Welcome to The Middle, an Enchanted Land Where Compromise and Civility Get Results

Welcome, my weary fellow citizen. Take off your coat, have a seat. It’s vicious out there in the Partisan Land. Luckily, you’ve entered a more civil realm, a realm that honors Solutions and Realism, not Extremism and A Living Wage. You’re in The Middle now.

You’ve arrived at the perfect time of year. It’s mating season for the Public-Private Partnerships, and the pungent aroma of freshly inked contracts permeates the air. Don’t be ashamed if you find it a little erotic — many of us do.

On warm nights, when the winds of Leadership, Innovation, and NPR all blow at just the right time, accomplishments bloom all around us. Sometimes, the accomplishments are small, like paying homage at the funeral of a war criminal, or casting the only dissenting vote in the U.N. on Israel. But sometimes the accomplishments are great and will reverberate for generations to come, like the Iraq War.

If you thirst, drink deeply from the River of Polite Discourse. Don’t actually drink from it, because we’ve found traces of amphelamitide-9 since the river’s sanitation was privatized a few moons ago. That was one of our most thrilling Public-Private Partnerships ever, because it was about a basic human need. You’ll have to buy some bottled Polite Discourse over in that vending machine.

Keep your camera ready, and you might catch the Republicans and Democrats spontaneously holding hands and dancing together, dancing in a beautiful circle around Henry Kissinger!

Of course, the best time to visit the Middle is during our most important ritual: an election. In elections, all of the people of The Middle generously donate their humble earnings to their Parties, and the Parties in turn offer it up to The Wise Consultants in exchange for their Visions, which become TV spots. It’s like Christmas, except Santa comes to take toys from your house and bring them all to the North Pole, and the elves have been replaced by contracted 1099 temps.

I remember after my first election, I was feeling a little punchdrunk and got this tattoo of the word “Process.”

There’s our theater, where a production of Hamilton is performed 24/7. Because of the demanding schedule, the actors went on strike — so we had them replaced with a team of animatronic POC’s built by Tesla! That’s Solutions. That’s The Middle.

Even though most of the country consists of baying packs of vengeful Partisans, we know that we can win the future by giving them back their pride in America — rather than by giving them, say, healthcare.

Where, other than The Middle, could we work ourselves into a frenzied state of Mutual Respect powerful enough to replace a public school with a charter school? Or address the coming doom of climate change by putting a couple solar panels on a suburban couple’s roof? We’re setting our sights lower than ever so that we won’t miss any little crumbs of Progress on the floor. When you pursue JFK’s vision of “Idealism Without Illusions,” who knows what kind of incremental change is possible!

We know how to have fun, too! On a Saturday night, when we want to mix it up, we enjoy a few Spiked Seltzers and engage in one or two of the following activities:

Taking a Stand (Tweeting)

Respectfully Debating What We Imagine the Constitution Smells Like

Making a Graph Which Mathematically Proves That All Lives Matter Equally

Admitting Which Strongman Ally We Have a Crush One

But as you know, the Middle is under threat. Listen, and you can hear the guttural howling of the Left. Every day, they grow bolder. Every day, they employ new forms of barbarism against our democracy: proposing policies, criticizing politicians, even running for office. If there’s something more dangerous to a democracy than running for office, I’m not sure what it is.

And what bizarre looking creatures! Their skin glows, their eyes sparkle. They are so unlike us, the only word that can describe their alien appearance is… “young.” I guess what I’m saying is they’re young. Violently young.

No one knows who the billionaires funding them are. Probably Russia, though.

Ah, the Right, of course. The Right. Funny people. Yes, we welcome the Right, as well. In fact, we make a great effort to accommodate their strange beliefs and customs. You see, it is crucial that we understand the Right. Without the Right, we wouldn’t be the Middle anymore! Without the right, we would be the right. Not that we’re to the right of The Left. We’re just, ah middle-er than them.

You see, society is like a majestic horse, a majestic horse with GPS. If you don’t push it too hard, it will naturally take you somewhere better. But if you demand that it goes in any particular direction, it will become a Nazi horse. We are perpetually moving toward a juster, better-er society, but if anyone tries to actively make it too much betterer, then it will, in fact, get worse. And it can’t get any worse!