Winning the Middle

As the story goes, a group of ladies in small-town Missouri all voted for the party promising mass kidnapping squads, but have been left reeling after the kidnapping squads kidnapped one of their own friends, one Ming Li "Carol" Hui, a fellow co-worker and fellow parishioner who had been living in their community for 20 years, and who happens to be an immigrant from Hong Kong. As the story goes, the ladies want to help their friend, and they also want it known that, while they voted for the party that repeatedly promised to round up and mass deport tens of millions of people just like their now-detained friend, they did not vote for it to happen to their friend, specifically. And then the usual online back-and-forth began. First there were those who pointed out that whatever these ladies might tell themselves, they actually very much did vote for it. These pointer-outers were scolded for this uncharitable reaction by those who pointed out that progressive purity tests do not help us expand the broad political coalitions we need, that we ought to "win the middle," capitalizing on this moment of new awareness within the minds of these Missouri ladies about the evils of mass deportation, which we would do by establishing points of agreement with conservative America, and by ignoring those pesky distracting points of difference that divide us.

To pretend to change the subject, the two worst people in the world were fighting last week, which you've probably heard about. These two guys are malignant narcissists who look like cartoon characters. One of them has more money than anybody else, which apparently makes him The Smartest Man in the World; the other one has managed to tell a lot of lies that people really liked very much—so much so that they voted him President, and that makes him The Powerfullest Man in the World. The Smartest Man's name is Elon Musk. The Powerfullest Man's name is Don Trump. I know, they also have cartoon character names.

Both the Smartest Man and the Powerfullest man are pretty openly Nazis, or, if you'd argue that point (as some unaccountably seem to want to), they are inarguably eugenicist autocratic monsters. Both also are never-ending fountains of bullshit, and both spend a lot of time spreading racist conspiracies on social media platforms they own, so I guess it only makes sense the two of them would have eventually teamed up, demolishing the federal government, turbocharging the surveillance state, firing thousands and thousands of people, and cutting off overseas aide in so sudden and draconian fashion that the death count stands at 300,000 so far, most of them children. This makes Trump and Musk not only Nazi cartoons, but saboteurs of the public good, demolishers of global peace, and mass murderers, which is exactly what you'd expect Nazis (or, if you like, racist eugenicist autocratic monsters who make Nazi salutes and/or pursue Nazi outcomes through Nazi rhetoric and methods but who are by some strange mental gymnastics nevertheless not Nazis) to become.

Anyway these two are fighting, as malignant narcissists always eventually do. I don't want to get into the details; you already know it all or you can find it easily. My view on this shabby display of bloated ego eating itself is that it is inevitable and just fine. Let them do whatever damage they will to each other, in my opinion; it surely won't stop them both from spending the rest of their time trying to subjugate and murder the rest of us. The kerfuffle might temporarily distract them both from the main effort of doing so, but probably not. Yippee.

So much for them. What I want to focus on is the rhetoric surrounding this moment. I want to unpack what a number of prominently placed Democrats want to do about this, which is to embrace the Smartest Man and get him and all his money to ally with them instead. The framing, which is by no means a new one, is that we should create a "big tent"—a coalition that includes as many people as possible, in other words— rather than applying the sort of progressive purity tests that push out people who might agree with us on lots of things, but who can't agree with us on everything.

Behold:

"Progressive purity tests" is a direct quote, by the way, from the home page of a Democratic political action committee that calls itself Welcome USA, and they want to make a big tent by pulling in MAGA and other types of conservative folks, by looking to the middle, establishing points of agreement and ignoring those pesky points of difference that divide us. "Win the middle" is a direct quote, also—it's their slogan. What a rouser! Why, you can almost imagine Henry V bellowing it at Agincourt.

There's a lot of this sort of thing going around, where people who position themselves as oppositional to our country's fascist bent actually seem to want to try to find ways to be not-so-oppositional, and even find ways of replicating the thing they seek to oppose. There was a recent attempt to create a CPAC of the center, for example, and another to find a Joe Rogan of the left and to replicate the right-wing propaganda apparatus generally. And if you look at the image above, it seems the rationale that Ro Khanna (D-Silicon Valley) offers for his position is that, were circumstances reversed, Trump would be doing exactly as Ro Khanna suggests—which is arguable, but it seems as if the suggestion is that Democrats should become the Donald Trump of the left. That's nearly as funny as the tacit suggestion that Democrats haven't been spending their time trying to embrace people on the right, but not as funny as the suggestion that FDR built his coalition by bringing in a lot of billionaires, which is a view of history that seems to have been picked up mostly by watching the 1982 musical film Annie.

