I don't disagree with what you are saying here but it is entirely beside the point I was making. Currently the middle only really cares about what disrupts the status quo. The right has weaponized that and gotten away with it for ages despite the fact that they are often risking shooting themselves in the foot. Think of the conservative leaning voters in swing states who demand consessions of Dems or they'll vote Trump. They are doing the exact same thing and they regularly get rewarded for it. Elements of the left are simply responding to those signals. If people don't like it then the long term solution is for the middle to stop rewarding that behavior across the board.
I don't know that I agree with the statement that "the middle only really cares about what disrupts the status quo." What I'd say instead is that the political left and the political right have--since around 2012--moved increasingly in an anti-establishment direction and the political middle has been dwindled down to almost nothing left of its original self. What was once a "silent majority" is now perhaps a "silent minority." At least that's my view on what's happening to the American electorate as a whole.
Are we not saying the same thing? Isn't the concept of a silent majority that it is a significant group in the middle that is by and large satisfied with how things are and therefore doesn't have to be vociferous about their needs because they are alreadly largely met? The only time a group like that would become passionate and focused is when the status quo they are happy with is challenged.
I suppose they could all see some failing in the status quo at once and be energized by that as well but that doesn't appear to be the case. The middle we have seems awfully fragmented and aimless to me. It doesn't even seem to have a coherent drive or strategy for saving democracy beyond occupy the presidency indefinitely and hope the threat goes away on its own or an ex machina saves them.
I don't know that we're seeing/saying the same thing per se. You're saying--and correct me if I'm wrong here--that the middle is a large majority that is mostly content/well-off who need to be shocked by the activism of the political left or right into wanting to move the status quo. I'm saying that the middle has gotten smaller and smaller since the beginning of the '10's as America gets increasingly polar/radicalized in a post-social media + smart phones world and it's actually the anti-establishment fringes on both sides of the political aisle who are now a majority while the pro-status quo middle are a shrinking minority.
I'd also disagree with you--again, correct me if I'm missing your point here as well--that the pro-status quo folks in the middle who are the most financially-content. What I'd say instead is that it's the *radicals* who tend to be financially well-off , and it's their decadence and comfort that enables them to have the kind of space in their lives to chase things like purposes beyond materialism that poorer working class folks are forced to focus their lives on. It's something JVL and I share in our worldview in the sense that if you follow Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is only the folks who feel physically safe, financially-secure, and materialistically well-off who then need to peruse around for other struggles to pursue. They have such a lack of struggle in their own personal lives via their decadence that they need to seek struggle elsewhere--namely white-knighting on behalf of others who actually have to deal with real struggles. This is evident--in my view--on the left side of the spectrum via the campus and post-college progressives and on the right side of the spectrum via middle-to-upper class MAGA (the "boat gentry" if you will). The Jan 6thers were mostly well off folk who were middle class professionals, business owners, veterans, etc. The radical left also tend to be post-college or in college and are either well off or will be well off in the near future. At least that's my viewing of it.
I see. You mostly get me right though I do not have financial status in mind when I am speaking of contentedness. Political participation increases by income so tbh I think most people who are voting, left, right or center, are beyond physiological needs on Maslow's hierarchy. I think most have safety and security needs met as well even if they feel precarious. I'm just mostly speaking about being contented with the majority orthodoxies. One such political orthodoxy is that economic freedom is the basis of all other freedoms and anything that might interfere with that (and most things do simply by requiring taxes to pay for it) must be of extreme importance to even consider. In my reading the campus protests are simply going against the orthodoxy that Israel deserves unquestioned support and they are only "left" because they are outside the contented middle on that issue. The people specifically disrupting elite universities are likely financially well off but I'm sure there are more behind it, for example Muslim voices who probably have a wider range of social and economic status. I'm also unsure why liberal campus protesters adding their voice to this issue is inherently phoney, silly, dismissable. No one seems to make the same argument when the retired people on the right are trying to influence how K-12 schools are run for instance.
Beyond that clarification I have some questions on your POV. I agree the middle has gotten smaller but I don't see it as establishment middle vs anti-establishment wings. Maybe it is a problem of definitions but the way you speak of the wings being radical and anti-establishment makes it seem like they are unhinged and looking to burn our institutions to the ground. Certainly there are factions on both wings that fit that mold but I think there are plenty on the left and I assume some/many on the right who would be happy institutionalists. They just want to change the orthodoxies that currently guide their missions and how they go about them.
"In my reading the campus protests are simply going against the orthodoxy that Israel deserves unquestioned support and they are only "left" because they are outside the contented middle on that issue."
