Alex Jones and Pro-Hamas

I was living five miles from Newtown/Sandy Hook during the shooting, where friends of mine died. When Alex Jones later smeared his excrement all over the incident, I didn't roll my eyes or rush to anger. I just felt physically sick, and mildly ashamed to be part of a species capable of such evil. I was vacantly shocked, like someone had shot a cannonball clear through my abdomen.

Progressive reaction to the Hamas attack (leaving aside for now the broader Israeli/Palestinian conflict) leaves me feeling that very same Alex Jones nausea/shame. I'm once again post-cannonball.

What I take away from this comparison is that our problems are not based on ideology. Alex Jones and progressives have nothing ideologically in common whatsoever. It's something more tectonic: the fabled "horseshoe effect". The yin/yang truism that the crazies at both ends are not only both crazy, but crazy in effectively the same way. They've caught the same virus, regardless of the antithetical slogans on their placards and bumper stickers.

The real problem is not the ideology, or even the extremist leaders spouting that ideology. The problem is extremism itself. Despite mountains of cold, hard experience, we seem unable to focus on this. Our attention won't quite stay there.

At the dawn of the Trump era I made a case for centrism (e.g. this). There still exists a super majority of reasonable people, if we could only recognize it - i.e. frame it that way. But we can't, due to a perennial problem too pervasive and unconscious to even have a name.

Reasonable, mild conservatives roll their eyes wearily at MAGA extremists, exactly the way reasonable mild progressives roll their eyes wearily at pro-Hamas extremists. We dislike the radicals on our side, but it's a vague, familial aversion, compared to the other side's radicals, whom we watch closely, loathing them with the heat of a thousand suns.

Hating and fearing the other side's extremists far more than own side's extremists makes it devilishly hard to see that the true problem is extremism, period.

I've had friends sever ties when I told them I'm friends with some reasonable Trump-voting Republicans. That's extremism, baby. It's one thing for a racist to mildly dislike black people, but quite another for them to violently repudiate white friends who befriend them.

Even those who see the truth of this seem to remain susceptible to the proposition of plowing straight through; to radicalizing your side's moderates via relentless anger provocation to finally, joyously, thrash, smash, and trash those awful people. It's a function of our engrained tribalism. The old shirts vs skins.

Even if we convinced people to take a good hard look at their own tribe's extremists, it would hardly guarantee benevolent reframing. Mostly, they'd either flip to the opposite camp (again: shirts or skins!), or else sink into cynical nihilism, because renouncing extremism leaves little to get excited about.

I implore you to get excited about moderation. Take yourself out of the market for beautiful mass movements and simple Utopias and fantasies of smashing, thrashing, and trashing the bad guys. Take yourself out of the market of being on A Team You Can Believe In, and just quietly elect quietly competent leaders...without disengaging from the process! Most of all: be intensely suspicious of any parties trying to stoke your anger when you're already furious.

What I’m suggesting is like walking a tightrope. And it's boring. But you know what would make a huge chunk of the populace crave some boredom? Civil war. Autocracy. Pogroms. There's nothing like cinders, smoke, and an empty belly to raise the cachet of boredom. Alas, boredom is a tough sell at the very peak moment of humanity.

Hyper-stimulated, infinitely-entitled Americans haven't felt attracted to quiet competence since the 1950s. We crave excitement and drama. Deeming ourselves uniformly exceptional, our politics - like every other aspect of our lives! - needs to feel like The Best!

To some tiny degree, I helped stoke that impulse. I'm still coming to terms with it.