The middle isn’t easy to find

Most Wednesday nights I go to U.S. Pizza with a group of guys, most of whom I’ve known since grade school or college.

We’ve shared hours in duck blinds. We’ve lost countless golf balls together, and our kids know each other. We discuss things like the ups and downs of the Hogs, when duck season should really end, and who just divorced who. You know: guy stuff.

For the record, I prefer Pizza Cafe, but U.S. Pizza is a better setting for larger groups. Either way, it’s always friendly.

However, because I don’t blame Joe Biden every time I sneeze, I’m considered the liberal in the group. It probably doesn’t help that while I think Bud Light’s wading into the gender wars was, well, stupid, I also think the reaction was absurdly silly and homophobic. My reaction the first time I heard about the outrage: Why are we even talking about this?

Given their sometimes extreme views, I try to make the case that being to the left of them doesn’t make me a liberal; it just makes me closer to the center.

In order to make sure I wasn’t suffering from eye-of-the-beholder syndrome (everyone thinks they’re mainstream), I took the isidewith.com quiz. In fact, I took it three times in four days.

To be clear, the questions are not about how orange Trump is, or if Biden used cocaine before delivering his State of the Union address, as Trump suggests.

There are serious questions about things that actually matter, like should the federal government pay for tuition at four-year colleges? It’s multiple choice, but answers can be nuanced with options like yes, but yada, yada … It’s even possible to write in your own stance if you don’t like the options.

In case you’re dying to know how I answered that particular question, it was D, “No, but lower interest rates should be made available for student loans.”

Like that answer or not, neither political party told me to think that way. It comes from having to borrow — and pay back — $4,000 from my dad to finish college after he determined my interest in academics at the Harvard of Northwest Arkansas was only marginal. I mean, who’s got the time to study when there’s so much libation to have, basketball to play, and women to chase, right?

Well, it turns out that even a broken clock is correct twice a day, and I was on time. Turns out I’m not a liberal. My average over the three tests showed agreement with the No Labels Party 78.3%, Republicans 62.3%, and Democrats 60% of the time. Since No Labels is a bunch of centrist independents surrounded by conservative Democrats and liberal Republicans, it’s not surprising.

No doubt my Wednesday group would show themselves to be more conservative if they took the quiz, but the gap between us is not the canyon portrayed by the partisan media, social or otherwise. Even someone who agrees with Republicans 100% of the time is closer to my beliefs than someone who agrees with Democrats 100% of the time.

An old acquaintance, Jim VandeHei of Axios, published an article last week that supports this theory. He says, “There’s compelling evidence we’ve been trapped in a reality distortion bubble…” that “warps our view … of everything around us … amplified by the loudest voices on social media and politicians driving it.”

For example, depending on your news source, it may come as a surprise that it’s as untrue to say that all Republicans want abortion banned at conception as it is untrue to say all Democrats want it allowed until birth. In the real world, almost everyone wants something in between.

We can also point to energy and the environment where Democrats tell us to trust the science on climate change, but not on fracking, while Republicans tell us the exact opposite.

Neither side is making this stuff up. They’re simply repeating what they hear every day in an endless echo chamber that provides the most extreme examples of the egregiousness of the other side.

To further the energy/environment issue, I worked in oil and gas as well as renewable energy in my 25-plus-year career in the energy industry, and there’s just no reason O&G has to be punished in order to promote renewables and vice versa. Elections are zero-sum games. Policy-making is not.

However, as in plumbing, auto repair, or any other undertaking, if you want to get hired to fix something, the buyer has to be convinced something’s broken.

So — surprise, surprise — Republicans say America is broken, while Democrats say it will only break if Republicans are in charge. It’s what gets candidates elected, especially in the primaries where voters are the most partisan. This mindset supports an entire media ecosystem and in a factless world, one thing we know is that division and anger sell.

At the end of the day, moderate Republicans aren’t running towards Trump, but away from Biden and vice versa. The solution is either a centrist third party for serious and objective people who care about things that actually matter, or to simply stop buying the division that’s being sold.

Or, maybe, we can build more U.S. Pizzas where people can disagree, but still look forward to losing more golf balls together.