It will be important to keep this model in mind as we go forward.
Turmoil and crisis favor polarization, and fear brings out the extremes of both sides who unfortunately tend to make the most noise, because they are often wrong but rarely in doubt.
It will be hard to maintain a centered approach if you are independent or moderate. The far right will see you as a leftist, and the far left will see you as on the right. This does not say much about you and your thinking, but more about them and their unbalanced approach to the serious problems facing the developed nations.
It is hard to talk reasonably to anyone holding a position that is not held in reason, by its very nature. And so we might find ourselves caught in the middle as it were when the histrionics start in earnest.
Even in matters of faith, there are conflicts with the distortions of the far right, who hold faith as a rationale for their own ends rather than an end in itself. I do not judge, but I can listen. And when someone holds forth about a God without compassion and love, and when they reject His own laws, they declare themselves for what they are, rather than anything about Him.
“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets.”
For a believer in one God, Jew, Moslem, or Christian, everything else is commentary, a 'how-to' and important for the individual on their particular Way, but tragically far too often a snare and a temptation, a place where people wish to hide, to avoid and resist obeying His righteous commands, and to feed their own passions and desires for power and privilege and place.
As for the irreligious far left, they are simply given in to the opposite pursuit of the will to power and glorification of the State (themselves) over all, in the manner of fascists but with a different name. The only freedom they truly desire is the freedom to dominate and enforce their wills as superior beings. They despise the common people, and that permeates their words. They view themselves apart, and most often don't want anything to do with them after the initial struggle is done and the people have bled for them.
This is why the so-called neo-conservatives were so easily able to shift from far left to far right. They still view the world in the same distorted ways, but with different labels. As Aristotle might have said, it is all a question of balance.
Neither side wants anything to do with the individual soul and spirit of genuine love. They are 'campaigners' fully engaged in expediency for their cause, and its end is power. This is why a period of reform is so often frought with danger of one extreme or the other.
This is all to say, remember, as uncomfortable as it may seem at times, as each side grows louder and more strident, you are not alone. Our calling is to stay the course, maintain the happy medium, and keep the fires burning, and the children fed and warm.