CPAC is the fascist hate rally that the Republican Party holds each year, in case you didn't know; it stands for Conservative Political Action Committee, so I guess the idea is to create a Conservative Political Action Committee conference of the left, to which I say interrobang?! Joe Rogan, meanwhile, is the low-information bro who is very popular with young lads and who is very good at interjecting nonsense conspiracy and junk science into the public discourse, so I guess the idea is to create a disinformation and conspiracy platform of the left, to which I say interrobang!?

All this seems to be a common theme of those political pragmatists looking to win the middle by establishing points of agreement and focusing on our shared values, while ignoring those pesky points of difference that divide us. None of them ever thinks about just creating a left of the left, or establishing exactly what principles a left might have or hold to in order to define and differentiate itself—not when they could spend billions to replicate one of the structures of the right in the image of a left whose principles remain enduringly obscure, all while naming the actual left as the main obstacle to doing so.

It perhaps shouldn't surprise any of us, then, that the same people who want such things as the Conservative PAC of the left would also like the Elon Musk of the right to become the Elon Musk of the left, and to want the RFK Jr. of the right to become the RFK Jr. of the left—not by asking them to change anything, but by establishing some common points of agreement and then focusing on those shared values, while ignoring all those pesky points of difference that divide us. After all, why build when you can acquire?

It makes me wonder: If we would do well to use the split between Musk and Trump as an occasion to welcome Musk into the big tent, wouldn't we do just as well to use the split to welcome Trump into the big tent, too? If one mass-murdering Nazi billionaire is good, wouldn't two be even better? And if not, why not? Don't we want a big tent and a broad coalition? Don't we want to be inclusive?

I sure do.

So I suppose now I should explain why I would be so snarky; so opposed to big tents, so opposed to growing broad coalitions, so skeptical about winning the center and finding points of agreement with others; why I would be opposed to spending money on media or annual conferences or action committees to influence people, why I am so committed instead to progressive purity tests and pushing people out of our shrinking tent. I suppose I would be doing all of this, too—that is, if I wanted to approach the question the way these "win the middle" types tend to do; namely, by agreeing at the outset with 100% of the oppositional framing.

I have a different frame, believe it or not, when it comes to big tents and purity tests.

I'm going to spoil the hell out of a movie from 2014 called Phoenix now. If you don't want a 10-year-old movie named Phoenix spoiled, including its rather powerful ending, then either go watch it now, or scroll down until you come to the bold text that contains the point I'm trying to illustrate.

Or don't subscribe. I'm not the boss of you. But if you do subscribe, my gosh the splendors that await you.

Phoenix is set in Germany in the immediate aftermath of World War II. In it, Nelly, a concentration camp survivor whose face was horribly disfigured, receives reconstructive surgery that repairs the damage but renders her unrecognizable. Posing as a stranger and calling herself "Esther," she finds her husband, Johnny, who she can't bring herself to believe sold her out to the Gestapo, and tries to learn the truth (which is that he sure enough did sell her out to the Gestapo). Johnny, who believes Nelly dead, is struck by "Esther's" passing resemblance to his late wife, and recruits her into a perverse scheme whereby she poses as herself in order to get the ostensibly dead Nelly's inheritance money ... for Johnny. This ruse-but-not-a-ruse requires convincing witnesses that "Esther" is Nelly, so Johnny begins to train "Esther" to convincingly portray herself to their friends from before the war. Got it? The real Nelly is posing as "Esther" to Johnny, who is grooming her to present herself as "Nelly" to them, even though, unbeknownst to them, she actually is Nelly.

It's all very pulpy and perverse, sort of like a noir My Fair Lady, if Higgins were actually training a princess who unbeknownst to him was only pretending to be a Cockney flower girl ... plus Nazis. What really struck me about the movie was Johnny's constant admonition to "Esther," that when she is pretending to be Nelly to their friends, she mustn't under any circumstance talk about the Nazi times or all the horrible things that befell her, because nobody wants to think about that. And, in fact, when the friends are gathered, it is suggested that they are pretty sure that this lady isn't Nelly, but they are willing to play along as long as they don't have to hear anything about the atrocities that occurred to their newly returned friend. Then, as "Esther" sings for them (Nelly was a singer), she shows that she knows them for what they are. She sings a song about not speaking until it is too late and all hope of love is gone. She sings "Speak Low." And then, with everyone absolutely sure that this actually is Nelly, she leaves.

