December 2, 2019--Moderation

I suspect in response to a piece I posted early last week urging Democrats for political purposes to move on from supporting impeachment and focus instead on censuring Trump, I have been chided by some progressive friends who are fed up with moderation in general and me specifically. They feel passionately that we need less moderation of the sort they feel I am promoting and more revolutionary thinking and behavior.

I have revolutionary thoughts of my own, for example, that we need deep structural change in much of our public policy--from education to healthcare to economic inequality--but feel that by pressing many of these issues at this time we would only contribute to Trump's reelection because Trump and his followers would weaponize them by labeling those of us who oppose him socialists and communists. For Trump and his people, we would further fuel this demagogic, potent reelection strategy already underway. 

Our focus, I have been arguing, should be exclusively on denying Trump a second term by all means possible. This is so urgent that it is smart to put the revolution on hold until he is no longer in the White House.

The part of my piece that I suspect was responsible for some of the negative reaction was--

Democrats should condemn Trump's behavior and move on. Take impeachment off the table. Censuring a sitting president is a big deal and would demonstrate to moderate voters that the Democrats are capable of behaving decisively and moderately.

To both disagree and take a poke at me, among other things that came my way, was this from the New York Times. It was posted on Facebook by a young friend. It is an excerpt from Jamie Aroosi's "Are You a Moderate? Think Again"--

As Dr. Martin Luther King understood, the problem he was facing--and that we now face again--is the problem of moral imagination. Moderates might have the “good will” that leads them to acknowledge injustice, but their very moderation is indicative of a “shallow understanding” that is emptied of the pain of those who currently suffer. For these moderates, injustice is a foreign affair, an abstract problem to be solved. Their response then lacks the urgency that a true understanding would bring. Learning how to expand their moral universe--learning how to turn opponents into allies--is just as pressing a problem as ever.

There is much to be said in response to this. Among other things it is absolutist and thus lacks the nuance we need to figure out where we stand and what we need to do to prevail. The Aroosi piece also drives deeper the wedges already separating those of us who should be strategic allies. 

And it doesn't help to compare moderates to the Ku Klux Klan, as Aroosi does in the full piece, when he quoted Reverend King--

"These white moderates were a potentially greater threat than the members of the Ku Klux Klan." 

This kind of talk is enough to dash all hope for rational and temperate dialogue. 

But sadly, this is where too many Democrats are--fighting each other, calling even those who are potential allies names. It is no wonder that this encourages many to seek the comfort of their favorite echo chambers.