The United States Has 3 Political Parties Disguised as 2
Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788]
I wrote this one a few years ago and I’ve republished it several times. It needs to be revisited every now and then because our society pushes a lie instead of the truth when it comes to evaluating our political ideology.
I don’t agree with Clint Eastwood’s politics, but I grew up watching his movies. The film that first made him a star was A Fistful of Dollars. It’s one of the so-called Spaghetti Westerns [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaghetti_Western], and it’s essentially a shot-for-shot remake of Yojimbo by Akira Kurosawa.
The film depicts an ongoing war between two rival gangs. Eastwood’s character drifts into town and realizes it’s a terrific opportunity to get rich by playing the two sides against each other.
He frequently makes a show of switching loyalties, but really he’s only in it for himself. He takes advantage of every opportunity he can to sow the seeds of division. He ensures that there is no shortage of violence, and that the wrong people are always blamed.
He gets away with this because he always claims to be an agent of one of the two established groups. He never admits that he’s an independent third player.
In short, he’s a centrist. It’s sad to think that A Fistful of Dollars is a fairly accurate representation of how US politics work.
Our political model is wrong
Part of the problem in our country is that we’ve been trained to perceive our political spectrum as points along a straight line.
This model is an oversimplification that allows the centrists to effectively be ghosts who sabotage everything as they hide in the middle. It’s commonplace for oversimplifications of complex ideas to be deployed in order to deliberately create confusion.
Once people accept the flawed model, they’re easy to control.
In reality, there’s no reason to use a straight line model to represent our political ideology. In fact, we need to move away from that framework if we’re ever going to make any progress as a society. There’s no reason we shouldn’t represent our political spectrum like this (I know you have questions and objections, I’ll get to them):
When you do that, you see that the “center” gets shifted over to its own quadrant. That’s important.
The one thing most Americans can agree on is that our country is divided. Part of the reason for this division is that those who deliberately sabotage the functioning of our government are never held accountable. For decades, they’ve been hidden in the shadows of a deliberate and inaccurate oversimplification.
We can no longer afford to let them deceive us with their false model.
Even if you don’t agree with my circular model, you have to admit that an unlabeled straight line is hardly a scientific or accurate representation.
MLK’s warning on white moderates
For the last few years, I’ve been reflecting on Martin Luther King’s Letter from Birmingham Jail [https://aninjusticemag.com/martin-luther-kings-letter-from-birmingham-jail-is-life-changing-6311ae570915]. In that letter, he offers the warning that white moderates represent the greatest obstacle on the road to equality.
When an intellectual with the stature of King makes such a statement, it’s to our advantage to reflect on its wide-ranging implications.
Echoes of this sentiment are reflected in the oft quoted phrase, “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” (there is some debate over the origin [https://www.openculture.com/2016/03/edmund-burkeon-in-action.html] of this quote).
We put ourselves in peril if we fail to recognize the inverse message of that declaration. That being: nefarious forces can serve evil and avoid accountability by encouraging inaction.
Even though we are warned by great intellectuals over and over, we are lured into inaction by the malicious deceivers who are our contemporaries. The mechanisms they use are right out in the open, and somehow we fail to perceive them.
The absurd theory of “swing voters”
Establishment Democrats have long insisted that progressive candidates [https://www.aaiusa.org/library/the-progressive/moderate-battle-in-the-democratic-party] can’t get elected because there is no overlap between progressives and conservatives. They claim that the key to winning elections is to appeal to the “swing voters” that exist at the center of the political line. Therefore, based on this theory, centrist candidates are the “safest” choice.
They’re wrong [https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944].
It’s frustrating to think that the so-called “best and brightest” leaders of our society are so committed to this absurd idea. Our whole future depends on formulating effective campaign strategies, and the DNC eschews a scientific assessment of our political reality in favor of what they can conclude by drawing a line on a napkin.
The linear model of the political spectrum is a complete fraud.
The reality is that there’s plenty of evidence of the popularity of progressive candidates. Obama turned out to be moderate, but he got elected based on the perception that he would be progressive. Biden succeeded where Hillary failed because of his willingness to embrace progressive ideas.
The evidence doesn’t end there.
