Cold War-era US ideological identity required an uncomfortable middle position

Evidence

That is not a cognitively satisfying state of affairs. It makes it difficult, for instance, to find an attractive ideological stance for the United States; a rather empty moderation or neutrality is the only consistent position that will justify our antagonism to two extremes. — John T. Jost and Jim Sidanius, Political Psychology, 671

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Cold War pressures drove Horkheimer and Adorno apart from Marcuse’s leftism — Martin Jay, The Dialectical Imagination: A History…, 864; US wartime capitalism was run on Soviet-style central planning