Were the political spectrum a real thing in keeping with non-subjective definitions for good and for evil, it would range from enabling the survival of others through the debilitation of one’s own esteem on one end, and enabling one’s own esteem through the debilitation of other lives on the other. Unfortunately, the concepts of good and evil have become entirely subjective in modern society. Expectations of consideration toward the merit and mettle of unaligned others is taken for evil, while never doubting icons is taken for good.
In practice, centrism is dangerous, as anyone who’s ever tried meeting a rapist or murderer or banker halfway can attest. Centrism technically does not mean special interests provided, does not mean special privileges for any subset. If centrism is the vantage for seeing both sides to an issue, it cannot mean lifting up those in need when those causing their predicaments go unscathed for being unobserved. Centrism as a pathway toward equality or equanimity is not ever going to lead to some dreamy society filled with luxury for all, a place where all are master. Rather, it’d be the reality of none having power over another, where none might be a slave. If billionaires simply reap the profits of the sacrifices by workers and consumers, then were all to be made wealthy, who would do the work, who would pay the piper? Automation and Artificial Intelligence, matters pushed upon a public neither needing or wanting such matters, would make the life of Joe Q Citizen all the more inconsequential. It would not allow him to live as a king, it would mean he need not live at all. Marc Andreessen and his ilk declaring otherwise amounts to them mistaking their immediate gratification for anything meaningful. Someone as self-serving as Trump seeing themselves as being on par with someone as self-sacrificing as Mandela shows how little they understand about sacrifice generally, in the presumption that it results in wish-fulfillment as opposed to an existence prolonged.
Centrism in a functioning society cannot mean giving everyone what they want, because what too many want is dependent upon the sacrifices of others. When the old Luddites were first faced with machination of factories, they were not met by company men eager to share the expanded profits, they were met with unemployment lines. Howard Zinn detailed in his writings accounts of early worker strikes met with the military, acting on behalf of the most self-serving interests, using full force and ending in hundreds of casualties. I imagine democratic societies ideally place such emphasis on law and order for the purposes of assuring none find the means or motives for destroying others. In practice, law and order do all that they can to collect taxes for self-avowed land-owners while reprimanding the working classes, courts incriminating in have-nots the same conduct which the haves insist is somehow necessary to their very own survival. The same preoccupations such departments and agencies have always indulged in this or any country, indulging the fantasies of the authoritarian hot at that crossing of space and time. Impersonating an officer is a crime, yet officers are public servants, so that impersonating public servants is a crime for apparently every politician has called dibs de facto.
There is no centrism betwixt good and evil. The Hamas invasion of Israel was wrong, but reacting to it with more of the same, fighting fire with fire in hopes that multiple wrongs make a right, is no less wrong. Because nobody should be killing anybody. Even the Christian right are suddenly dandy about foeticide, as long as the mothers attached are not indulging the right fantasies, whether it’s happening in Palestine or anywhere else experiencing the effects of American arms production and sales. One of my own Prosperity-Indoctrinated aunts hasn’t been able to hold a conversation beyond small talk with me in 20 years, since I asked her how many unborn babies had died in the bombing of Baghdad. But as I’ve commented before, both sides of the abortion debate serve as rich examples for everyone wanting blood on their own hands, in that nobody on either side proposes aggregating principles for removing living embryos faster, safer and cheaper than dead ones, and with no lingering strings attached legally or financially. Everyone feels that their feelings can be more important than someone else’s life. If you can justify the death of anybody, you are not a good person, but then, the core to most modern fantasies whether personal or social rests in justifications over oneself or one’s icons not being as bad as they come off.
