What is the Center?

Why democracy collapses without a shared reality—and how to hold the center without force

Photo by Leonardo Iheme on Unsplash

Some people are wired to crave stability. Others are wired to demand change. Neither impulse is wrong. The question is whether we can build systems that honor both.

This isn’t a new problem. It’s the fundamental tension of human social existence: how do we preserve enough continuity that people can orient themselves, pass something meaningful to their children, feel connected to something larger than themselves—while also adapting to new realities, correcting inherited injustices, making room for those who were excluded?

Every functional society has to answer this question. And for a while, liberal democracies had a pretty good answer: constitutional frameworks that allow the cultural frontier to move through democratic persuasion rather than through force. Institutions that manage change without chaos. Processes that respect both the need for stability and the inevitability of evolution.

That framework is collapsing. Not because the philosophy was wrong, but because the epistemic conditions it requires have been systematically destroyed.

Let me explain what I mean by starting with the psychology underneath our politics.

The Two Impulses

The conservative impulse is driven by a need for certainty in an uncertain world. Not evil. Not stupidity. But a psychological orientation that prioritizes stability, familiarity, and predictability over constant adaptation and change.

This isn’t pathological. Human beings need some stability. We can’t live in perpetual flux. Traditional hierarchies, inherited roles, cultural continuity—these things provide the predictability that allows people to make sense of their lives. They offer answers to fundamental questions: Who am I? Where do I belong? What should I do? What can I pass on to my children?

When the world feels chaotic, when change comes faster than people can process, when familiar landmarks disappear, the conservative impulse intensifies. It’s not about hating progress or fearing the new—it’s about needing some ground to stand on, some continuity to hold onto while everything else shifts.

The progressive impulse responds to a different truth: cultures evolve whether we want them to or not. What seemed natural and inevitable in one generation becomes intolerable in the next. Injustices that were once invisible become unbearable once seen. People who were excluded from the old order demand inclusion in the new one.

This impulse recognizes that tradition often means “the way things were for those who had power.” That stability often means “comfort for some, oppression for others.” That continuity can become calcification—preserving not what’s valuable but what’s merely familiar, including hierarchies that never deserved to be preserved.

The progressive impulse says: justice requires change. Inclusion requires adaptation. Human dignity requires that we keep pushing the frontier forward, making room for people and possibilities that previous generations couldn’t imagine or wouldn’t accept.

Both impulses are legitimate. Both respond to real features of human existence. Both are necessary for functional societies.

The conservative impulse without the progressive one produces stagnation, calcified hierarchy, injustice preserved as tradition. The progressive impulse without the conservative one produces disorientation, cultural vertigo, change so rapid that people lose their bearings entirely.

The question isn’t which impulse is correct. The question is: can we build systems that honor both? Can we manage the inevitable movement of the cultural frontier in ways that respect people’s capacity to process change within their own lifetimes?

The Democratic Center

For a while, we had an answer: the center—not as a position between extremes, but as the framework where conservative and progressive impulses can contest without force.

Not “moderate” in the sense of splitting differences. Not compromise that satisfies no one. But the institutional and epistemic space where both impulses can negotiate through democratic process rather than through violence.

The liberal framework—constitutional constraints, rule of law, democratic process, free expression—provides the structure within which both impulses can contest without one eliminating the other. It’s the container that allows change without chaos, pluralism without fragmentation, evolution without revolution.

Within this framework, the progressive impulse works through persuasion and institutional reform. You expand rights through democratic process. You correct injustices through legal change. You include the excluded through constitutional means. The frontier moves—but through methods that give people time to adapt, that respect their capacity to process change, that honor legitimate attachments to tradition even while interrogating and reforming it.

Within this framework, the conservative impulse works through cultural transmission and democratic resistance. You preserve valuable traditions not by state force but by making the case for their value. You resist changes that haven’t been adequately debated. You maintain enough continuity that people don’t feel completely unmoored. You slow the frontier when it’s moving faster than people can bear—but you don’t stop it, because you can’t, because the progressive impulse is responding to real injustices and real demands for inclusion.

