No Middle Ground

What happened to middle ground? It seems to be non-existent these days. I realize this really isn’t a new development, but a couple things have passed by me recently that inspired these thoughts.

You’re either with us 100%, or an extremist on the other side. The problem I see is that there is a large number of ‘Us’ es. Grammatically terrible I know, but it’s my musings.

You have fringe political players on the far left and the far right. In their minds and the minds of their supporters, If you’re not in line with them, you’re a radical on the other side. If you’re any where in between you’re bound to get sucked into the nearest political black hole existing on the radical fringe you’re closest to.

I see this playing out in politics and in daily life for average people. In the political realm, it’s different. Your fringe political office holders accomplish making mostly just noise and stirring up twitter than they do getting anything material accomplished. They don’t sit on committees with high esteem. They don’t hold any leadership roles in Congress. They bluster about making outlandish statements about this and that just trying to stay relevant. Anyone who remotely follows politics knows exactly who I’m talking about on both sides of the aisle.

For us regular people it plays out a little different. One example I’ve seen recently is a meme of sorts going around that centers on Tim McGraw. He’s currently starring with his wife Faith Hill in 1883. He’s wielding guns and such as they did in those days. The meme labels him a Raging Leftist who hates the 2nd amendment and is a complete hypocrite.. blah blah blah.

I did a little research on Tim. He is a democrat. His open position on guns is not at all anti 2nd amendment. He’s a bird hunter and owns guns himself. He was in the media several years ago after the Vegas mass shooting. His position wasn’t what I would classify as radical. He simply was sharing his opinion that he didn’t feel average American needed to own military style weapons. You know, the kind that can be equipped with bump stocks and kill almost 60 people from an elevated hotel room window from 500 yards away. I’m not sharing this to have a gun control debate, just to illustrate that even though the man’s views are not in-line with some card caring NRA members, it doesn’t by default mean he’s a Raging Leftist Anti 2nd Amendment hypocrite.

Your political beliefs can fall a little left of center without being leftist maniac seeking a Socialist agenda.

Your beliefs can fall right of center without being a right wing white nationalist who wants to whitewash out entire country.

There are millions of Americans who congregate much closer to the center than the fringes, yet the media gravitates to the extremes.

This all circles back to how the center is boring, but it’s also where things get done. It’s where compromise is found and real solutions are developed.

While the fringe characters suck up most of the air time, many others are in between trying to quietly get real work done. Don’t overlook those folks who are doing the real work.