The world is not the ultimate of clusterfucks due to a small number of bad people conveniently holding different political or religious beliefs than you, it’s the mess that it is because everyone contributes to it. No matter how seemingly insignificant. Robo-calling telemarketers could find other ways to earn a living, they choose to negatively impact your day instead. Nothing is shunned more than accountability, not even the targets of racism or sexism or ageism. I mean, if someone killed my kid I would be beyond devastated, but that does not give me free license to then slaughter everyone in the killer’s neighborhood. But no, we are informed by our betters, most Palestinian fatalities are the result of Hamas shitting where they eat as opposed to say, Israeli rockets, which of course are surely magical things incapable of property damage or harming anyone but bad people, although still free of the burdens of due process. I don’t see anyone white-washing or downplaying the Hamas attack upon Israeli Jews but I see loads of pundits and commentary whitewashing and downplaying the fact that many more Palestinians have died since, and many more will continue to be razed to salted Earth. The punishment is not fitting the crime, it is surpassing. Consider the hospital attack in this way,
“Even if I have been vocal about my intent to leave a poo inside every shop at the mall, I take great offense to any suggestion I left a pile in the one. Clearly it was someone who depended on the specific store. And even though I was never there myself I can assure you the mess they left was not noteworthy. I can prove this, because I have video documentation of the ordeal, not because I was going to poo there but just in case someone else was set on doing so at that particular moment. Although the video doesn’t actually show the poo coming from the direction we insist it arrived by, we understand this will go unaddressed by all those feeling shame over their own obsessions with mud-slinging, and in accordance with the laws of projection permitted in a society with no division between church and state, that obsession of yours is of far greater concern than our apparent need to film the poo of others and the physical effects of the poo of others upon human shields. Which we do as our right to exist and not because we control all media.”
Each and every contributing member to this or any society of a first world nation today would rather indulge fantasies than be responsible for anything. And in that way, whether it’s the matter of themselves or their heroes doing no wrong or the matter of the marketing wot sold them being wisdom from the gods above, or the matter of their pride and comfort being their priorities in life, are they all rightwing. The absolute worst that anyone can say about me is that I would not indulge their fantasies, but with most people today there is no greater offense imaginable. If I had a god complex, which I have been charged with over not replacing my thoughts and feelings and experiences with those of others, it would be with insuring every life is permitted to struggle for as long as humanly possible, to experience the world such egos make manifest for themselves by their own words and actions where it pleases them, by their own silence and inaction where it pleases them. I can’t fathom how actual deities of any stripe would be as enriched by the travesty as self-perceived demigods look to be by those praising them, but as above so below are their existences certainly prolonged by the suffering abundant in every sacrifice they will never know as their own. Verifiable god complexes indulge in collective punishment rather than great replacement theories, indulge in victim-shaming, indulge in whatever most conveniently gratifies the pride and comfort of their egos all the more. Meanwhile I won’t even indulge friendships or romantic relationships, not for most of my adult life, for I am self-aware enough to confine my ego and only my ego. I don’t require anyone like me or follow me or subscribe to me, and I sure as shit don’t lay claim to the resources or opportunities of others. Right now I’ve relatives back in Kentucky discussing the possibility of my inadequate care as culpable for my mom’s death, persons who never could spare themselves to talk with her in any capacity during her final bedbound years. They see themselves as good people, these animals lacking empathy and self-awareness who hurt my mom so, and because I refuse to share in that fantasy I must be bad. Fortunately, explicitly because of the relationships they have cultivated with me all my life, I’ve no cause to pay them much mind at all, as disingenuous opprobrium is forever preferable to disingenuous peoples. In this case, people possessing not two words to share with my mom in her final years or with me in the years since, somehow observing reality better than those unable or unwilling to avoid it. Feeding no ego quickens my death, but the wait still seems so prolonged. I sometimes wish the experience were at least vicarious for them, but as I am no god it is not my place to make it so, for unlike any god I recognize that self-determination is the most fundamental right. And I endure regardless of the wish-fulfillment of others. When one sacrifices enough of themselves, is how one gets cursed with enduring survival, because there are always others who need or want it, the sacrifice. An undergoing I don’t believe anyone in this country is capable of learning for themselves, acknowledging and learning from their own mistakes and foibles, how there is indeed a choice in who or what sacrifice is for, evidently being as they are far more preoccupied in their codependency of getting pipe-dreams granted by others taking the hits. Jesus fucking Christ, so disinterested in having my will enforced upon others and so disinterested in benefiting myself by masquerading the will of others as my own, I must be the least inclined towards god complexes, but quote unquote good people never ask the devil for his side of the story either. I leave only these virtual etchings so that others may learn from my folly.