Politics & Power Quote by Brad Thor

The smartest move Brad Thor makes here is branding, not statesmanship. “I’m purple” is less a policy position than a permission slip: it lets him stand in the political arena without being pinned to a team jersey. For a novelist whose work likely draws readers across the culture-war divide, “apolitical” functions as audience management. It’s a way to keep the door open to red and blue wallets while claiming the moral high ground of independence.

The line is built to sound reasonable in an unreasonable time. He takes a tired binary (“red state or blue state”) and replaces it with a soothing third option that feels mature, even civic-minded. “Great ideas on both sides” is the kind of phrase that reads like generosity, but it also sidesteps the unpleasant question of which ideas, and at what cost. The subtext is: don’t ask me to litigate today’s sharpest controversies; I’m here to tell stories.

“Neither side has cornered the market” borrows the language of economics to frame politics as a competition of products rather than a struggle over power. That’s rhetorically clever because it makes disagreement seem like consumer choice, not moral emergency. It flatters the reader who’s exhausted by partisan shouting: you’re not disengaged, you’re discerning. In a polarized marketplace, “purple” isn’t just a color blend; it’s a strategy for staying broadly legible, broadly likable, and commercially unboxed.