From our overstocked archives: America's most dangerous extremists: the muddled, myopic, miasmic middle

Sam Smith

One of the greatest myths draped over this land is that the so-called wing nuts mainly come from the far right and left. And that there is, however, a wise and moderate establishment that will save us from their madness.

In fact, the real wing nuts are to be found in the middle. Mistaking their power for wisdom, corruption of principles for principled conscience, and unprovoked surrender for hard earned common sense, this syndicate of supercilious sycophants, having captured both public office and major media, spread disaster, death and decay with impunity.

Take, for example, the 60,000 some American troops killed in pointless wars beginning with Vietnam. Now count the number of political assassinations, hate murders, terrorist acts and so forth. There is simply no comparison.

Yet every war that we have fought in modern times has been the direct choice of the American establishment, those who pompously describe themselves as moderates, centrists, or biparistan.

Add to the military casualties, the disastrous war on drugs - which has failed to reduce either drug trafficking or use - and you can add several more thousand unnecessary deaths a year to the count.

Now, let us turn to less violent matters such as the American economy. For the past thirty years the American establishment has preached, created, legislated, manipulated and subsidized economic behavior which has led to the worst financial collapse since the Great Depression. While cheered on by the right, the hard work was done by self-proclaimed moderate politicians aided mightily by a deceitfully self-described "objective" media.

And what progressive or rightwing whackos created the climate crisis that will result in the deaths of millions and global misery? Again, that was the work of our educated and thoughtful establishment, the one that repeatedly told us not to worry about it and didn't have time to worry about it either.

Going back further, equality for women, blacks and gays would probably still not have made to the table if only the smug center had called the shots. And there would have been no environmental movement, for that matter.

In these cases, as in almost every great step of American progress throughout our history, it has not been the center that brought change, but the progressive left.

This doesn't mean that those on the left and right can't also be dumb, cruel or careless; only that, in fact, it has been consistently the cancerous center that has fouled things up to badly.

And will continue to do so.

We should stop treating them so kindly - whether they're at the White House, Congress, the Brookings Institution or on the editorial board of the NY Times. We should regard them as the arrogant, ignoramuses that they are, delusional in their self-regard, reckless in their behavior, and deeply dangerous in their results.

They sit still ensconced in their Washington manors like decaying British lords of a time well past as on some PBS Masterpiece Theater series. And the sooner we learn to treat them the same way, as ridiculous relics of a disastrous era rather than as purposeful guides to the future, the sooner we can begin to have a the state of our union worth talking about.