I disagree here. The protests have gone far beyond that in my view. I personally hold that exact position--that Israel does not deserve unquestionable support, but the campus left has gone beyond that position in my view. Examples of this include chanting "from the river to the sea," the widely-used label of "zionists" as a derogatory term for anyone who has a shred of support for Israel, and the labels of "genocide"--which is roundly false when compared to *actual* genocides like what happened to the Rohingya or Tutsis.
"....but the way you speak of the wings being radical and anti-establishment makes it seem like they are unhinged and looking to burn our institutions to the ground."
I don't mean to label all anti-establishment folks as radical, sorry if I came off that way. I myself am anti-establishment in a lot of ways--particularly on domestic economics (I'm a former Bernie Bro gone Bulwarker post-Trump). What I tried to describe is that since around 2012 both sides of the political aisle have gone increasingly anti-establishment, and this is visible to me considering the rise of Bernie Sanders on the left in the run up to the 2016 election, and the rise of Trumpism on the right in the run up to the same election. On the left, the center mostly held against their anti-establishment wing, whereas the right got consumed by MAGA's anti-establishment moment. The left is now a wide coalition--even broadening itself to include former right-wing people in the anti-Trump coalition Venn Diagram, that includes anti-establishment lefties, center-lefties, and old guard establishment lefties. On the left, Clinton's victory over Bernie in the 2016 nomination fight was the establishment left fending off the anti-establishment left, but demographic change does what demographic change does and the younger Zoomers are coming up anti-establishment--as most youthful gens do--whereas a lot of middle-aged Millennials have moved toward the center after getting their earlier OWS/BLM rebel phases out of their system (BLM's start goes all the way back to 2012 right after OWS and peaks in 2020 with the George Floyd summer) and have settled into post-college assortative mating, financial stability and family formation, and political moderacy closer to what would be considered "establishment" vibes. The 2016 election could be argued to have been about the anti-establishment (Trumpers) vs the establishment (Clinton backers) and that's part of why Trump won (because there were deep anti-establishment vibes across the country). The country saw that Trump brought about chaos in 2020 and quickly pivoted back to wanting a more moderate establishment guy in the form of Biden.
Take a listen to the Bulwark pod discussion yesterday between Tim & Frank Bruni. They bring up a lot of things I kind of point toward in my thoughts within their discussion of Maslow's hierarchy bringing out more political activism due to lack of struggles in peoples lives (they don't *actually* use this phrasing, but they're basically doing it without saying those exact words). Once generations like Millennials and Zoomers get out of their rebellious college and yuppy phases and settle into family construction they tend to level out and become more establishment. They were well off before, which gave them the space to be rebellious, but it's *after* their mid-30's that they tend to level off and become more moderate and less rebellious because now they have to dedicate more time between work and child-raising and don't have the emotional bandwidth or time to dedicate themselves to counter-societal outrage like they did in their pre-family days.
"The protests have gone far beyond that in my view."
Fair enough. I think our differences here are that I am willing to dismiss most of those issues as the work of fringe actors rather than the main body of the protesters. I don't really trust the media (left, right, or nominally neutral) to put them in appropriate context. They'd rather generate clicks with sensationalism. I recognize I could be wrong. I also recognize that my biases are causing me to grant the benefit of the doubt in uncertainty rather than being safe and remaining neutral until I am sure. That said I'm clearly not alone in either of those things and tbh I find the need to balance almost everyone else's rightward lean in uncertainty.
"They bring up a lot of things I kind of point toward in my thoughts within their discussion of Maslow's hierarchy bringing out more political activism due to lack of struggles in peoples lives (they don't *actually* use this phrasing, but they're basically doing it without saying those exact words). Once generations like Millennials and Zoomers get out of their rebellious college and yuppy phases and settle into family construction they tend to level out and become more establishment."
It is anecdotal but I have gone the opposite way. As such this argument, while it may very will be accurate overall, strikes me as wrong at a gut level. I started well-off, at least by virtue of having well off parents. However, I knew where my bread was buttered. I was definitely to the left of my parents but not so far left that I would have been considered anti-establishment. I was neutral on OWS and was not a Bernie Bro in 2016. However, as problems have been ignored and gotten worse, as Republicans have made it more and more obvious that they will not be moved by facts and reasoned debate, and as Dems have made it more and more clear they are too cautious or perhaps uninterested to deal with either of the above in an effective and timely manner I've moved into the progressive camp. There are clearly some true radicals there but for the most part it seems to be people who like and need most of our institutions but are dissatisfied with the dominant orthodoxies they labor under and who actually have a sense of urgency for change and are unwilling to wait passively as the moderates attempt to kick the can once more.