In fact, the evidence is so obvious that you can only conclude members of the DNC establishment know their model is wrong and some among them are deliberately working to sabotage any chance of allowing the American people to have the leaders they actually want.
The consequences of conservative presidencies
This whole subject has been gnawing at me since 2016. Don’t be confused by the overall thesis of this article. When the time came for me to cast my ballot, I perceived anything other than a vote for Hillary to be irresponsible.
However, through my personal experience, I was surprised to discover that there were some people who believed Hillary represented the greater threat to our way of life. Surprisingly, I found that there were those among conservatives and those among liberals who believed this.
We’re lectured again and again that kind of overlap doesn’t exist, yet there it was!
I’ve been having a hard time coming to terms with the choices some people made in the 2016 election. There were people I know to be good people who refused to vote for Hillary because they wanted to send a message that she shouldn’t have been the candidate. Again, don’t assume that they voted Republican. I believe most of them voted third party. I remember being frustrated with them, but in 2016 there was so much hubris in the Democratic establishment that we didn’t think we could lose.
Wrong.
We know that Republicans are always awful presidents who do damage that takes decades to overcome. We have that data. We don’t have the data as to what would have happened if Hillary had gotten elected.
The only silver lining we can look at now is that perhaps the GOPs atrocious behavior will be enough to energize the progressives into actually bringing about a foundational transformation. For example, I highly doubt you’d be reading this article (or anything of mine) if Hillary had won. I’d probably be teaching somewhere instead of flooding the internet with rage rants.
Is the world a better place with me as a teacher or me as a writer? We’ll never know.
Two personal anecdotes and a news report
There are three pieces of evidence I wish to discuss which demonstrate the reality of American political leanings:
* My liberal friend who refused to vote for Hillary
* My conservative cousin who supported Bernie until he perceived Bernie was “cheated” by the DNC
* News reports of Bernie supporters voting Republican
Liberal friend
My liberal friend who refused to vote for Hillary is a piece of evidence that disproves the linear model of the political spectrum. The implication of that model is that voters who are further to the left will support a center candidate to prevent a right wing candidate from winning office.
False.
The reality is that centrist candidates can discourage left leaning voters from voting at all.
The establishment response to this is to blame voters rather than campaign strategies when unpopular centrist candidates lose elections. I find the argument of blaming voters to be irresponsible and inept. If you want to win elections, you have to listen to the voters. You can’t lecture or threaten the voters and tell them they’re stupid for not supporting you (especially when you refuse to stand up for the issues that are important to them).
“I know better than you, so you need to vote for me,” isn’t a winning message (particularly when that candidate ends up losing).
Conservative cousin
My conservative cousin is the heartbreaking scenario. Today, people forget that there were lawsuits after the 2016 primaries that determined the DNC did cheat Bernie Sanders [https://aninjusticemag.com/democrats-didnt-steal-the-election-but-they-do-steal-primaries-fdb1732e3e09] out of the nomination. People don’t want to talk about this because it serves to contradict the linear model of the political spectrum, but it’s the truth.
Cognitive dissonance [https://readcultured.com/cognitive-dissonance-can-lead-to-violence-but-that-does-not-justify-suppressing-the-truth-72b80f9d4dc3] is alive and well throughout all of our politics.
If you want to look for somebody to blame for Republican victories, blame the establishment Democrats. I’ll be furious with them for their arrogance for as long as we have a Supreme Court that is fraudulently stacked [https://aninjusticemag.com/republicans-stacked-the-supreme-court-by-abandoning-the-filibuster-31bc49ebde19] with conservative justices who seem dead set on stripping us of our unenumerated rights [https://readcultured.com/the-supreme-court-has-declared-war-on-our-unenumerated-constitutional-rights-ac192a869cd8].
I have a cousin that was so incensed by the way the DNC cheated Bernie, that he went from being an ardent Sanders supporter to a rabid MAGA. It was like somebody flipped a switch. Today I don’t talk to him because I can’t support anything he believes. However, the one shred of his ideology that I do sympathize with is that I, too, think the DNC should let the voters choose the candidates.