So here are my takeaways:

For a lot of people the greatest atrocity is failing to be polite to others like themselves. So, if you want to understand who somebody thinks is most like them, look for those to whom they are least comfortable being impolite to, even about atrocities, and what atrocities they'd like to stay silent about.

Nothing punctures a polite conspiracy of silence like a truth spoken publicly.

"Win the middle" pragmatic types very rarely name those pesky points of disagreement that divide us, I've noticed, or define who us is. They are so committed to ignoring those pesky points of difference that they even ignore what exactly they are. Likewise, they rarely name what the purity tests that they claim push people out of the big tent they claim to want to build actually are.

But when they do name these points of division, they usually name people.

Groups of people.

Groups of other people, people who they clearly do not think of as us.

It's trans people, usually, these days. In former days, it was other groups. It's the same story through the decades and centuries. It's an old conversation.

Trans people are unpopular in polling, it turns out, and that makes them pesky and divisive. They apparently don't need to be a part of the big tent we're making. They don't need to be a part of the winning coalition we're going to make with all our pragmatic winning of the center. Apparently we grow the coalition by pushing people out of the coalition to make room for others. Apparently we make a big tent by setting our tent pole around the latest poll.

And let's name the rarely mentioned "progressive purity test" that we're supposed to pragmatically abandon in the name of solidarity: The demand of this purity test is that we not compromise on universal human dignity and equality under the law. I suppose you could say that insisting on the rights of all people, including all trans people, is issuing a "political purity test." But why would you do so, while also ignoring the fact that those who refuse to enter the tent unless you push trans people out of the tent are also issuing a political purity test?

To me it seems what these "win the center" types are objecting to is not purity tests per se, but rather a negotiation over which purity tests we ought to prioritize over others, and who we ought to mean when we say "we."

It makes me wonder. If demanding that we respect and honor the humanity of (for example) trans people is a divisive distraction, if demanding that trans people be afforded equal recognition by and protection under the law is a divisive distraction, if we would be just as willing to abandon other unpopular groups of people tomorrow as we are to abandon trans people today, then what exactly are the shared values that we would all focus on, and what sort of coalition would be formed over them? Win the center? What center are we winning? Big tent? Broad coalition? What tent? What coalition?

For example, the police are shooting "less lethal" rounds at crowds of U.S. citizens this morning, I've learned while writing this. This is what police do whenever citizens decide to stand up for themselves, which is how you know that they are murder goons and not keepers of the peace. The citizens being shot at this morning are protesting the armed brute squads that Donald Trump is sending to hospitals and courtrooms and churches to kidnap people and send them to slave camps, which is how you know that they are kidnapping and slavery squads and not border security agents. In previous years, the cops would have been firing on people for the divisive crime of protesting the police's habit of murdering citizens. I would note that "less-lethal" rounds are still lethal, and so are cops, yet many people continue to think of cops as being a source of safety no matter how many murders and kidnappings they participate in, and these people are the middle we need to win, by ignoring the fact that they want this.

And yet, whenever anybody suggests that we actually don't need to spend public funds on brutality squads and murder goons and kidnapping gangs, we're scolded that this is the sort of progressive purity test that drives people who otherwise agree with us out of the big tent we want to make. We're commanded to speak low about it, lest we risk shrinking our allegedly big tent. We're told we're making coalitions harder to build. Apparently the bigger atrocity than atrocity is speaking these uncomfortable truths to people we consider to be us about people we do not consider us. Nobody ever tells us how speaking low about this atrocity will solve the atrocity. The big win appears to be the polite silence.

I ask: Does this strategy grow a big tent? Is it even successful at that?

Think of a big round carnival tent, like in Bugs Bunny cartoons. Picture it from the top. Big circle. Got it?

Now, picture people standing in the middle of the tent.

Now, expand the size of the tent.

Did you expand the tent by making room in the middle?

Do you find it odd that somebody would propose expanding that tent by looking toward the middle? Don't expansions of a circle usually come at the circumference?

It starts to feel as if the people who look to not alienate the middle aren't actually looking to expand the tent, but contract it. Or perhaps what they want is to redefine the middle; to pick up the center pole and move it so that the center now includes not more people but different ones; people with whom these pole-movers feel they have more in common, towards whom they are less comfortable being impolite about atrocities.

