A Centrist Cri de Cœur

Can't we fight for a better tomorrow?

We, the generations of the 1990s and 2000s of the West, grew up convinced that the future would be, if not smooth sailing, at least predictable — we thought we would be spared the horrors and uncertainties of changing times. We learned about wars and dictators in History class as far-away memories; comparable contemporary events seemed distant from the comfort of the West’s apparent ideological victory over evil. The future was so comforting then. It was a future where the world would be freed by democracy, in which poverty would be eradicated by progress, where our principles could not be put back into question and would come to become universal norms.

Then came waves of terrorist attacks — we fought back. After, Russia’s annexation of Crimea — our governments protested. Extremism began to dictate our politics — we built a smokescreen of political correctness, naively thinking it was a floodwall. We have gotten to a point where we aren’t fighting anymore.

The United States, once the mightiest democratic force, has now re-elected the embodiment of these changing times. This is yet another wake-up call which we cannot passively ignore. Throughout the world, leaders are increasingly subverting democracies, invading countries, and killing innocents while the world suffers the consequences. The world we thought to be permanent is crumbling around us. Our world without History has turned out to be a fleeting mirage.

These men — these ageing, sordid men — what right have they to rob us of the dreams of our youth? The generation of individualistic leaders currently taking an axe to our hopes for the future grew up in a world which they knew could get better. They saw how the flowers growing from the ruins of the Second World War could bloom into something great; they lived through the end of the Cold War and the incredible advances which the following years brought to so much of the world. Yet their selfishness trumped all of that.

We are at an inflexion point. The system we live in has not evolved significantly since 1945, and we are confronted with the fact that papering legislation over the cracks in the system is no longer working. Countries, especially in Europe, can no longer adequately respond to crises with the deficits they have accumulated over the years. They can’t fight the deficits because taxation on the majority is already too heavy and can’t tax multinational corporations or the ultra-wealthy, because they have us in a chokehold. The global system — by that I mean the overarching capitalistic, institutional framework and ideology — is failing, constraining, and suffocating us. We, the youth of today, the hope of the future, cannot let the following century be sacrificed at the altar of a few men’s self-interest. We cannot be like the masses of our ancestors a century ago who, from concession to compromise, from submission to complacency, sleepwalked into the depths of humanity’s barbarity.

This is why figures promising revenge, retribution, and miracle solutions are elected — they are the only ones questioning the system. We cannot blame people for voting for them because they are the only ones who speak about changing things; they are the only ones who give hope to many. Maintaining the status quo no longer works because the status quo no longer works.

What is needed today, what will be necessary tomorrow — if we are not to fall into the trap of authoritarianism — is an alternative. We need well-meaning moderates to offer real change. Ambitious leadership, willing to sacrifice the relics of the past whether ideological or institutional, is the only way to move us away from the precipice we are running towards. If we want to change something, if we want to be united once more, we have to fight for an overhaul. I am not a revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination — I am a centrist, a moderate, a humanist. I believe that people are good when given a choice when given hope. That is what we need now: moderates who promise a better tomorrow by changing the basis on which our world exists. We have to be willing to change constitutions, laws, and foreign policy which don’t contribute to a fairer world. We have to be willing to recapture the narrative and break down the media corporations which imprison so many people in univocal bubbles. We must listen, care, and rebuild.

We could slash inequality if the world agreed to set up a common level of minimum taxation for individuals and corporations alike. We could ease the scars in the world if we put our selfish interests to one side and worked together in good faith, North and South, East and West. Maybe I’m grasping at straws; perhaps I’m an idealist, but I think I’m a realist. The old world, the one that we live in, is dying and Trump is but a symptom of the sclerosis. Only hope, a new outlook and a new capacity to put everything back into question will save us from going down with it. We need a moderate international willing to break whatever stands in the way of change. We need a centrist revolution to survive. 

Illustration by Liza Vasilyeva