As a centrist, it seemed to me that the Democrats wanted this huge influx to create more liberal voters as a long-term strategy. It also seemed to me that the Republicans wanted to deport everyone as a short-term power move. Both positions are cynical. Both are partially correct. Neither is honest about its motivations.
The pragmatic centrist exists in a world that insists on binary choices. Left or right. Progressive or conservative. With us or against us. The insistence is not about clarity. It is about control. Binary framing makes people easy to manage. The person who refuses to pick a side is the most threatening figure in any political ecosystem because they cannot be predicted, leveraged, or silenced by their own team.
The operating position
NYC residents should come first. That is not a partisan statement. It is a resource allocation principle. A city with finite resources should prioritize the people who pay taxes, vote in local elections, and contribute to the community over people who have not yet entered that system. The corrupt politician who believes in putting New Yorkers first before doing charity work for non-New Yorkers is more useful than the virtuous politician who treats the city as an international aid organization.
This position is held simultaneously with the acknowledgment that people are treated differently based on skin color, at least subconsciously. And that people who live in a city try their best to ignore their impulses in order to treat everyone in an unbiased way because you never really know who you are messing with in cities. Both things are true at the same time. The binary framework cannot hold them both.
The scene application
The rave scene is the most concentrated version of the binary problem. The Bushwick consensus demands a specific political posture. Safe space language. Identity-based booking quotas. Performative solidarity statements. The promoter who does not comply gets categorized as right-wing, which in that scene is synonymous with dangerous.
The reality: more than half of the favorite venues, DJs, promoters, and photographers are very centrist and very tired of far-left and far-right extremists calling for exclusion based on identity. They do not say it publicly because the social cost is too high. The binary framework enforces silence. The centrist majority operates quietly while the vocal minority on both edges dictates the public conversation.
Regular collaboration with people who hold the complete opposite socio-political views. The collaboration works because everyone is working for something greater than any individual project. The music does not care about your voter registration. The dancefloor does not check your ideology at the door. The only question that matters is whether you showed up and whether you contributed.
The political layer
The real issue with American politics is term limits. It takes too long to make positive change happen in a short amount of time. What happens instead is rushed policy enforcement to get whatever goals done within a short amount of time with very little quality control. Both parties do this. Obama deported people. Trump deports people. The difference is quality control, not policy direction.
The pragmatic centrist sees the mechanism, not the team. Follows the money, not the narrative. Evaluates the policy by the outcome, not the rhetoric. This makes you unpopular with everyone because both sides want loyalty, not analysis.
The binary world wants you to choose. The pragmatic centrist chooses to evaluate. That is not indecision. It is the most demanding position available because it requires you to do your own homework instead of outsourcing your thinking to a team. The team makes life easier. The homework makes life honest.