The Democratic establishment tried to blame Clinton’s loss on Sanders
Here’s one of the most dishonest spins of the last few election cycles (and with the accusations of a “stolen” election, that’s saying a lot). Once Clinton lost, the DNC was quick to point the finger at Sanders. Some reports indicated [https://sites.google.com/view/brianfschaffner/public-outreach-analyses/how-sanders-supporters-behaved-in-the-2016-general-election] that as many as 10% of Sanders supporters voted MAGA in 2016.
This was just an opportunistic and fraudulent way for centrists to cast undeserved shade at progressives. The more responsible thing would have been to use the data to reassess the flawed campaign strategies.
You know… so you could actually win the next time?
I can’t think of a single news story that focused on how the defection of a small percentage of Sanders supporters PROVED there is an overlap between progressives and conservatives.
If you’re writing stories about how Sanders supporters switched to MAGA, you have an ethical obligation to mention this demonstrates the existence of an overlap the political establishment doesn’t want to acknowledge.
The only thing centrists want to do is deny, deny, deny that overlap exists. The reason they want to deny it is because it contradicts the linear model of the political spectrum which is the basis of the fundamentally flawed strategy which only serves to keep power within their grasp.
But if you’re reading this you need to get the facts straight: it’s not just centrists who can draw voters away from the political right, progressives can too. We have proof!
A circular representation
The linear model is nonsense. If you take nothing else from this article, please walk away with that. It’s just a sketch. It means nothing. There aren’t even any units written on the bar.
You can make the model a lot more accurate simply by ripping it off the page and sticking the ends together. When you do that, you make an amazing discovery:
See how easy that was? All of a sudden something that centrists will scream and yell and pull out their hair and deny becomes perfectly obvious. They’ll draw lines on napkins until they scratch the table beneath because they’re too outraged to admit their model is wrong.
You have to stop them and declare, “The line on the napkin means NOTHING!”
The other advantage of the circular representation is that it shows the centrists as their own independent group. They don’t get to hide any more.
They’ve just had the light shined on them and they don’t like it.
Centrists don’t like to admit they exist so they’re never held accountable
Thinking about the political spectrum this way robs the centrists of their deniability advantage. Centrists are like Petyr Baelish in Game of Thrones. They’re always making a mess of everything and laughing as somebody else takes the blame.
Centrists: “It wasn’t us, we don’t even exist! Blame the progressives or the conservatives.”
Well, Martin Luther King told us to watch out for the deceptively passive obstructionists in the middle, and we should listen to him.
But how is an overlap between progressives and conservatives even possible?
At this point you might be asking the question of how overlap between philosophically opposed voters can exist.
That’s a fair question. To get to the answer you need to be willing to abandon the fraudulent linear model. The linear model is a shell game designed to steal from you.
You see? We’re hardwired to perceive this vast oversimplification. Don’t you get it? Oversimplifications are deliberately misleading! There are forces out there that want you to make bad decisions based on false representations that “sound” reasonable.
You know this exists. Subconsciously, you put your armor on to avoid getting robbed every time you go to the grocery store. You pass by the “BIG SALE” signs without even reading the details because you know they’re lies!
You know everything you encounter in your life is designed to fleece you out of a couple extra bucks. Why shouldn’t this deceit also exist in the much more lucrative realm of national politics?
People who want power divide us. The truth is that we are more alike than anyone wants to recognize. We’re only trained to believe we’re different because that gives some people power.
Our political model is NOT as simple as drawing a line on a napkin!
How can there be overlap between the groups that want progress and groups that want regression? It’s because there are those on either side that are confused.
I still believe there are only a small number of evil people who delight in being evil. I think the majority are just misguided.
I’ve already cited one famous quote, here’s another: “The road to Hell is paved with good intentions” (discussion on the origins [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_road_to_hell_is_paved_with_good_intentions] of that quote).
The reason there is an overlap between progressives and conservatives is that some conservatives think the strategies that will take us backwards are the key to progress. It’s as simple as that. Faced with a problem, they do the wrong thing. They believe silly things like the only way to fix the national debt is to cut Social Security rather than raise taxes on the rich.
We have to focus on the fact that progressives and conservatives BOTH want to eliminate the national debt. See? When you shift the focal point, things become clear.
