Well I guess I fall into the centrist category although I truly abhor labels. At times it's a bit depressing to sit in the middle of the extremes and see the passion that develops in the extremes. I try to make up for the lack of fantasy that compromise and rational thought provide through my entertainment choices. I attempt, while watching overblown action and wacked out science fiction shows, to throw away science and reason and just indulge in the whole good vs. evil, alien vs. human, bogus science crap that Hollywood puts out and simply let go.

What scares me though is knowing that I can take on the extreme views of a great revenge movie and when it's over throw it all off as a good time and be content to work in my backyard without any thoughts of blowing my neighbor to pieces. Many of our fellow citizens can't seem to separate the fantasy from the reality. They truly believe that the world is black and white. Something that makes them uneasy or confused and can't be immediately explained has be supernatural or evil or turned into a simplistic image. Another country doesn't support our world politics and they conjur up images of every cheesy French character they've seen in spy movies, the guys that are always selling out the hero. Suddenly that whole country is against us in their minds. It's easier that way. No dealing with people on individual levels. Hell, there's millions of them. Easier to make them all alike. It was the same with the Commies in 50's. So much simpler to make anyone questioning our country's policies "one of them" than to look into their intellectual underpinnings.

This phenomena isn't held just by the right wing. The left leaners are just as guilty. The words "conservative" and "liberal" by themselves are not derogatory terms but you'd never know it in most political discourse these days. It's so easy for someone that labels their leanings in either faith to have those labels extended to "neo-cons" or "tree-huggers". The next extension is "fascist" and "communist". Obviously individuals of both groups can reach their extremes but I certainly feel it is a small percentage. My hope is that as we evolve we learn that there simply isn't much difference between the most common Republican and Democrat, that they pretty much believe the same basic things and that we learn together to laugh away the extremists and get along a bit better.