I don't disagree with what you are saying here but it is entirely beside the point I was making. Currently the middle only really cares about what disrupts the status quo. The right has weaponized that and gotten away with it for ages despite the fact that they are often risking shooting themselves in the foot. Think of the conservative leaning voters in swing states who demand consessions of Dems or they'll vote Trump. They are doing the exact same thing and they regularly get rewarded for it. Elements of the left are simply responding to those signals. If people don't like it then the long term solution is for the middle to stop rewarding that behavior across the board.
I don't know that I agree with the statement that "the middle only really cares about what disrupts the status quo." What I'd say instead is that the political left and the political right have--since around 2012--moved increasingly in an anti-establishment direction and the political middle has been dwindled down to almost nothing left of its original self. What was once a "silent majority" is now perhaps a "silent minority." At least that's my view on what's happening to the American electorate as a whole.
Are we not saying the same thing? Isn't the concept of a silent majority that it is a significant group in the middle that is by and large satisfied with how things are and therefore doesn't have to be vociferous about their needs because they are alreadly largely met? The only time a group like that would become passionate and focused is when the status quo they are happy with is challenged.
I suppose they could all see some failing in the status quo at once and be energized by that as well but that doesn't appear to be the case. The middle we have seems awfully fragmented and aimless to me. It doesn't even seem to have a coherent drive or strategy for saving democracy beyond occupy the presidency indefinitely and hope the threat goes away on its own or an ex machina saves them.
I don't know that we're seeing/saying the same thing per se. You're saying--and correct me if I'm wrong here--that the middle is a large majority that is mostly content/well-off who need to be shocked by the activism of the political left or right into wanting to move the status quo. I'm saying that the middle has gotten smaller and smaller since the beginning of the '10's as America gets increasingly polar/radicalized in a post-social media + smart phones world and it's actually the anti-establishment fringes on both sides of the political aisle who are now a majority while the pro-status quo middle are a shrinking minority.
I'd also disagree with you--again, correct me if I'm missing your point here as well--that the pro-status quo folks in the middle who are the most financially-content. What I'd say instead is that it's the *radicals* who tend to be financially well-off , and it's their decadence and comfort that enables them to have the kind of space in their lives to chase things like purposes beyond materialism that poorer working class folks are forced to focus their lives on. It's something JVL and I share in our worldview in the sense that if you follow Maslow's hierarchy of needs, it is only the folks who feel physically safe, financially-secure, and materialistically well-off who then need to peruse around for other struggles to pursue. They have such a lack of struggle in their own personal lives via their decadence that they need to seek struggle elsewhere--namely white-knighting on behalf of others who actually have to deal with real struggles. This is evident--in my view--on the left side of the spectrum via the campus and post-college progressives and on the right side of the spectrum via middle-to-upper class MAGA (the "boat gentry" if you will). The Jan 6thers were mostly well off folk who were middle class professionals, business owners, veterans, etc. The radical left also tend to be post-college or in college and are either well off or will be well off in the near future. At least that's my viewing of it.
I see. You mostly get me right though I do not have financial status in mind when I am speaking of contentedness. Political participation increases by income so tbh I think most people who are voting, left, right or center, are beyond physiological needs on Maslow's hierarchy. I think most have safety and security needs met as well even if they feel precarious. I'm just mostly speaking about being contented with the majority orthodoxies. One such political orthodoxy is that economic freedom is the basis of all other freedoms and anything that might interfere with that (and most things do simply by requiring taxes to pay for it) must be of extreme importance to even consider. In my reading the campus protests are simply going against the orthodoxy that Israel deserves unquestioned support and they are only "left" because they are outside the contented middle on that issue. The people specifically disrupting elite universities are likely financially well off but I'm sure there are more behind it, for example Muslim voices who probably have a wider range of social and economic status. I'm also unsure why liberal campus protesters adding their voice to this issue is inherently phoney, silly, dismissable. No one seems to make the same argument when the retired people on the right are trying to influence how K-12 schools are run for instance.
Beyond that clarification I have some questions on your POV. I agree the middle has gotten smaller but I don't see it as establishment middle vs anti-establishment wings. Maybe it is a problem of definitions but the way you speak of the wings being radical and anti-establishment makes it seem like they are unhinged and looking to burn our institutions to the ground. Certainly there are factions on both wings that fit that mold but I think there are plenty on the left and I assume some/many on the right who would be happy institutionalists. They just want to change the orthodoxies that currently guide their missions and how they go about them.
"In my reading the campus protests are simply going against the orthodoxy that Israel deserves unquestioned support and they are only "left" because they are outside the contented middle on that issue."
