Articles at Quillette tend to be long, and this by Benjamin Kerstein is no exception. An American who lives in Israel, he writes about the polar forces trying to pull apart the country of his birth, as seen from a distance.
His article is, for these days, amazingly even-handed. It’s a plea for an activist center that seems mostly unenergized and inactive in our supposedly ‘United’ States.
Kerstein sees the left jonesing to wander off into a faux-utopian mess like Venezuela or Cuba, while the right imagines an authoritarian strong man overcoming the self-perpetuating uniparty blob. He imagines some kind of Balkanization of city-vs-rural separation ending up in Somalia-like militias and warlordism.
Kerstein gives Joe Biden credit for a centrism of which I don’t see much evidence, and for lowering the presidential profile, which he certainly has done. It is a substantially insightful analysis. Hat tip to RealClearPolicy for the link.
Afterthought … Another Benjamin - Franklin - is supposed to have answered a question about the nature of the embryonic new government the founders had just designed, describing it as “A republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin’s caveat seems particularly prescient in these fraught days.
