Trego's Mountain Ear

I saw this illustration of what has happened in political stances in our country. It struck a note with me, as the guy who drew it kept ‘me’ in the same spot over the years. I thought back, and in 2008 I had a choice between Obama and Romney, so I voted for the Libertarian candidate Bob Barr.

Somehow, with a guy putting a 223 bullet through Trump’s ear, and another jerk using his grandfather’s Mauser to kill Charlie Kirk, the 2025 line doesn’t seem inappropriate. The horrible lesson is that it doesn’t take a great shooter to hit a human at relatively close range – and our political rhetoric seems to encourage the extremists to pick up a weapon. All told, I think it is better that the nuts shoot at politicians than grade school kids – but I like kids better than politicians. It’s still not good.

So back to the left and right. The distinctions began with the French Revolution, and where people sat in the National Assembly. Those who 8wanted to keep the King sat on the right, those who wanted to cut the King’s head off sat on the left. That characterization may seem a little raw, but it surely fits with today’s politics. Still, it is a very one-dimensional look at political perspectives.

I suppose that’s why I don’t like seeing politics described as left and right. In 1789 France, the left wanted to send the King to the Guillotine – and they did in January of 1793. On the other hand, in the 1917 Russian Revolution, the split was between the Whites and the Reds – and the Reds killed Czar Nicholas and his family in July of 1918. Whether Right or Left, they were murderous bastards. Either way, leaving a sniper along the line seems (pardon the adjective) bloody appropriate.

Lately, the determinant seems to be that the right views illegal immigration as a crime while the left talks around that definition. At least one of my high school classmates was hauled back across the border when he took a job in the oil patch. It’s definitely a crime when la migra can kick a LCHS graduate back across the line at Roosville.

I suspect that, had it not been for Al Qaeda’s attacks on 9/11, President Bush would have pushed through some immigration reform that made life easier for our Mexican neighbors – at that time, we were getting some fairly high quality mojados in the southwest. It didn’t happen – and as a nation, we became increasingly familiar with some of Islam’s more radical sects. And, having dealt with a few in a college setting, I can’t see deportation as an altogether bad thing.

Maybe we need to go back to using the term wacko for the extreme 5% on both sides. As an indicator, I suggest that badmouthing Melania Trump should put folks under consideration for the title of left-wing wacko – and badmouthing Michelle Obama can be the first step for the title of right-wing wacko. Just a thought experiment you understand.