Trego's Mountain Ear

As a high school kid, I knew I was closer to being a Republican than a Democrat.  In those long ago days, I would have described myself as fiscally conservative and socially liberal – and there was room in the Republican party for Rockefeller, McCloskey and me.  In August of 1971, Nixon abolished the gold standard – and as a new adult, I realized that neither party was fiscally conservative.  The two party system had left me politically homeless.  Gold was no longer $35 an ounce.  By 1980, it was $594.90 an ounce.  I voted for Carter – once, and only once.  Politically homeless or not, Reagan was a lot more fiscally responsible than Carter or Nixon.

As I write this, the spot price for gold is $2,738.27.  And I’ve listened to Elon Musk talking about a new department – the Department of Government Efficiency.  Perhaps we will again see a political party dedicated to fiscal responsibility – but the price of gold is now 78 times what it was when I started high school . . . or, more realistically, the value of a dollar, based on gold, is 1/78th what it was in 1963.

So I thought I had found a home with the Libertarian folks – they couldn’t win an election, but at least spoke the same language.  In 2016, they nominated Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor.  I was a bit disappointed – the only libertarian issue on his table was legalizing pot.  Aside from that, Gary was just another damned statist, wanting more government and more control.  I kept the libertarian philosophy, but the big L Libertarian party didn’t feel like home either.

In 94 I was on the mailing list for both parties – democrat and republican.  I filed for office with the republicans, and found I couldn’t make it past the primary.  Too liberal for the republicans, too conservative for the democrats.  The term is middle-of-the-road.  There are a lot less tires on the extreme right side and the extreme left side of the road. 

So, as I approach my 75th birthday, I received a card asking me to respond to a questionnaire for five bucks.  That’s a whole lot more appealing than a poll that uses autodialers and drops the slow respondents.  It was an interesting poll – since I admitted voting Libertarian for president, it wanted to know who I would have voted for had the libertarian option not been available.  I had to admit Trump seems better to me than Harris.  The questions seemed to understand selecting the least bad candidate – voting to send Jon Tester back to Big Sandy doesn’t mean I have undying love for Tim Sheehy.  I’m still politically homeless – and that’s not necessarily a bad thing.