Uncompromising & Coming Through

To walk the path of survival, we must hold fast to our values and use our imaginations

Illuminated path by Shawn on Unsplash

Under authoritarianism, there is no middle ground.

With whom, on what point, would we negotiate?

What, or whom, would we sacrifice?

What would we — those of us who remained — receive in return?

Would they give us even a bit more time?

We should keep trying, realizing there’s no middle ground

A month before Trump’s inauguration, Denny Carter wrote against doomerism. He said that, by insisting “we’re ‘cooked’,” we’re merely insulating ourselves “with layer after slimy, toxic layer of irony…there is no future with such an approach, and it’s exactly what the bad guys want us to do.”

After the inauguration, he reflected that, during the first Trump term, faith in bipartisanship had been common, enough at least “to make folks believe there was a middle ground, a compromised path out of Trumpism.” During the subsequent Biden era, however, such compromise in action “failed spectacularly,” such that, at a rally in 2025, he overheard an elderly woman acknowledge: “There is no middle ground anymore.” True, he admits; MAGA can’t be compromised…