"In basically every major institution in America, there are powerful figures who I doubt voted for Donald Trump but nonetheless play down the radicalism of the Republican Party, belittle those who speak honestly about it or otherwise act in ways that make it harder to combat that radicalism. That needs to change. Americans desperately need leaders and institutions that are fully grappling with Republicans’ dangerous antidemocratic drift. [snip]
"Here’s the big problem with all this performative centrism: Real harm is being done. It’s harder to push for changes to the Supreme Court when one of the liberal justices is playing down the danger. It’s harder to get political journalists to adapt to the radicalism of the GOP when some of the most prominent figures in the field suggest that covering Republicans honestly amounts to left-wing activism. It’s harder to prevent false information from reaching millions of Americans when the leaders of the biggest social media companies aren’t fully committed to that cause.
"Throughout the Trump era, a pattern has played out over and over: Those in the center or on the left, often women and people of color, warn that Republicans are about to take a radical step. They are cast as alarmist by institutionalists. Republicans take that radical step. The pattern repeats." -- Perry Bacon, Jr., writing in the Washington Post on "The Problem with Performative Centrism."
2 comments:
The problem -- THE problem -- with "performative centrism" is the problem with performative anything. Everything(*) has become performance. Everyone(*) goes through life as if they were playing a video game or acting in a movie. Which came first, the performativity or the unaccountability? Is the unaccountability in the service of the performance, or is the performance the determined outcome of a human lifetime of "LOL nothing matters"?
Frank -- good points, especially as you've qualified everything and everyone. Perhaps it's a desire to be in the spotlight, the hero, someone who has control over themselves and those around them? That would certainly fit the common understanding of the ego boosts Joe Manchin, and to a lesser extent, Sinema are enjoying from their performative behavior.
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