Rarely do you see battles between a group that declares itself “evil” and a group that declares itself “good.” Most of the time, both groups think they’re “good.”
Remember that our whole political model is designed to confuse people. The linear representation of the political spectrum isn’t the only deliberate act of deceit. They also work to undermine the effectiveness of education.
To put it simply: powerful people lie to retain their power.
You knew that already.
Centrists are the nepo babies of American politics
Nobody wants centrists. Many conservatives view centrists as nothing other than the worst things about Republicans but with the addition of an anti-gun agenda. They don’t stand for anything other than to maintain a corrupt power structure that serves them.
That’s it.
They have no ambition for the betterment of humanity. They only care about clinging to their pitiful sense of significance. They divide progressives and conservatives so that they can retain control.
Centrists don’t want anything to be fair. They don’t have any objective other than to be the center of attention. They’re like Aaron Rodgers announcing his ludicrous “darkness retreat [https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/aaron-rodgers-went-on-a-darkness-retreat-to-decide-his/446748]” leading up to the Super Bowl because he’s petulant that other players are getting all the attention (for actually winning).
The problem is that centrists have had an inordinate amount of power for decades. They’re the establishment, and by their very existence they give an undeserved amount of influence to the radicals on the right.
Centrists keep putting their finger on the scale to prevent the American people from launching any common sense initiatives.
They’re the reason why we’re unable to build any momentum in pursuit of a better world.
What do centrists even want?
Have you ever noticed that the only group that falls victim to tactics of voter suppression [https://www.aclu.org/news/civil-liberties/block-the-vote-voter-suppression-in-2020] are the progressives?
Our society rolls out the red carpet for sociopaths who want to return us to the plantation era. The centrists tolerate that because it’s only by being the pivot point on the teeter-totter of power that they can remain significant.
This is what Martin Luther King Jr. was talking about. This is why the white moderates are the greatest obstacle to equality. They are indifferent about doing the right thing. They care only about themselves, and they’ll pick their moments to deliberately sabotage our whole society the second we are on the verge of making any advancements.
Centrists won’t sabotage the right because they know that our society has already leveraged its small percentage of right-wing extremists to the max. We’ve already got minority rule in many ways. Districts are gerrymandered [https://www.democracydocket.com/analysis/how-gerrymandering-helped-republicans-win-the-house/] to the point where progressives have to win massive majorities [https://www.wunc.org/politics/2018-11-09/dems-win-more-votes-reps-win-more-seats] just to retain an equal (or slightly less than equal) number of seats.
Manchin and Sinema
This is why centrists killed [https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2022/01/manchin-sinema-filibuster-voting-rights/621271/] the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. If that had passed, no Republican would have ever won another election, and CENTRIST DEMOCRATS obstructed it. This is because the loyalty of centrists is not really to the Democrats, their loyalty is not to the American people, their loyalty is only to themselves.
With more Democrats in the House and Senate, the centrists see their power eroded. They become insignificant! That’s why they deliberately work to have a small majority!
Centrists can only hold our government hostage when it’s a 50–50 split.
THIS IS THEIR OBJECTIVE!
They’ll work to ensure other Democrats AREN’T ELECTED in order to maintain their own power.
Centrists didn’t want progressives to have easier access to voting because that would make the current centrists irrelevant. You see? This is why centrists are the enemy of progress. They care only about maintaining a status quo in which they are significant.
It’s a political philosophy of stagnation for personal gain.
We need to listen to MLK
Over the last few years, the United States has been experiencing a disturbing march towards fascism. However, I still believe that the number of evil fanatics in this country is low. The problem is that our passive centrists are doing everything they can to magnify the power and influence of that relatively small group.
There is no excuse for tolerating fascists. Centrists have such a myopic fixation on their own sense of importance that they completely disregard the larger picture. They steadfastly work to disenfranchise progressives because they know a legitimate vote is a threat to their significance.
Our current group of centrists is especially bad because we’ve been teetering on the brink of authoritarianism for so long. We’ll never get rid of “centrists,” but a shift in the Overton window [https://readcultured.com/an-illustrated-guide-to-how-right-shift-is-destroying-america-7caeb5092184] might usher in a less odious group.
