The Middle

[TxHoops]

This was written by a high school friend, who graduated a year behind me, and posted on social media.  As he states in the preamble, it’s lengthy but I found it worth the read.  I also found it deeply relatable so I thought I would share it here for those trying to exist with the craziness going on all around us:
 

“I know this is way too long for most of you to actually read, but for the few readers and thinkers in my orbit: I offer some (personal) thoughts on why political and cultural moderates like me are increasingly silent amidst all the violence and chaos that is rotting our great Republic.

WHY I’VE STAYED SILENT ON ALL OF IT

I used to imagine that someone in the political middle, someone aligned with neither of the extremes nor indifferent to public life, could speak up and help steady the discourse. I believed that moderation, reasonableness, and a willingness to hear the other side might have some purchase. But over time, watching how our public square has become not just loud but corrosively hostile, I’ve come to the conclusion that adding my voice now may well be pointless. I no longer speak if I cannot, or will not, be heard.

The primary reason for my silence is simple: in this moment, the middle voice barely rises above the din. Every statement is swallowed by louder, more polarized voices peddling arrogant certainty, misplaced grievance, and unmitigated fury. When reasonable claims get drowned out by emotionally charged slogans, one is forced to ask: what is the gain in speaking at all?

There is a bitter irony here: those who claim to defend “free speech” frequently turn on moderates who insist on nuance. The common tack taken by the most vocal on both sides is to invoke free-speech rhetoric only when it serves their side and may turn harshly on dissenters otherwise.

The Harper’s Magazine editorial  “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” (2020) warned that “[t]he intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty” now infects both sides.  

So, increasingly, moderate voices stay mute, partly out of self-defense: if your voice will only be used as a target, why volunteer it?

There is a second, deeper reason that I remain silent. In extreme environments, reasoned argument loses traction. When people are primed by anger, fear, or identity-based tribalism, they respond not to evidence but to narrative, symbolism, and emotional resonance. If a moderate speaks in calm tones, they risk seeming weak or irrelevant. If they raise their voice, they risk being absorbed into the very hell they wished to escape.

In that sense, the act of speaking may force us to adopt harsher tone, cruder frames, or safer alliances. But to do that, we sacrifice the very quality (temperance, nuance) that defines political moderation. And so I prefer silence to distortion, rejection, or complicity in the poison.

There is a kind of tragic resonance here with Faulkner’s observation in The Sound and the Fury (via Quentin):

“Because no battle is ever won … The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

That line haunts me: it suggests that the spectacle of conflict lays bare our own weaknesses, not any grand moral certainty. Speaking in that field can feel like rehearsing a folly, repeating the despair.

But my silence does not signify my apathy. Nor does it signify my complicity (though, admittedly, silence sometimes serves complicity). Rather, it is a recognition of my limits and the dangers I see in shallow participation. I still observe, read, and reflect. Sometimes I counsel others or intervene quietly. But I no longer assume that public utterance is the same as influence.

As a moderate, I’ve come to feel that meaningful change, if it ever happens, will not come from the loud center but from the margins pushing morality, from trust reknit in communities, and from slow, patient civic repair. The public arena is too polluted, too weaponized, to welcome a voice of neither fury nor absolutism.

Thomas Jefferson counseled, “Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.”   He was not denying political engagement, but warning that the constant clamor of politics can drown out inner reason. I take that advice seriously now.

So here I remain, publicly silent, though not disengaged. I judge that when the cost of speech is loss of integrity—or worse, being a caricature in someone else’s war—it is sometimes less damaging to the soul to stay quiet. I am not proud of this silencing. But it is what remains to someone in the middle who still wants to learn, to reflect, and to preserve some interior coherence.

If ever the air clears, if reason again finds traction, I may speak. But until then, I wait.”

[baddog]

I read all of it. Makes me stop and think, which was the purpose of the article. Thanks for sharing.

[AggiesAreWe]

That speaks loudly.

Awesome post.

