Stop glorifying ‘centrism’. It is an insidious bias favoring an unjust status quo | Rebecca Solnit

The notion of a neutral and moderate middle is a prejudice of people for whom the system is working, against those for whom it's not

The idea that all bias is some deviation from an unbiased center is itself a bias that prevents pundits, journalists, politicians, and plenty of others from recognizing some of the most ugly and impactful prejudices and assumptions of our times. I think of this bias, which insists the center is not biased, not afflicted with agendas, prejudices, and destructive misperceptions, as status-quo bias. Underlying it is the belief that things are pretty OK now, that the people in charge should be trusted because power confers legitimacy, that those who want sweeping change are too loud or demanding or unreasonable, and that we should just all get along without looking at the skeletons in the closet and the stuff swept under the rug. It's mostly a prejudice of people for whom the system is working, against those for whom it's not.

I saw a tweet the other day that said the Secret Service and US Capitol police must have been incompetent or complicit to be blindsided by the 6 January insurrection. The writer didn't seem to grasp the third option: that the Secret Service was unable to see past the assumptions that middle-aged conservative white men don't pose a threat to democracy and the rule of law, that elected officials in powerful places weren't whipping up a riot or worse, that danger meant outsiders and others. A decade ago, when I went to northern Japan for the first anniversary of the Great Tohuko Earthquake and tsunami, I was told that the hundred-foot-high wave of black water was so inconceivable a sight that some people could not recognize it and the danger it posed. Others assumed this tsunami would be no bigger than those in recent memory and did not flee high enough. A lot of people died of not being able to see the unanticipated.