An Extreme Moderate

Woe is me -- for I am a moderate.

Over the past several weeks, I have watched my staunchly partisan friends exchange barbs, guffaw at the opposition, and proudly display support for their own. Moderates like me silently observe, feeling awkward about joining in.

The fervor that rages at either end would say the simple solution would be for me to just pick a side, of course, hoping I would pick THEIR side. But choosing sides isn't so simple.

One doesn't become a moderate out of cowardice or ignorance or shortage of passion, but more out of lacking. There lacks a candidate and a party that encompasses all of the important elements for me. There are issues on both sides that I feel very strongly about -- but never in my lifetime will there be a single American political entity to embrace it all.

One's political views comes from one's upbringing, belief systems, cultural priorities, and life experiences. As a moderate, to figure out who to vote for, I take into account my complicated amalgam of policy preferences, and then assign weights to each philosophical contention and each practical matter. Then I look wistfully at the items I have assigned less weight to, for those are the very things of meaning and import that I must be prepared to let go, as I vote according to the weight.

I envy my decidedly decided friends, or people who have a single issue that makes up their minds -- their choices are unequivocally clear. My composition is such that I am increasingly stuck in the middle, feeling tugs on both sides.

My partisan friends are either happy or sad with the election results; but with each and every election, I am always upset, because some issue I identify with has to be sacrificed. And oddly enough, just as I can't relate to my friends' vivid blueness or redness, they probably can't understand how I can be purple.

Nevertheless, I have enjoyed watching my friends express themselves. It's all part of who they are -- and I wouldn't want it any other way. I can appreciate and recognize where they're coming from, why they think as they do, and why they feel so compelled to share their feelings with everyone. It's something uniquely and beautifully American that we can openly agree or disagree and still love and respect each other, or at least, peacefully co-exist.

So here I am with a heavy heart, as usual, on Election Day Eve. Because no matter how this turns out, I will have to grieve for positions I hold dear.