Daily Inspiration Quote by Brad Bird

There is a particular kind of American self-description that sounds modest but carries a quiet accusation, and Brad Bird’s “I’m definitely a centrist and feel like both parties can be absurd” fits it perfectly. The line isn’t trying to win a policy debate; it’s staking out an identity: reasonable, clear-eyed, allergic to tribal slogans. “Definitely” signals preemptive defense, as if he’s answering a room already primed to sort him into a camp. The centrist posture becomes less a midpoint and more a refusal to be drafted.

As a cartoonist, Bird’s leverage is ridicule. Calling “both parties” absurd doesn’t just critique; it levels. Absurdity is the language of satire, a way to say the system isn’t merely wrong but structurally silly, driven by incentives that reward performative outrage, bad-faith purity tests, and narratives too tidy for reality. The subtext is weariness: you can feel the exhaustion with political messaging that asks people to pick a team before they’re allowed to think.

Centrism here also functions as a shield. It grants permission to mock everyone without being dismissed as partisan, even as it risks sounding like a dodge. That tension is the point. In a culture where politics doubles as personal branding, Bird is claiming the right to be unbranded. The statement works because it’s less ideology than temperament: a satirist’s instinct to distrust any group that takes itself too seriously.