If you try to follow the presidential campaign in the news, or or cable TV, (which is not really the news at all), you have probably noticed that there are only two sides, left or right, liberal or conservative.

In the last 10 or 15 years, the craven corporations that now practice what was once called journalism have abandoned the idea of taking positions or offering their idea of the truth, they simply present every trend, story, pronouncement or controversy as a conflict between the left and the right. Civic issues instantly become yet another argument that explains nothing, helps no one, and clogs up our political and legislative system like a cheap toilet in a run night gas station.

The very idea of the journalist is fading, journalists are pre-packaged commentators and screamers, their job is to add to the din, not cut through it.

It was once considered journalism’s right to find people with expertise and get them to explain things to the rest of us. Journalists are now mostly trained to check Twitter feeds and argue, not think, and the public has followed suit.

A dysfunctiona, seething man-child like Donald Trump would never have gotten near the presidency just a few short years ago, today 40 per cent of the American public loves him and thinks he is actually going to fight for them.

There are a lot of reasons people might wish to vote for Trump, one of them is that he is angry all the time, and the two-dimensional system that has taken over our political system – there is no statement or event that is not an argument now, this is the seeding ground of polarization – makes almost everyone angry, the left or the right.

Could it really be true that there are only two ways to see any and every political issue in America. Check out the BBC News site, it is interesting to see that stories are presented by reporters and commentators, there is plenty of diversity of opinion, but every story is not jammed into the narrow geography of the left and the right.

There are many ways to see the world, very few of them are on cable news. If you live in the middle, as I do, it is getting lonely. One friend is not speaking to me because I have written sharply about Donald Trump, another stopped speaking to me because I didn’t agree that Hillary Clinton is a murderer and criminal.

Will there be any place for me next time around?

It doesn’t seem to bother any of the people who label themselves so enthusiastically, nor does it suggest much in the way of personal responsibility that both the left and the right, the liberals and the conservatives seem quite paralyzed by what I would considered the paramount issues of our time:  persistent and growing poverty and income inequality, the destruction of land and people by corporations and wars, the diminishment of work and security, the Frankenstein and outrageously cruel system of health care, the endangerment of what some might call life itself by our obsession with wars and by the rapidly expanding corporate industrialism.

The runaway corporate expansion and intrusion in out campaign system is destroying the integrity of our legislative system and is no longer distinguishable from it.

I don’t see myself as a political person, at least not until this year, but I think it is true at the moment that how you vote is who you are.

It seems to me that we have devolved into a sort of teenage culture of wishful thinking and foot-stomping, victimization and resentment. The two-label way of thinking is in many ways responsible for this, it means it so easy for people to hate the other.

Politics is really becoming a culture of blame and outrage, not of resolution or advocacy.  Our media seems to have fully bought into the right-left idea. It certainly makes life easier for them and takes them off the hook.

Whoever succeeds in blaming the other label for the greatest number of things, whether they are responsible for them or not, wins. In fact, when you have a left and a right as the only two choices, no one is responsible for accomplishing anything, just for gathering the best poll data – essentially, a list of who is left and who is right – and winning.

And as a consequence, no one is responsible for anything  other than proving the blind adherence to labels.

Since every story and issue and happening is filtered through these two narrow and spectacularly unsuccessful prisms, there is no longer any such thing as problem resolution, only stagnation, polarization rage and frustration, the perfect trough for someone like Donald Trump to come along and exploit.

I am a creature of the middle, and there are no panel experts for us on cable news or in the political parties.I don’t love the left or the right, neither one has ever quite fit me.

The middle, as we are told, is shrinking, we are becoming a distinct and powerless minority.  I hardly know anyone in the middle any longer.

Something about being patronized and labeled and taken for granted seems to appeal to people, maybe because like journalists, nobody has to think any more. If it’s on the left, some people like it, if it’s on the right, others people like it. It’s the best way to get dumb about politics in a hurry. You simply parrot what others tell you.

Neither side ever listens, changes its mind, surrenders or negotiates. I believe everyone who puts a label on themselves or me is undermining the core idea of democracy, which is a peaceful mixing of ideas that ends up with the best possible solution. In a real democracy, no one side wins all the time, you just do the best you can for as long as you can.

I am often in disagreement with these two sides, they seem shallow and constipated to me, incapable of boldness or creativity or inspiration. They do little more than declare their pre-conceived positions. I especially disagree with both the left and the right when they use or misuse the great power of government and money or violence to determine, design and enforce the moral responsibilities of people.

Both the left and the right seem to have decided what all of our moral choices should be, from going to the bathroom to how we die to having a child to voting dreading law enforcement. They have fixed positions for moral responsibilities, but I don’t see many people taking responsibility for their own moral choices anywhere.

Liberty to me is about making our own choices insofar as it is possible, not surrendering them to government or a political party.

I am waiting for a label that understands that both sides are in perpetual collusion with the corporate industrialists, who have trampled the ground, who have destroyed work, the essential structures of family and community and corrupted the functions of legislative government.

I am not  hearing the left and the right fighting for that ground, and the middle ground, where I live, is in danger of being no ground at all. Perhaps the growing movement to expand the voting rights of independent voters can help the vanishing middle. Although I have to wonder if that isn’t a label as well.

I feel like I am lost in America this year, my voice and place fading as these two utterly unsatisfactory choices are ever more thrust upon us. No idea can live more than a few seconds before it is sucked into the murky maw of conflict. There are so many good ideas and systems and ideologies in the world, it is sad that the people who embrace these shallow labels  are giving up the most precious thing any of us have been given, the very idea of liberty – the right to think for ourselves.

I’m  lost in the middle, but I’m  staying there.