polgedanken

[polgedanken]

thoughts the first (enlightened centrism)

centrism is presented as rationality; inherently it is not (why depending on what 'centrism' means in the context).

centrism can simply refer to specifically the opinion in the center of the spectrum (spectrum as referring to left-right spectrum, though this is probably a simplification). centrism and centrists can also refer to people who actively try to align themselves to the middle, usually on principle (which i think is a fairly good principle, which is that the two sides are equal, which is what makes it enticing to believe; it ends up with problems still). This is not rational because it forces you to give equivalence to the left and the right points equally distant from the center, when they aren't necessarily equal. If you were to actually consider their opinions and think about where you were on the spectrum, you would probably find you're off from the center by nature.

quick oversimplification (the usage of 'far-left' and 'far-right'; more on that later) to write a statement: The far left and far right in America are not equal; the far right is much worse. military groups parading around nazi adjacent flags & etc, the storming of the capitol on Jan 6. Supposedly there are some similar groups on the far-left, like Antifa, but i don't know how significant they are, if 'they' actually refers to something; this is either because it's just not a threat on the same level as the 'far-right', or because i'm limited by my perspective (i'm pretty culturally left). furthermore, if you consider those who are considered the farthest left politicians (bernie sanders, aoc) vs the farthest right (jewish space laser lady and co.), you'll find that they are not equal at all.

the point of this far-right far-left statement is that the center, placed in the center of the ends of the political spectrum and linearly extrapolating (probably linear; im not sure what it would be) everything in between (which is probably bad for a definition, though realistically it would probably be used as a definition by many) is very not good, and people would probably imagine themselves as a little more left (though not necessarily in the left) if they weren't centrists

picture to illustrate everything so far. not drawn to scale (the point is to illustrate the hypothesized phenomena). considering how the right gets much darker, and gets darker much more quickly, the 'center' is not really a good place to be.

a lot of the time, due to the nature of centrism that centrists think of centrism as inherently rational, these people see themselves as inherently rational. I do not think the act of centrists trying to actively align themselves in the center of the spectrum actually works; the 'center' isn't even well defined (probably depends mostly on your perspective), and they will tend to fall into the side that they like more. explicitly, centrists probably don't even exist on a true level (that they're in the center); it's more imagined in their heads, and they're just following the political ideology they like (though they would at least partially self balance due to their acceptance of the principle of aligning themselves to the center)

so what? i don't really know to be honest. it would maybe be better for people to do off with this enlightened centrism. and that isn't to say that we shouldn't be striving to work with one another and to bridge the gap between the right and the left. polarization and cultural division (cultural issues like guns, lgbtq, even abortion are so so soooooo important and dominate a lot of politics today, which causes so much polarization) are really really big problems in society currently that really need to be addressed

side note at the end: biden actually seems to have tried to mitigate polarization (in the few times i've watched him speak and learnt his policy, which isn't many. i think this might come from his state of the union address, maybe a town hall? i'm not sure) and tried to spread the message, though i guess that hasn't had an impact, maybe either because he's kind of old and shleepy and doesn't get much credit as a result, or because the message just isn't pushed enough. idk

examples: i'm lazy so there are none, but look for them in your personal social media platform. personally youtube comments and r/all reddit is a ripe place for this kind of stuff (for reddit, i would think unpopularopinion-like subs would be ripe, but in general, r/all subs that are big, like r/memes or general things like r/damnthatsinteresting or r/facepalm. a good percentage of the popuation sees r/all posts regardless of their political orientation, which leads to a lot of enlightened centrism). this lack of examples makes this a bad post. sorry :(