The Radioactive Middle

Spectrum-wise, no one wants to spend any time in the middle. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm finding it a very intriguing question. I've lately been bemoaning the fact that the two churches we have recent attachments to are each too far to one end, and I feel like there is a gaping vacuum in each experience. Maybe we just need to try more churches--it seems like being consigned to what Jesus (in Revelation) lambastes as lukewarmness would be all too prevalent in the modern church.

Today's New York Times columnists were Bob Herbert and David Brooks. I generally find Bob Herbert to be very good, and since Barack Obama has been elected president it is as though Mr. Herbert has been electrified. After eight-plus years of being worn down by right-wing ascendency, during which I'm sure he began to feel like Don Quixote, he has risen to the occasion of putting some wonderful commentative pressure "out there" to keep it liberal and not give in to compromising away all that has been won just yet.

David Brooks occasionally says something I agree with, but most of the time he really gets on my nerves. Most of the time I don't read him unless the blurb sounds like something out of the ordinary. Today, the two of them made my case that not only does no one want to spend any time in the middle, there seems to be a willful blinkeredness to any issues of one's own side.

Herbert's column today talks about the middle class crunch of the last three decades, and how the Republicans have been trying to reverse the New Deal. I agree with pretty much everything in the column, except that the downfall of the New Deal and the popularity of trickle-down economics is not simply due to the Republican agenda. It is due also in no small part to the fact that the Democrats and the unions drove their agenda to its extreme, with no regard to whether the outcomes were sustainable or fair to business. I'm not suggesting we're anywhere near needing to warn against going to far, but to put down how we got here solely to Republican meanness without taking any responsibility for overindulgence on the part of unions is not telling the whole story.

Then we have Brooks. (Here I had to delete quite a rant about the bulk of his column until I stumbled upon the paragraph that supports the thesis.) In the middle of his lecture to fellow Republicans about what they should be doing, he characterises our current crisis as follows: "When exogenous forces like the rise of China and a flood of easy money hit the global marketplace, they can throw the entire system of out of whack, leading to a cascade of imbalances: higher debt, a grossly enlarged financial sector and unsustainable bubbles."

Did you see that? The rise of China and the flood of easy money--that was what caused our problems. Nothing at all to do with any Republican policies.

(Also, Obama, or better yet the Republicans, should "fix" the banking problem. And not by letting Citigroup fail or by nationalizing it. They should get out there with "initiative-grabbing" approaches. I agree! I told you occasionally I agree with him. :-)