Thursday, October 04, 2018

Centrism Is Good

Of course for all the talk about "bias" in journalism which prevents journalists from having "opinions" (about certain things), nothing stops them from blathering on about how wonderful the latest dipshit centrist It Congressperson is. What is weird is how content free such praises generally are. Not just free of content, but free of even the hint that there is content beyond some version of Trump's own "straight from central casting." As with Ben Sasse, what, actually, are they good for?

Even with The Maverick, beyond tributes to his Vietnam days, the praise was remarkably vacuous. And if ever anyone did push - um...why exactly do you think he is the most honorable person in the land? - they would retreat right back to Vietnam. Whatever the merits of that, it had little to do with The Senator.

I know John McCain wasn't really a centrist, but that's because nobody is really a centrist. Dipshit centrism is about appealing to the Morning Joe crowd aesthetically, and shoveling money to rich people substantially, neither of which is meaningfully "centrism." For Republicans it also means being not being quite as racist and homophobic as the rest of them or as interested in punishing poor people (for a time, Paul Ryan, deeply concerned with The Poors, was a centrist), and for Democrats it means being a bit more racist and homophobic than the rest of them and a bit more interested in punishing poor people.