We need to take the inherent challenge of achieving progress more seriously
Centrists are obstructionists. Centrists are saboteurs. They’ve been allowed to operate in the shadows for decades. However, centrists have been exposed by the extremism that has become the calling card of modern Republicans.
Our society has moved so far towards authoritarianism that the centrists are no longer able to hide.
Even their name is a lie, they aren’t in the “center” of anything.
History has to remember that we had a chance to pass the John Lewis Voting Rights act and ultimately it was the CENTRISTS who blocked it. The only silver lining is that, in doing so, they exposed themselves. They’ve been allowed to hide in the deliberately oversimplified linear model of our political spectrum for too long.
Now, they’re out in the open for everyone to see. Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about them as have countless others. Today, I’m warning you. Don’t underestimate this passive and indifferent threat to progress, equality, and fundamental freedom.
Remember the lack of enthusiasm in 2016?
Nobody wanted Hillary. Nobody was enthusiastic about either choice. The 2016 election was HISTORICALLY unpopular. MAGA got a smaller percentage [https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/18/16305486/what-really-happened-in-2016] of the vote in his 2016 win than Romney had in his 2012 loss.
It’s time for the media to be honest about the FACT that Americans don’t like centrists!
Throughout the whole Biden campaign the DNC establishment (the centrists), kept issuing warning [https://www.economist.com/briefing/2022/07/14/democrats-in-america-are-realising-they-must-moderate-or-die] after warning after warning that he was leaning too progressive. Well, the joke is on them since he won with a historic [https://www.pewresearch.org/politics/2021/06/30/behind-bidens-2020-victory/] turnout. But centrists refuse to recognize the lesson because they don’t care about truth, they only care about power. They’d prefer to lose an election than to risk losing the larger structure that serves their ability to grasp at undeserved significance (and, incidentally, that’s how institutionalized racism is allowed to persist).
There’s nothing scientific about drawing a line on a napkin and labeling it left, center, right. That’s a deliberate oversimplification designed to deceive people. We shouldn’t even accept the terms “left,” “right” and “center.” There are those that stand for progress, there are those that stand for regression, and there are those that stand for obstruction.
Our plan of action
Imagine if we were in year 7 of a Sanders presidency. We’d probably have universal healthcare, free college tuition, student loan forgiveness, reasonable gun reform, and there would be a responsible plan in place to combat climate change.
Instead, we’re stuck looking out the windows at a festering dystopia that provides only the empty promise that someday things will get better.
Do not let haughty, entitled establishment Democrats insist that their crude napkin drawing is a valid basis for a political strategy. It’s a lie. It’s a distraction. When they bring it up you need to laugh them out of the room.
Here’s what we have to do:
* Vote for progressive candidates in primaries (critical)
* Challenge people when they say “left, right, center” (that is an inaccurate and oversimplified model intended to deceive you)
* Demand that pundits recognize that polls show progressive platforms are popular [https://www.citizen.org/news/progressive-policies-are-popular-policies/] among the American people (sometimes by a stunning percentage)
* Challenge people when they repeat the lie about “swing voters” (there’s no such thing)
* Reprogram your own thinking, then you can work to reprogram the people in your sphere (oversimplifications are meant to deceive)
* Working together, we can make progress (understand that no gain is too small)
The fascists might be the ones burning down the world, but it’s the centrists who are handing out the matches.
Even their name is a lie! Saying they are in the “center” is as inaccurate as labeling the activists who would prefer to see a woman bleed out from an ectopic pregnancy as “pro-life” (they’re the opposite). Centrists are the obstructionists and deceivers. They’re the anchors holding back the progress of humanity, and we need to call them out.
Even in A Fistful of Dollars, the warring gangs eventually realize they’re getting played. They act accordingly. We should do the same.
I’d Rather Be Writing is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Thanks for your support: 30% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/b66e5c2e] 💙 40% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/01f1b0e8] 💙 50% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/0d3e6643] 💙 60% off [https://walterrhein.substack.com/6a8f4788]
Empowering Progressive Writers is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Get full access to I'd Rather Be Writing at walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe [https://walterrhein.substack.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4]