This is the center: the acknowledgment that both impulses are necessary, and the commitment to managing their tension through democratic institutions rather than through force.

It requires something difficult: patience on both sides. Patience from progressives who want justice now and see any accommodation of traditional values as betrayal. Patience from conservatives who feel their world slipping away and want someone to just stop the change.

But when it works—when the center holds—you get something remarkable: societies that can evolve without tearing themselves apart. Cultures that can correct injustices while maintaining enough continuity that people don’t experience change as pure loss. Frontiers that move at a pace people can process, through methods that respect both the need for stability and the demand for justice.

That center is collapsing.

The Epistemic Destruction

Here’s what the center requires to function: a shared capacity to perceive reality and negotiate meaning through rational discourse.

The progressive and conservative impulses can coexist in productive tension only if people can agree on basic facts, engage in good-faith debate, change their minds based on evidence, trust institutions to adjudicate disputes fairly, and believe that democratic persuasion is possible.

Social media has demolished all of that. Not gradually or accidentally, but systematically, algorithmically, profitably.

The platforms don’t facilitate discourse—they weaponize engagement. They fragment reality into personalized feeds that confirm priors. Facts become tribal markers, opponents become enemies, complexity gets punished, outrage is rewarded.

People no longer inhabit a shared reality. They inhabit information bubbles optimized to maximize time-on-platform through anger, fear, and righteous superiority.

The result is epistemic collapse.

In that environment, the center becomes impossible. Not because the framework is wrong, but because the conditions it requires no longer exist.

You can’t negotiate the pace of cultural change when people can’t agree that change is happening. You can’t manage tension between progressive and conservative impulses when each side’s bubble makes the other look apocalyptic. You can’t respect tradition while correcting injustice when tradition itself becomes a weapon in culture war rather than a shared inheritance to be interrogated.

Social media turns every political question into tribal warfare.

The progressive impulse, amplified through algorithmic optimization, becomes: “Tradition is white supremacy and anyone who values it is fascist.” The conservative impulse, similarly distorted, becomes: “Change is cultural genocide and anyone pushing it is trying to destroy America.”

Both get amplified because both generate engagement. And the space between them—the center that says both impulses are legitimate and can be managed—gets squeezed into invisibility. Because moderation doesn’t trend. Nuance doesn’t go viral. Patient negotiation generates zero engagement compared to “They’re trying to destroy everything you love.”

This is why the authoritarian shortcut is tempting—now.

The Reactionary Response

When people can’t agree on reality, democratic persuasion becomes impossible. When democratic persuasion becomes impossible, only two options remain: accept cultural changes you can’t process, or impose your vision by force.

The reactionaries—those who want to reverse or freeze the cultural frontier—look at the progressive impulse amplified by social media into seemingly endless demands for immediate total transformation, and they conclude that persuasion has failed.

From inside their epistemic bubble, the frontier isn’t moving—it’s being demolished by elites who hold them in contempt. And the methods aren’t democratic persuasion—they’re cultural revolution.

So they embrace authoritarianism. Not because they’re evil, but because they’ve been convinced that only force can preserve what needs preserving. That constitutional constraints prevent them from defending their way of life. That democratic process produces unacceptable outcomes because the other side isn’t operating in good faith.

And here’s where the reprobates enter.

Donald Trump doesn’t care about tradition or stability or cultural continuity. He cares about power—absolute, unconstrained, unaccountable power.

But he recognized something crucial: there’s a coalition of people who feel the frontier moving too fast, who experience cultural change as loss, who are desperate for someone to make it stop. And in an epistemically collapsed environment, he doesn’t need to actually deliver stability. He just needs to deliver dominance over the right enemies.

So he promises to stop the frontier by force. To punish cities that vote wrong. To deploy federal agents against communities that represent the change people can’t process. To use ICE not as immigration enforcement but as cultural enforcement—making Latinos afraid to gather, to celebrate, to exist publicly in spaces of cultural power.

He doesn’t restore the past—because that’s impossible. But he performs stability through dominance. And in an epistemically collapsed environment where people can’t tell performance from reality, that performance is close enough.