I disagree here. The protests have gone far beyond that in my view. I personally hold that exact position--that Israel does not deserve unquestionable support, but the campus left has gone beyond that position in my view. Examples of this include chanting "from the river to the sea," the widely-used label of "zionists" as a derogatory term for anyone who has a shred of support for Israel, and the labels of "genocide"--which is roundly false when compared to *actual* genocides like what happened to the Rohingya or Tutsis.
"....but the way you speak of the wings being radical and anti-establishment makes it seem like they are unhinged and looking to burn our institutions to the ground."
I don't mean to label all anti-establishment folks as radical, sorry if I came off that way. I myself am anti-establishment in a lot of ways--particularly on domestic economics (I'm a former Bernie Bro gone Bulwarker post-Trump). What I tried to describe is that since around 2012 both sides of the political aisle have gone increasingly anti-establishment, and this is visible to me considering the rise of Bernie Sanders on the left in the run up to the 2016 election, and the rise of Trumpism on the right in the run up to the same election. On the left, the center mostly held against their anti-establishment wing, whereas the right got consumed by MAGA's anti-establishment moment. The left is now a wide coalition--even broadening itself to include former right-wing people in the anti-Trump coalition Venn Diagram, that includes anti-establishment lefties, center-lefties, and old guard establishment lefties. On the left, Clinton's victory over Bernie in the 2016 nomination fight was the establishment left fending off the anti-establishment left, but demographic change does what demographic change does and the younger Zoomers are coming up anti-establishment--as most youthful gens do--whereas a lot of middle-aged Millennials have moved toward the center after getting their earlier OWS/BLM rebel phases out of their system (BLM's start goes all the way back to 2012 right after OWS and peaks in 2020 with the George Floyd summer) and have settled into post-college assortative mating, financial stability and family formation, and political moderacy closer to what would be considered "establishment" vibes. The 2016 election could be argued to have been about the anti-establishment (Trumpers) vs the establishment (Clinton backers) and that's part of why Trump won (because there were deep anti-establishment vibes across the country). The country saw that Trump brought about chaos in 2020 and quickly pivoted back to wanting a more moderate establishment guy in the form of Biden.
Take a listen to the Bulwark pod discussion yesterday between Tim & Frank Bruni. They bring up a lot of things I kind of point toward in my thoughts within their discussion of Maslow's hierarchy bringing out more political activism due to lack of struggles in peoples lives (they don't *actually* use this phrasing, but they're basically doing it without saying those exact words). Once generations like Millennials and Zoomers get out of their rebellious college and yuppy phases and settle into family construction they tend to level out and become more establishment. They were well off before, which gave them the space to be rebellious, but it's *after* their mid-30's that they tend to level off and become more moderate and less rebellious because now they have to dedicate more time between work and child-raising and don't have the emotional bandwidth or time to dedicate themselves to counter-societal outrage like they did in their pre-family days.
"The protests have gone far beyond that in my view."
Fair enough. I think our differences here are that I am willing to dismiss most of those issues as the work of fringe actors rather than the main body of the protesters. I don't really trust the media (left, right, or nominally neutral) to put them in appropriate context. They'd rather generate clicks with sensationalism. I recognize I could be wrong. I also recognize that my biases are causing me to grant the benefit of the doubt in uncertainty rather than being safe and remaining neutral until I am sure. That said I'm clearly not alone in either of those things and tbh I find the need to balance almost everyone else's rightward lean in uncertainty.
"They bring up a lot of things I kind of point toward in my thoughts within their discussion of Maslow's hierarchy bringing out more political activism due to lack of struggles in peoples lives (they don't *actually* use this phrasing, but they're basically doing it without saying those exact words). Once generations like Millennials and Zoomers get out of their rebellious college and yuppy phases and settle into family construction they tend to level out and become more establishment."
It is anecdotal but I have gone the opposite way. As such this argument, while it may very will be accurate overall, strikes me as wrong at a gut level. I started well-off, at least by virtue of having well off parents. However, I knew where my bread was buttered. I was definitely to the left of my parents but not so far left that I would have been considered anti-establishment. I was neutral on OWS and was not a Bernie Bro in 2016. However, as problems have been ignored and gotten worse, as Republicans have made it more and more obvious that they will not be moved by facts and reasoned debate, and as Dems have made it more and more clear they are too cautious or perhaps uninterested to deal with either of the above in an effective and timely manner I've moved into the progressive camp. There are clearly some true radicals there but for the most part it seems to be people who like and need most of our institutions but are dissatisfied with the dominant orthodoxies they labor under and who actually have a sense of urgency for change and are unwilling to wait passively as the moderates attempt to kick the can once more.