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1. I’d argue there isn’t any moral or cultural center from which to prevent this fissioning to the poles. Civic nationalism was the glue that held things together, but now that the “moderate centrist,” position is that statues should be torn down and whites made to become second class minorities, where do you establish a middle-ground?

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   • What seems to me to be the case is that the real Red/Blue divide reflects a rivalry between different factions of the elite, i.e. the traditional WASPish plutocracy, and the rising upper middle class representing the left-wing of capitalism, the “newly rich,” urban cosmopolitan professionals, public sector bureaucrats, upwardly mobile minorities, etc. On the ground level the center still holds: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-is-more-in-touch-than-you-think/

     Both of the two major factions of the elite are concentration in their respective parties, and continue to reach out to the far fringes on the ground in order to build constituencies for themselves. So what we need at this point is a radical/revolutionary center that is 100% anti-state/ruling class/power elite, but rejects the extremes of left and right. The emergence of a movement of this kind would have the effect of marginalizing extremists while attacking the system from the middle.

     I like Adam Kokesh’s idea of running for president on a platform of abolishing the federal government: https://anarchast.com/adam-kokesh-on-running-for-non-president-relationships-and-10-days-of-ayahuasca/ But I don’t know how serious would be or how seriously anyone would take it. Something like that might be an effective means of building anarchism/libertarianism. But we probably need something a little more generic in the shorter term.

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2. I’d argue the elites are not divided, but in-fact were unified more by Trump than they have been in decades. The Anglo-Jewish plutocrats is transparently hostile to anything outside the general program I described before. Everyone from C-level Fortune 500 executives to adjunct professors in Marxist studies believe in the virtue of this initiative, as do the overwhelming majority of the civil servants who’ve implemented it thus far.

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   • I agree with that. The elites are divided among themselves into the Red and Blue teams, but that represents a intra-class divide, or perhaps a rivalry between the traditional elites and the left-wing of capitalism. But, yes, you’re right they certainly are united in their opposition to the values of the populist-right which tends to be primarily white working class. That goes without saying.

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     • You say that as though the white working class were a trivial sum. How does one propose centrism at the expense of the largest political cohort?

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       • I should clarify my previous comments a bit.

         I would certainly argue that the divide between the elites is real. The right-wing of the ruling class (the “old, rich, white males” hated by the Left) and the left-wing of the ruling class (the “liberal-Jewish-homosexual-globalists” hated by the alt-right) both oppose the interests of the traditional white working class but in different ways. The right-wing plutocrats might be fine with American patriotism and Christianity but they want cheap immigrant labor and the global economy. The left-wing plutocrats want neoliberal economics and cultural leftism. So the effect ends up being the same.

         The traditional white working class sees its interests being attacked in terms of declining economic security and living standards, the “race replacement” through mass immigration the WNs complain about, attacks on their culture and religion with everything from statue removals to transgender restrooms. So the traditional white working class regards itself as under attack on all fronts.

         However, this alone doesn’t explain the left/right divide on the ground level. For one thing, there seems to be a big divide among the white working class between those focused on economic and class grievances and those focused on cultural or racial grievances. The former tended to drift towards Bernie Sanders and the latter towards Trump, and there was only a marginal cross over in the election.

         https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/5/9/15592634/trump-clinton-racism-economy-prri-survey

         https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/05/white-working-class-trump-cultural-anxiety/525771/

         https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/05/its-time-to-bust-the-myth-most-trump-voters-were-not-working-class/?utm_term=.f628fed78894

         http://www.salon.com/2017/05/19/12-features-of-white-working-class-trump-voters-confirm-depressed-and-traumatized-multitudes-voted-for-him_partner/

         https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/15/upshot/the-obama-trump-voters-are-real-heres-what-they-think.html

         http://www.deseretnews.com/article/865681319/7-surprising-graphics-about-Trump-voters.html

         https://townhall.com/tipsheet/christinerousselle/2017/08/23/wow-12-percent-of-bernie-voters-voted-for-trump-n2372351

         At the same time, the center still holds in the sense that while there are plenty of divisions along different lines among the general population, the differences aren’t as pronounced as they are among the elites or on the margins as the survey I linked to before shows: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/trump-is-more-in-touch-than-you-think/

         While there is divisiveness among the general public, most people aren’t SJWs or Fox News junkies, nor are they interested in joining the neo-Nazis or the Antifa. This is what I meant when I said the center still holds at least on the ground level.

         I’m not sure how to develop a competitive radical center, though I agree it was have to address the concerns of white working class, but it couldn’t be exclusively rooted in the white working class. It would have to be broader than that.

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         • My main point is that there are plenty of people out there of all kinds of backgrounds who hate the system, but don’t want to be part of this lunatic stuff that goes on among the margins. That would have to be the base of a new radical center.

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           • Antifa is the “radical,” center. They’ve been endorsed by both democrats and republicans.

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             • I would be very skeptical as to whether the Democrats and Republicans actually approve of Antifa, and certainly most of the public doesn’t Right now, the Department of Justice is prosecuting about 200 of them for felony rioting charges during Trump’s inauguration. The system’s partisans may fight among each other but none of them like radicals whether Antifa, WNs, NS, anarchists, eco-radicals, Marxists, NOI, etc.

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