THE DISAPPEARING MIDDLE

There is no philosophical-social middle in America. Perhaps that is the goal of today's political parties. The vast electorate has become stupefied by polarizing mass media and amateur streaming media. Simplistic analysis is mainstream analysis. Attention spans are too short for complexity. Reading and thinking are being replaced by watching and listening.

The two major poles of politics, Liberal vs. Conservative (or Left vs. Right) must both court the greater majority, who are increasingly under-educated in the deeper roots of Western thought, art, history, politics, culture. They have turned the shadow play for power in government into a major sport. 

Unlike the Super Bowl, this game has a lasting impact on human lives. 

Take universal health coverage, as an example. There is absolutely no rational argument against the ability of our national government to run a central health insurance program, like social security, for all American citizens. We send robots to Mars. Why can't we figure out a way to fund basic preventative and emergency health services for all Americans without going bankrupt?

The real answer is that we can. The fake answers from both poles of the political discussions on this topic serve the purpose of making it unlikely. The Conservatives, who own stock in private insurance or the financial machines it is rooted in, defend the status quo by saying the sky will fall if private health insurance companies are replaced by a single-payer. The radicals on The Left cry for "free health care", a true unicorn. Keeping people alive and well takes intensive resources and labor which have costs. 

There is no political middle on health care, but there is a vast middle in the actual provision of health care, the people who deliver it. 

Doctors, nurses, technicians ... these providers do not generally care who pays them. The vast majority are not fixated on the source of their pay. And, of them, another majority are not solely motivated by that pay. They are committed to helping people.

So, why is single-payer health care such a political and financial football? Simple. Conservatives do not want to surrender their financial stake in the system as it now stands. Liberals do not want to tell the truth to the people they need to get elected. That truth is simply that health care, like social security, still needs to be paid for by premiums, paid by healthy and sick alike for a lifetime.. 

Liberals have ruined social security by expanding pay-outs to widening groups other than retirees, who have paid into the system for decades, to satisfy their base. While promoting chain and illegal migration, for example, they have not taken the fiscal steps to pay for their policies. Conservatives have balked at raising social security taxes to please their wealthier base. 

The middle approach to many issues is based in logic, research and scientific process. Politics are increasingly running from that approach to appeal to an electorate that is badly educated and predictably fearful of being left behind by science and logic. Also, a huge and very fat political class has devoured the system for lifetime wealth and security of their own. D.C. is the wealthiest city per capita in the U.S.A..

The intellectual and philosophical middle is disappearing with the middle economic class. As education has been converted into a purely business proposition, instead of a virtuous pursuit with intrinsic social value, it has served to sap the finances of the middle class which once relied on education to graduate from blue-collar labor. And that expenditure has not paid off lately. It has backfired. By burdening the middle class with education-loan debt and private charter-school costs, the educational institutions have abandoned their mission to elevate society as a whole.

Without a middle, which is the place where all practical compromise happens, government simply will not work well, if at all. This is good news for corporations and radical 'resistance' types. Corporations, like all bureaucracies, tend to stagnation. Those who are natural malcontents flourish in environments which bore and/or deny the human need for change/progress. 

I have spent a lifetime standing in the middle. My participation in activism and protest has always been balanced by my participation in daily work life and the economic mainstream. My idealism has always been balanced with a deep belief in the benefits of the practical. It has mostly seemed a relatively solitary place as the mobs around me rushed to one banner or another. 

But I have no intention of abandoning my middle ground.