What Middle Ground?

Since he was (figuratively) flogged in public over his choice to repeatedly equate neo-Nazis with people protesting against neo-Nazis, President Trump has sought solace in the safer arguments over the Confederate statue at the center of the rally there. He stopped questioning whether the people at the rally really were white supremacists, but he is painting their opposition to the removal of the statue of General Lee as a defense of "history," and "culture," which have broad resonance - although to be sure white supremacists will hear those words as a loud and clear endorsement.

It is clearly a shift designed to move himself onto firmer rhetorical ground, as there is significantly more support among Republicans for keeping the monuments in place than there is for open defense of hate groups. That is a reality that, I admit, I find rather difficult to understand. It seems odd to me that living white supremacists would be given such pointed censure by public figures, but at the same time the symbols of a rebellion fought in the name of white supremacy and in defense of race-based slavery would be treated with such reverence.

The issue is illustrative of the difficulties faced by conservatism - and by conservatism I mean an inclination toward preserving or only carefully modifying the existing social order - in an age of such dramatic upheaval. Thirty years ago, when there was no popular movement to remove Confederate monuments from public spaces, it was possible for conservatives to say that those monuments were simply historical pieces, and not see themselves as associated with white supremacists.

Today that possibility has vanished. One can no longer blithely talk about the history being commemorated by a statue of Robert E. Lee without considering the political and moral implications, precisely because the monuments have been made controversial by previously unheard or unheeded voices. As might be expected, as more and more of the country becomes nonwhite, the challenges to elements of white supremacy are becoming louder and have a more powerful political infrastructure behind them. "History" is not a reasonable defense of a monument when the moral mistakes of the Confederacy are still being made today in less garish form. 

Speaking more broadly, the political logic of conservatism is that social instability is bad and that the most efficient way to maintain stability is to protect the existing social structure, making modifications only as necessary. Yet in times of rapid social change, when that existing structure is inherently unstable, the logic of conservatism breaks down. When preserving the social order as it exists is no longer possible, what is a conservative to do?

The only options, it would seem, are to pick a side or to withdraw. Under these circumstances the most likely thing for anyone to do is to continue to fight the enemy they know. People react to situations that challenge core beliefs by pretending as though they don't exist. Yet, even that denial amounts to choosing a side. Defense of the status quo, at a certain point, is indistinguishable from support for the reactionary forces attempting to reverse the tide of change.

There is a fundamental tendency for chaotic political situations to radicalize everyone, even and perhaps especially those who don't realize it. When the questions being discussed are so fundamental to who we are as a society, the middle ground erodes beneath us. That doesn't mean that more extreme conflict is inevitable and there is no hope of reconciliation, but it does mean that before there can be reconciliation there must be a decisive victory for one side or another. Whether we were in the streets or not, whether we spoke out or not, we will know what side we were on.