Spectrum

I have long felt that the practice of characterizing political positions as "left" or "right" with the qualifiers "center", "moderate" and "extreme" to be erroneous and even misleading. I understand this practice originated with the seating of members of the French National Assembly after the Revolution of 1789 from the perspective of the Speaker - the aristocracy and high-ranking clergy favoring the upper class to the right and the commoners and low-ranking clergy favoring the middle and lower classes to the left. The implication is that political opinion falls along a band like the colors in a spectrum. This works, but only to an extent. If, however, we look at the extremes on both sides they begin to resemble each other. I compare this phenomenon to the scene at the end of George Orwell's Animal Farm where the pigs start to resemble the hated (and deposed) human masters. This has been the case historically and is happening again now. I am referring to the positions espoused by former President Trump and his supporters. The most glaring example of this extremism is, of course, the attempts to reverse the result of the 2020 election by any and all means. As of now, it is not clear if Trump will be brought to justice for his actions. But the election-related activities of Trump supporters are just the tip of the iceberg. Measures like book banning in schools and libraries, dictating what and how students are taught in schools and colleges, gerrymandering aimed at disenfranchising minorities and enactment of draconian abortion laws criminalizing women seeking help with complications of pregnancy and their doctors all somehow in the name of individual liberty, to mention the most egregious items on their agenda, may not run afoul of the letter of the law. But they sure don't pass the sniff test. Whitewashing of history with regard to slavery and other issues is reminiscent of the airbrushing of Politburo portraits in the Soviet Union. If you have not yet caught my drift, we are looking at dictatorial, authoritarian and totalitarian policies being promoted by the Party which used to swear by Lincoln and Reagan and now bows to the golden calf of Trumpism. This is where the spectrum model breaks down. The impartial observer and student of history can easily see the resemblance of the Trump Republicans to fascist and communist regimes of the past and present. In other words, the extreme Right is indistinguishable from the extreme Left. Rather than a band, the political "spectrum" is like a circle where the extreme Right and Left are diametrically opposite to us "the People". What the two have in common is hubris, paranoia and certitude which blinds them to the possibility that they could be wrong. The most recent example of this is the attempt by Ohio Republicans to raise the threshold for passage of constitutional amendments to 60% so as to prevent voters from overturning laws they find unacceptable. The "People" saw the move for what it was, a power grab, and turned out in large enough number in the middle of a hot summer in an off-election year to defeat the proposal. People power is on display too, indirectly, in the way Republicans have started to try to sound "reasonable" on the issue of climate change. The party line now is that climate change is real and may even have something to do with human activity, but that it is does not call for drastic measures. Tell that to the residents of Lahaina, Hawaii. Wary as the Founding Fathers were of political parties which they called factions, they could not find an acceptable way to prevent people from organizing in this way. It falls to the People and, in particular, to middle-of-the-roaders to deny extremists in our midst the chance to put an end to the Republic. To quote Benjamin Franklin, what we have is a Republic - if we can keep it.