Can Political Centrism Survive the Digital Age?

Previously discussing centrism I have stressed how much it has been a creation of the mid-century period, and especially of Cold War anti_Communism, such that it seems to me more useful to think of centrism as a species of conservatism (specifically, the more flexible, adaptable, bend-rather-than-break, pick-its-battles side of the conservative tradition, rather than the heels-digging variety associated with the hard right) rather than mere middle-of-the-roadness, or "practical" non-philosophy.

However, it also seems to me that centrism was a product of the mid-century media universe as well, with this evident in its attitude toward public discourse—centrism's sense of what are s legitimate boundaries, with certain viewpoints, certain modes of argument, acceptably "pragmatic," "pluralist" and "civil," and others not, and in line with the sense that the dialogue had to be carefully managed, carefully gatekept, against the latter. Those espousing this view seem to think it a great thing that the sources of information, the forums in which that information and the views based on it could be discussed, were few in number, making them more easily manageable, and the public dialogue along with them. Others took a more critical view of the matter, but it does seem worth noting that those unsatisfied with the center had few alternatives, enabling the center "to hold."

By contrast, with broadcasting given way to the Internet and its opportunities for innumerably more "channels" of communication, those dissatisfied with the center find it easier to present and to access such alternatives today--and are perhaps given more reason to do so with the center, in spite of being defined by its facilitation of compromise, actually less given to compromise of any kind. Indeed, it sometimes seems to me that with the mainstream so often seeming to speak in a single voice on many issues, and offer a lame "both sidesism" when it does not, those looking for any other view at all find themselves going elsewhere--and perhaps very easily pulled toward views far more extreme than they might otherwise have interested themselves in simply because the range of what centrism deemed allowable was so limited and so unsatisfactory.

In such a situation centrism would seem to be backfiring--and quite frankly the way centrists pine nostalgically for that earlier age in which everybody watched three channels that offered pretty much the same thing seems to bespeak their lack of ideas about how to cope with the present situation, which may be a feature, not a bug. After all, one way of coping with the situation would be to reconsider how the boundaries of the legitimate have been drawn, engaging with rather than simply shutting out anything that does not fit within the very tight confines of today's centrist-gatekept discourse. But in that event centrism would become something other than it has been--ceasing to be centrism.