Demagogues and the opportunists that surround them promise to stop the frontier. But what they deliver is domination. They promise stability through strength. But what they deliver is chaos that targets the right enemies. They promise to defend traditional America. But what they’re actually building is authoritarian America—where the executive branch uses federal power to punish cities that vote wrong, to intimidate ethnic minorities at cultural events, to conduct military-style operations against civilian populations.

When the executive branch uses its power to fight a culture war, that is fascism. The fusion of state power and cultural resentment. The use of government force to enforce ethnic and cultural hierarchy. The selective suspension of constitutional protections for disfavored groups.

The followers never get what they were promised because what they were promised was always impossible. You can’t restore a mythological past. You can’t stop cultures from evolving. You can’t eliminate pluralism once people have tasted freedom.

But as long as the right people are being hurt—as long as federal agents are raiding immigrant communities, as long as ICE is making Latinos afraid, as long as the cultural hierarchy is being enforced through state power—the performance is close enough.

This is the “sufferable evil” Jefferson warned about.

Each violation normalizes the next. Each accommodation lowers the threshold for what’s acceptable. Each time we decide this particular evil is bearable, we give permission for something worse.

Federal agents detained American citizens without individualized probable cause. They handcuffed children. They sorted people by race. They announced they’ll deploy to cultural events to intimidate ethnic minorities.

And half the country cheers. Or shrugs. Because it’s not happening to them. Because the targets are the right people. Because in their epistemically collapsed reality, this looks like defending America rather than destroying it.

What Holding the Center Requires

I don’t have easy answers. The epistemic environment that made the center possible has been systematically destroyed, and I don’t know how to rebuild it while the platforms that destroyed it continue to operate unconstrained.

But I know what holding the center requires: refusing to accept that force is the only option.

The progressive impulse is legitimate. Justice does require change. The excluded do deserve inclusion. Cultures do need to evolve. But that evolution must happen through persuasion that respects due process and individualized suspicion—not through cultural revolution that treats everyone who struggles with change as an enemy.

The conservative impulse is legitimate. People do need continuity. Traditions do carry value. Change does need to happen at a pace humans can process. But that need must be met through cultural transmission and democratic resistance—not through authoritarian force that shortcuts both persuasion and due process to freeze or reverse the frontier.

The frontier moves. Always has, always will. The question is whether we manage that movement through democratic institutions or through violence.

Right now, we’re choosing violence. Not all of us. Not consciously. But through accommodation, through shrugs, through deciding that each particular violation is sufferable as long as it’s not happening to us.

Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions—sufferable.
Children zip-tied and sorted by race—sufferable.
ICE deployed to cultural events as intimidation—sufferable.
American cities as military training grounds—sufferable.

Until it’s not. Until the sufferable becomes insufferable and we realize—too late—that we accommodated our way into something we can no longer escape.

We are watching that accommodation happen in real time.

The framework for managing the frontier through democratic institutions is collapsing. Social media has destroyed the epistemic conditions it requires. Reactionaries have embraced authoritarianism because persuasion seems impossible. And opportunists are exploiting all of it to eliminate constraints on their own power.

But accommodation isn’t inevitable. The choice to notice, to care, to say “this far and no further”—that choice still exists. For now.

You can choose to act.

Email your city council member and state attorney general today—two emails, ten minutes—formally requesting a Department of Justice Office of Inspector General review of the Chicago raid. Demand your representatives reaffirm that probable cause must be individualized, that proximity to suspected criminals doesn’t suspend Fourth Amendment rights. Make them record their vote. Make them take a position.

Delete one outrage-feed app for 30 days; commit to a longform forum or local civic group instead. The algorithms profit from your fragmentation—starve them while rebuilding the commons.

And render moral witness. Say clearly: this is wrong. Not as partisan talking point but as constitutional principle. Not as tribal signaling but as defense of the framework that protects everyone’s liberty, including those we disagree with.

Federal agents conducting warrantless mass detentions is wrong. Using ICE as cultural enforcement is wrong. Describing American cities as military training grounds is wrong. Using executive power to enforce cultural hierarchy is wrong.

