concerns about changing the definition of marriage.”“There is huge support among the Center for requiring voters to present an ID at the polls.”“The center wants the federal government to spend less, go easy on regulation.”“There also happens to be a clear lack of support in the Center for issues typically related to diversity.”“Support for abortion—but mostly during the first three months.”Unlike my fellow travelers on the left, I tend to take a glass half-full view of such findings. People expressing “concerns” does not bother me. I expect people, especially self-described centrists, to have concerns, questions, reservations--that by definition is what centrists do. As for the voter ID question, as I said in last week's post, my guess is that most centrists see this as a pro forma matter and not a racial matter (though, for the record, I should say that it is most definitely a racial matter--by, of and for racists; because centrists don’t quite see it that way is, I believe, more a matter of messaging than bigotry). I’d put the center’s suspicion of regulation to an item-by-item test before dismissing it as soft on exploitation. After all, the Center is fore-square against polluters. (And if Eliot Spitzer had not been distracted from his brilliant career as a regulator, government regulation would probably be held in higher esteem than it is today.) The Center gets cover on its attitude toward diversity issues since the poll also reveals that, “support for affirmative action and immigration reform on the Left is soft—a bare majority supports both causes.”

As I write this, the center’s equivocation on abortion—supportive in the first trimester; much less so thereafter—is about to come in for some clarification. Senator Lindsay Graham, the ultimate caricature of a centrist, has just introduced a bill to outlaw abortions nationwide after the first twenty weeks. Aside from being a craven effort to save his pink little electoral ass among his party’s fundamentalist base, the move forces centrists to resolve some of their ambivalence. On the one hand, they don’t much want to see abortions after the first trimester; on the other, they don’t want government intruding in their personal lives. It’s time for the Center to decide—however reluctantly--which of those two incompatible desires it holds most dear.


It is also an interesting test for my fellow lefties who can barely deign to admit the existence of an American electoral Center. They can continue with their truly myopic centrist denial and let that little twerp Lindsay Graham win this one, or they can reach out to centrists both in and out of office and make the case for defeating this bill. Planned Parenthood makes no litmus tests and needs the support of all those focused on the big picture of the nation's future, rather than the little picture of their own vanity.