Having thought about this carefully¹, I have concluded that my position is the rational middle. All other positions are inexplicably extremist while I have carefully cultivated an intelligent rational position. Unusual among Mankind, I have been blessed with the power to apply reason to terrible subjects. It is sad that all the other people are such extremists for if they weren't we could have had such productive discourse. I could've convinced them of how right I am by application of reasoned discussion of evidence. But alas, I stand beset on all sides by irrational fear-mongers, violent identitarians, and wishful communists. Disgusting.

Naturally, any rebuke of my position is evidence of their extremism, for steeped in their emotion they are unable to be rational. I, on the other hand, am wise beyond belief, empowered by the reason that Nature and my own path to self-growth have given me.

¹ To be clear, I always think about things carefully. I only mention this because it is clear that almost everyone else doesn't, as evinced by the fact that they do not agree with me.

Long time lurker, made an account just to commend the parent post. Then I read your post and made the account just to commend you. While everything he said is true, that doesn't necessarily mean that the truth is between the two candidates or two parties as it may imply. There is a status quo of mild corruption that has happened throughout almost any leadership, and there is an acute enemy to principles that hold modern and just societies in place.

There is no rational middle. Liberalism, the 18th and 19th century ideology that America was built on, is really just a truce between the monarchists and the jacobins. Everyone in between is simply confused.

I can’t speak for the person you’re asking, but Tulsi Gabbard is representative of what I see as the rational middle.

The only way you can see Tulsi as the "middle" is because the overton window has slammed so far right. In a rational society, Biden and Obama would be considered middle and AOC/Bernie left.

You may be right. I may be right. You may view my response here as a false equivalency. Others might be frustrated and view one position as extreme and another as not. There likely is a false equivalency, but it will differ depending on who you ask.

This gets to a larger point. When the country was first founded, the different religious and political factions deeply distrusted each other. Religion was extremely important, and those who differed were considered wrong and/or corrupted in a way much deeper than I think modern, non religious people fully understand.

And yet despite this, they managed to cooperate with each other. It wasn’t perfect. And it didn’t always work; we did have a civil war. But it allowed for a regional plurality between peoples that were deeply different and factional, and no doubt considered the others evil or dangerous or a threat.

The only means by which I think we can escape this is a return to a respect for local autonomy. Allow people to shape the law where they live as they desire and reduce nationwide impositions. Give more authority to the states to create the world in which the people there want. If you think others would be trapped in repressive systems, give them a means by which to escape to yours.

Evil is perpetrated by violent coercion. The beliefs might be come to voluntarily, and may be more common in one framework than another. But the actual execution of evil requires coercion, which usually seems justified to the person perpetrating it.

Because the law inevitably requires coercion, coercion itself cannot be eliminated without lawlessness. But the laws people concede to can and should be varied. The social contract is only valid if the people have a choice. If we allow people that choice, people will flee the systems which coerce them unjustly, and they will wither. It will be painful to endure systems that seem obviously terrible without intervening. But there is no other way to audit your own biases then to let the people in each system decide which is better over time themselves, and no other way to avoid the inevitable violent conflict of imposing your values onto others who fundamentally disagree with them.

You misrepresent Rep. Tulsi Gabbard. She is no rightist. She has been one of the few voices for pacifism in Congress in the last decade.

In most countries around the world, Sanders' policies are mainstream.

That's not entirely true, Sanders often doesn't support gun control

Yeah. Compared to the rest of the world, the entire left half of the political spectrum is more or less missing in the US.

The democrats are a center right party. The republicans are at this point, a far right party. It has been a deliberate strategy of the far right to paint the center as "socialism" (which a lot of Americans seem to mistake for communism...), because it makes their ideology seem less extreme. A lot of Americans have fallen for that nonsense, unfortunately. Definitions and framing and perspective matters a lot.

Honestly, socialism should be re-branded in the US as "Canadianism" or "Scandanavianism" to break free of that branding problem.

Americans aren't against socialized medicine or safety nets, just the "socialism" boogieman.

That’s not true. America, or at least its coastal big cities, leads the world in identity leftism. That is, the kind of leftism that finds its base in gays, transgenders, criminals, and other social “losers” (as opposed to economic losers) and their sympathizers. In fact, American leftists have contempt for the working class that used to form the base of old, economic leftism. They despise crass, vulgar, manly working men.

It’s obviously more complicated than this, but that’s the 5000 foot view.