More on Obama and the Mythical Middle

Tweet "SAM SMITH - Harry Truman remarked that whenever anyone said they
were bipartisan he knew they were going to vote against him.
Barrack Obama is the latest major politician to use this ploy,
promising mushy abstractions instead of actual policies,
making nice to everyone in the room while ducking the issues
they raise and, in a time of historic confrontation over whether
America can recover its constitutional democracy, pretending
that the answer is somewhere in the middle.

"But what is the middle ground between democracy and fascism?
Between having a job or a house or being unemployed or
homeless? Between having health care or dying?

"As William Lloyd Garrison put it, "Tell a man whose
house is on fire to give moderate alarm; tell him to
moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher;
tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe
from the fire into which it has fallen."

"The myth of the happy center is a major illusion dominating public life
in Washington. But the truth is that from that internecine struggle of
two factions of the American middle known as the Civil War to FBI
assaults on activist organizations in the 60s and 70s, from the Palmer
raids to anti-terrorism legislation, Americans have traditionally had
more to fear from people they have elected than from those on the
fringes of politics. In fact, the latter have often served largely as an
excuse for the American center to tighten its grip on the political and
economic system. This is not to say that the left and the right would
not enjoy being just as violent and repressive given the chance, but the
American center has rarely allowed that.

******

"The right understands the centrist myth far better than liberals. They
know that the center is homeland security for inaction in public, lots
of action behind the scenes, and power staying where it should: with the
powerful. It's not surprising that some of them see Obama as their man,
the "black Reagan" as he has been called.

"Yet he is also the liberals' Pat Robertson, and while the right can see
where they can cut deals with him, the liberal evangelicals are all
misty eyed by his talk of hope and faith. But Harry Truman was right:
that guy serving you the happy meals of centrism in the campaign is
likely going to be on the other side after election day.

From Sam Smith at the Progressive Review Undernews