Increasingly, I feel as if, when these self-proclaimed coalition builders talk about "winning the middle," they're not talking about the people they hope to win over. Rather, they're talking about themselves, and defining what it will take to keep them in the tent. They aren't opposed to purity tests. They're issuing purity tests. You'd better be in favor of funding the police, or they won't be in your tent. You'd better be OK with the fact that they feel uncomfortable around trans people, or Black Lives Matter activists, or prison abolitionists, or any other group that demands universal human rights, or they won't be in your tent. And if we don't like it, we'd better speak low about it—if we want to be welcome in their tent, that is.

Increasingly I feel that "win the middle" is not about winning the people they see as being in the middle. It's about defining where the middle should be, and guess what?—it's always either further right, or else nowhere at all, endlessly moveable, wherever the latest poll indicates it ought to be.

It makes me think about the conversation I started with; the one about the suburban ladies who didn't vote for the mass deportations that we all know they all voted for.

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The frame I'm given by self-declared "win the center" pragmatists is that any people pointing out that these ladies voted for mass deportation are not only being uncharitable and sanctimonious but impractical, and making the sort of alienating talk that results in the sorts of political losses we all hope to avoid. The idea is that these women are now surprised by a new realization, and would be our allies in the fight against mass deportation if only we don't alienate them by saying true things to them.

Let me acknowledge that the kidnapping of Carol Hui is indeed an invitation for her conservative friends to recognize some deep truths about universal human connection and basic empathy that they have been ignoring up until now—that to harm one person is to harm all, and to make one vulnerable is to make everyone vulnerable, even oneself. They're either going to accept this invitation or reject it. Those are the choices.

So let's take a look at the quote that is the most discussed part of the story.

“No one voted to deport moms,” said Vanessa Cowart, a friend of Ms. Hui from church. “We were all under the impression we were just getting rid of the gangs, the people who came here in droves.”

OK. So what I'll note right from the jump is that these ladies sure enough knew about the mass deportations, and sure enough voted for them. They just didn't vote for this one particular deportation, the one that affected them personally. We might then question the depth and breadth of their new awareness, and just how much their attitudes and beliefs have shifted toward something that people who respect universal human rights would consider "shared."

"Win the center" pragmatists want to point out to us that the story shows that despite what we sanctimonious elitist purity-politic lefties who live in a bubble might think, conservatives actually care about other people. First, this is a very sanctimonious thing to say, and a very elitist and live-in-a-bubble thing to find surprising, because ... Second, this isn't news to most of us. We're aware that conservatives care about other people. The problem is that they have drawn boundaries around the limits of their care beyond which they will not go. In the story, the writer poses it as a very strange thing that a person could support both deported immigrant Carol Hui and a politician who had promised to deport immigrants, but this is very standard stuff for supremacists. They always believe in exceptions for themselves, and among the groups they want to see harmed, they always expect that they will get a carve-out for the "good 'uns."

What "win the center" pragmatists would have us believe is that the shock of the Missouri ladies over the shabby treatment of one of their "good 'uns" means that they share our common value of universal human equality, even though there is scant evidence that this value is shared. This seems to be standard rhetorical practice when one is a pragmatic "win the center" type.

Consider the values that Ro Khanna wants us to believe the left shares with Elon Musk: "A commitment to science funding, a commitment to clean technology, a commitment to seeing international students like himself." Are these Musk's values? He may have at some point said he was in favor of those things, but he literally just this year destroyed those things. He's in favor of the mass deportations that currently focus on international students. He seems to be in favor of self-dealing and eugenics, mostly. I find the practice of bestowing upon your opponents shared values that they clearly don't actually share ... well. I don't want to seem to be issuing sanctimonious political litmus tests, so let's say I find it odd. Let's say it makes me wonder what motivates somebody to find points of agreement with their alleged opponents by making up points of agreement to agree to on behalf of your opponent. Let's say it makes me think of conspiracies of polite silence.

To return to the MAGA ladies of Missouri, there are two options as I see it. Either these women have seen the grim reality of mass deportation's effects and they no longer want any part of a regime that would enact such atrocities, and are looking for alternative political options, or else they are shocked that the regime—which they supported precisely because it promised atrocities—would have enacted atrocities in such a way as to have harmed one of the "good 'uns," and now they are looking to not be blamed for it, and would like everyone to speak low.