[Big girl]

1 hour ago, TxHoops said:

This was written by a high school friend, who graduated a year behind me, and posted on social media.  As he states in the preamble, it’s lengthy but I found it worth the read.  I also found it deeply relatable so I thought I would share it here for those trying to exist with the craziness going on all around us:
 

“I know this is way too long for most of you to actually read, but for the few readers and thinkers in my orbit: I offer some (personal) thoughts on why political and cultural moderates like me are increasingly silent amidst all the violence and chaos that is rotting our great Republic.

WHY I’VE STAYED SILENT ON ALL OF IT

I used to imagine that someone in the political middle, someone aligned with neither of the extremes nor indifferent to public life, could speak up and help steady the discourse. I believed that moderation, reasonableness, and a willingness to hear the other side might have some purchase. But over time, watching how our public square has become not just loud but corrosively hostile, I’ve come to the conclusion that adding my voice now may well be pointless. I no longer speak if I cannot, or will not, be heard.

The primary reason for my silence is simple: in this moment, the middle voice barely rises above the din. Every statement is swallowed by louder, more polarized voices peddling arrogant certainty, misplaced grievance, and unmitigated fury. When reasonable claims get drowned out by emotionally charged slogans, one is forced to ask: what is the gain in speaking at all?

There is a bitter irony here: those who claim to defend “free speech” frequently turn on moderates who insist on nuance. The common tack taken by the most vocal on both sides is to invoke free-speech rhetoric only when it serves their side and may turn harshly on dissenters otherwise.

The Harper’s Magazine editorial  “Letter on Justice and Open Debate” (2020) warned that “[t]he intolerance of opposing views, a vogue for public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty” now infects both sides.  

So, increasingly, moderate voices stay mute, partly out of self-defense: if your voice will only be used as a target, why volunteer it?

There is a second, deeper reason that I remain silent. In extreme environments, reasoned argument loses traction. When people are primed by anger, fear, or identity-based tribalism, they respond not to evidence but to narrative, symbolism, and emotional resonance. If a moderate speaks in calm tones, they risk seeming weak or irrelevant. If they raise their voice, they risk being absorbed into the very hell they wished to escape.

In that sense, the act of speaking may force us to adopt harsher tone, cruder frames, or safer alliances. But to do that, we sacrifice the very quality (temperance, nuance) that defines political moderation. And so I prefer silence to distortion, rejection, or complicity in the poison.

There is a kind of tragic resonance here with Faulkner’s observation in The Sound and the Fury (via Quentin):

“Because no battle is ever won … The field only reveals to man his own folly and despair, and victory is an illusion of philosophers and fools.”

That line haunts me: it suggests that the spectacle of conflict lays bare our own weaknesses, not any grand moral certainty. Speaking in that field can feel like rehearsing a folly, repeating the despair.

But my silence does not signify my apathy. Nor does it signify my complicity (though, admittedly, silence sometimes serves complicity). Rather, it is a recognition of my limits and the dangers I see in shallow participation. I still observe, read, and reflect. Sometimes I counsel others or intervene quietly. But I no longer assume that public utterance is the same as influence.

As a moderate, I’ve come to feel that meaningful change, if it ever happens, will not come from the loud center but from the margins pushing morality, from trust reknit in communities, and from slow, patient civic repair. The public arena is too polluted, too weaponized, to welcome a voice of neither fury nor absolutism.

Thomas Jefferson counseled, “Be a listener only, keep within yourself, and endeavor to establish with yourself the habit of silence, especially in politics.”   He was not denying political engagement, but warning that the constant clamor of politics can drown out inner reason. I take that advice seriously now.

So here I remain, publicly silent, though not disengaged. I judge that when the cost of speech is loss of integrity—or worse, being a caricature in someone else’s war—it is sometimes less damaging to the soul to stay quiet. I am not proud of this silencing. But it is what remains to someone in the middle who still wants to learn, to reflect, and to preserve some interior coherence.

If ever the air clears, if reason again finds traction, I may speak. But until then, I wait.”

I agree