For over thirty-five years I was a Liberal Democrat who strong believed in, and stood by the Liberal push for voting rights, civil rights, gender rights, and women’s rights. But beginning in the Regan era and getting worse every year, the Democratic Liberal agenda began moving further and further to the left even as the Right Wing Evangelical Christian right backed Conservative Republicans moved further and further to the right. Each side attacked the other, blamed each other of every single one of America’s ills as defined by ‘the two parties’ that had little to do with the public at large.
Next the Progressive joined the Liberals and a new left wing nightmare was created. And now primarily the “only two existing ideologies are the far left and far right extremism, with neither side cognizant of or even caring that Americans are worried about much more than the wall, detainees and dreamers. Most moderates, myself included, support immigration reform and an end to detaining immigrant children as they are more like the Japanese internment camps in the U.S. during WWII. But we are worried about so much more, as well.
Following the 2018 mid-terms I realized the Liberal or Progressive factions of the Democratic party was no longer the party I had supported for years. They had become too centered on engaging in a battle with the far right and focused on only 4–5 issues like free Medicare for all; the wall; the detainees and immigration as if nothing else matters and have developed the same “my way or no way” mentality as Trump and Conservatives in Washington. Both continue to paint themselves out to be the party of the people, the only ones in tune with what Americans want or need, the answer to all our problems, and willing to work across the isle and seek to compromise if need be, e.g. The problem is, it has all been shown it is just lip service to get votes on both sides.
And in the end — — it is still just politics as usual. I am now aligned with the centrist a.k.a. Moderate faction of the Democratic party and am an independent thinker. And although most Liberals — Progressives just can’t fathom the idea, myself like millions of other Democrats remain socially Liberal but Economically Conservative as we move more to the center or become Independents. I don’t want to see my three adult children’s tax dollars pay for free college tuition, free health care, etc. when they are already paying off their own student loans.
As an average American and a senior living in a small dying city of 48,000 and a grassroot political and social advocate for families and children, myself and millions of ‘other Americans’ worry about police brutality against minority populations, the Native American indigenous populations and their lives, crimes against women and children, gun violence, MH issues and the opioid crisis along with its effects on children and families, the delivery of health care services to isolated rural communities with NO doctor or clinic — hospital for up to 100 mi. away, disability and senior services, the continued outsourcing of jobs, etc. But the far left and the far right simply do not listen or put their own extremist spin on our concerns.