If it's the second option, then there seems no way to grow a broad coalition with them. There's probably no way to grow a coalition of any kind. Even if we threw everyone under the bus—immigrants, trans people, gay people, Black people, women—in order to get them, why would they move? They already have a tent that promises to hurt everyone but the "good 'uns." Why would they want a new one? We'd have moved the tent for nothing, and we'll have shrunk it by however many marginalized people haven't survived our abandonment. Or, say we do get a handful of Missouri ladies who don't like their friend being kidnapped, but aren't willing to help her if it means that a trans woman gets to live her life in peace and safety. Great. We'd have swapped decent people for indecent people, for a net zero gain, and all it cost us was core principles.

And I ask myself: This is pragmatism? This wins?

Let me put my skepticism about the intentions of these Missouri ladies aside. Maybe they really are shocked into new awareness through empathy for their friend. It's certainly possible. That's great if so. They realize that what affects one affects all! They are committed to defending our democracy against what they now realize is tyranny! They will no longer support atrocities! That's fantastic!

So, if they really have had a revelation and are driven by solidarity with their friend, then presumably they'll stop supporting the people hurting their friend, whether people say nice things about them or not. It's amazing to me when somebody tells me we need to convince these Missouri ladies, as if we could be convincing in a way that a kidnapped friend is not. It's amazing to me when somebody tells me that we need to avoid alienating these Missouri ladies, as if people saying mean things to you would make you abandon your resolve to help a kidnapped friend. Either these ladies have accepted the invitation into truth that this incident has offered them, or they haven't. That's ultimately their choice, not any of ours. Sincere transformation will have transformed. What new awareness needs, if it is sincere, is not polite lies but more awareness. What somebody looking for an alternative needs is an alternative, not a recreation of the same thing they're hoping to leave.

It seems to me that, if we want to expand a tent that actually defends the habeas corpus rights of immigrants, what is needed is not all of us validating to a group of newly shocked Missouri ladies that actually their support of the regime that did it is a perfectly fine defensible choice. What is needed is not us reinforcing their belief that even if they voted for the mass-deportation candidate they didn't really vote for the deportation. In fact, that would build a case allowing them to go on supporting atrocity while telling themselves they aren't doing so.

We tell them the truth, not because they need to hear it, but because we need to say it. We need to say it because only when it is said do we puncture our shared complicity of silence.

What's needed is an acknowledgment of the uncomfortable truth that yes, there is actually a causal relationship between support of a kidnapping party and one's friend having being kidnapped, and the person who chooses to support that party bears a certain degree of responsibility for the kidnapping. Would we do better to express it politely rather than angrily? To be sure, and do that if you can. Do some people speak these truths in a sanctimonious ways motivated more by establishing their own blamelessness than by truth? Yes, and don't do that. But if these Missouri ladies need polite lies whispered in their ears before they'll stop supporting the people who kidnapped their friend, then at the end of the day, I don't think they're going to support their friend, even if we tell them the lies.

We don't need a party that validates someone's choice to support the deportation of their friend, or a party that validates the popular belief that the failure of conservative white people to do the right thing is actually the fault of everyone else for not flattering them well enough.

What would actually expand the tent to include these Missouri ladies is to offer them not the same thing, but something different—to actually embody unshakeable ideals of universal human rights that are not up for debate, and make that the center pole of our tent—a pole, not a poll. This would give an actual option to people who have become newly concerned about and newly aware of the destruction of human rights, in a way that a party that offers to swap one atrocity for another doesn't. It would do it without pushing other people out of the tent. It would grow the tent by expanding the margins on all sides, which is where there is space to expand. It would allow all to come if they truly wanted to come. It wouldn't chase, it would attract. And it would truly win the center, not by engaging in a pandering chase after the least awful of an awful coalition, but by defining and defending a true moral center—a fixed spot around which people can gather, if they want to accept the invitation for something better.

I don't think cowardice in the name of pragmatism builds a broad coalition.

You know what I think builds a broad coalition? Principles and resolve.

That's what I recommend if what we actually want is a big tent, and not just to avoid being impolite about atrocities to people who some of us identify with more closely than those the atrocities are being inflicted upon.

That's what I recommend, if we actually want to choose to prioritize a political test that expands the number of those who can join with us, expands the number of people we mean when we say "us," and expands the parameters of the uncomfortable truths we can tell one another.

We don't speak low in the big tent.

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A.R. Moxon is the author of the novel The Revisionaries and the essay collection Very Fine People, which is available in most of the usual places, and some of the unusual places. You can get his books right here for example. He is also co-writer of Sugar Maple, a musical fiction podcast from Osiris Media which goes in your ears. And it's too late to lose the weight he used to need to throw around.