the contempt gap, again

This piece by Henry Farrell (not, I should note, a member of my fan club) on Clive Crook really gets at the essential bullshit of American centrism, which is that centrists aren't. As Farrell says,

I think it would be fair to say on the evidence that Clive Crook fancies himself as a centrist only interested in the pure and disinterested exercise of good policy judgment, but is in fact strongly (and even irrationally) motivated by his partisan animus against the left. I think it would also be fair to say that he’s at the ‘naked contempt towards dissenters’ end of the spectrum himself when those dissenters have the poor judgment to be leftwing.

This is certainly true of Crook, but it's worth saying that this is also true of American centrism writ large. Centrists may direct criticism in "both directions," but they inevitably treat arch-conservatism like reasonable ideas gone too far and radical leftists like lunatics who are out to destroy America. It's again indicative of a deeply skewed American political spectrum. Because genuine leftist sentiment has been effectively forbidden for so long, our whole conversation is off-balance. The extremes define the center. What's more, those on the edges draw heat and attention, making it easier for comrades to engage in their own work. When Paul Krugman is treated like a socialist and Clive Crook like a centrist, you've got a badly distorted political process at work. But in order to rebalance it, conventional progressives are going to have to stop constantly trying to achieve seriousness by renouncing those to their left. Doing so only plays into the hands of reaction.