Not because these things hurt the right people or the wrong people. But because the federal government has no business using its power to fight a culture war. That’s what makes it authoritarian. That’s what makes it fascist. That’s what makes it incompatible with constitutional democracy.

The Ground Approaches

Managing the frontier was never going to be easy. The tension between progressive and conservative impulses is real, permanent, and often painful. The center doesn’t eliminate that tension—it transforms it into something productive through institutional frameworks that allow both impulses to contest without one destroying the other.

But that framework requires conditions we’re losing: shared reality, good-faith discourse, trust in democratic process, belief that persuasion is possible.

Social media didn’t just change how we communicate. It destroyed the epistemic commons where democratic negotiation happens. It replaced shared reality with personalized bubbles. It optimized for tribal warfare over rational discourse. It made complexity impossible and outrage profitable.

And now we’re living with the consequences: reactionary authoritarianism rising because people can’t process the pace of change in an epistemically collapsed environment. Opportunists exploiting that fear to eliminate constitutional constraints. Federal power deployed not to govern but to dominate, not to serve all citizens but to punish disfavored groups.

This is the crisis of our time.

Not just Trump. Not just this administration. But the collapse of the framework that made democratic management of cultural evolution possible.

I don’t know how we rebuild that framework while the forces destroying it continue to operate. I don’t know how we restore shared reality when algorithms profit from fragmentation. I don’t know how we revive democratic discourse when tribal signaling is what gets rewarded.

But I know this: the alternative to managing the frontier through democratic institutions is managing it through force. And force doesn’t actually manage it—force just determines who gets hurt while the frontier moves anyway, because cultures evolve whether authoritarians want them to or not.

The reactionaries think they can stop the frontier through ICE raids and military intimidation and federal domination of cities that vote wrong. They can’t. They can only make the movement more violent, more chaotic, more destructive. They can only ensure that when change finally comes—and it always does—it comes catastrophically rather than through the patient work of democratic persuasion.

Each side’s bubble makes the other look apocalyptic. And the opportunists running the show don’t care about any of it except as means to consolidate power.

This is how democracies die. Not through honest ideological conflict, but through epistemic collapse that makes democratic conflict resolution impossible, followed by authoritarian promises to impose order by force.

The constitutional order is collapsing in real time. The epistemic environment that made democratic self-governance possible has been destroyed. The framework for managing the cultural frontier through persuasion rather than force is breaking down.

And most people are accommodating it. Each violation normalized. Each evil deemed sufferable. Each step toward authoritarianism accepted as long as it targets the right people.

This is how it happens. Not through some dramatic moment of obvious tyranny that everyone recognizes and resists. But through incremental violations that people are “more disposed to suffer” than to resist through the hard work of defending constitutional constraints.

The ground approaches. Not as metaphor but as reality. The impact when accommodation turns to catastrophe, when the sufferable becomes insufferable, when we realize we’ve given up more than we can get back.

But we’re not there yet. The choice still exists. The framework, though damaged, still holds—barely. The center can still be held, if enough people choose to hold it.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And cultures evolve whether we want them to or not.

The question isn’t whether the frontier moves. It’s whether we manage that movement through democratic institutions that respect both the need for stability and the demand for justice—or whether we surrender to authoritarians who promise to stop it by force and deliver only domination.

The progressive impulse is legitimate. The conservative impulse is legitimate. The center—the space where their tension gets negotiated through constitutional democracy rather than violence—worked for a while. Not perfectly. Not for everyone. But it provided a way to manage change without chaos. We’re watching it collapse. And we haven’t found a better answer.

But that answer requires epistemic conditions we’re losing. And until we recognize that social media has systematically destroyed those conditions, until we understand that algorithmic optimization for engagement is fundamentally incompatible with democratic discourse, we’re going to keep watching the authoritarian alternative gain ground.

Jefferson’s warning echoes across centuries. All experience shows that humans accommodate tyranny. The question is whether we will be the exception—whether we will notice, care, and act before accommodation becomes irreversible.

The ground approaches.

Hold the center. Or watch it collapse.

There is no third option.