This is the last part of this monstrous political potpourri, I promise. Because even a nattering nabob of liberal claptrap like me has to reach a conclusion sooner or later. If I don’t, then sooner or later Donald Trump is going to hear that I may have called him a Fascist, soon to be followed by a Twitter Tweet Storm from Hell.
But the only part of the continuum of political terminology I haven’t explained is the center of the horseshoe. Yes, I said “horseshoe” because it is not a straight line continuum. The two extreme ends, the crackpot communist end and the freaky fascist end both bend towards chaos and destruction. The safe part is in the middle. When you mount a horseshoe over the kitchen door for luck, the middle part goes at the bottom. This way the horseshoe holds the good luck in. If you tip it upside down, the good luck all drains out. And for my extremely conservative friends in both Iowa and Texas, that is a metaphor, when you use one thing to mean something else completely, or compare two unlike things to get at a deeper meaning. So please don’t break your brains trying to figure that one out. It is just more of what you call, “loony liberal stupidity”.
I have always thought of myself as a moderate, at least until recently. The right side of the equation has skewed the numbers so badly that moderates are now liberals by comparison. Republicans since Reagan have really turned Eisenhower into a liberal. What once was a moderate conservative Republican in the 1950’s would have to be considered a liberal Democrat today if he or she maintained their core values. I have the Bushies who are really proto-fascists peeking in at the right side of the moderate cartoon because they both started as moderates, and are really pretty much to blame for pushing moderates to the narrowing left as they ballooned the more evil aspects of the right.
In truth, the old Greek idea of “Moderation in all things”. also provably a Biblical idea, is really the best approach to politics. Liberals aim to change things for the better (which we desperately need them to do in the next four years) and conservatives aim to preserve everything that already exists that is good. We need both of those sides in a political debate. But good governing happens always in the middle. Remember, chaos happens at both the extreme ends.
Eisenhower is a good example of the kind of moderate I am exalting as the best political sort of thing. He was a moderate conservative Republican. But if you substituted Barack Obama’s picture and name on this quote, my conservative friends would start hooting and hollering about the communist Muslim president from Kenya. The idea itself is what they have been taught is communist liberal claptrap. I may have mentioned before that I see Eisenhower policies and politics as virtually a synonym for the policies and politics of Barack Obama. Obama is a moderate. As is Mitt Romney whose Republican healthcare plan as governor of Massachusetts Obama stole to turn into Obamacare. Jimmy Carter was a gentle Christian gentleman who was not only a moderate, but the first presidential candidate I was ever eligible to vote for. I could easily have lived with Bob Dole, the moderate Republican senator from Kansas as president. Moderates, in my estimation, are a very good thing for our country.
Harry Truman was also a moderate, though he was very much on the conservative end of the moderate bench. Still, what he said in this quote is really more true now than it was in his own time. I would rate Truman as more conservative than Eisenhower.
So there is my essay on politics in three complete parts. I have said my piece, and am now ready to be called a “stupid fear-mongering liberal”. Let the throwing of overripe tomatoes begin.
During my middle-school teaching years I also bought and read copies of The Prince and the Pauper, Roughing It, and Life on the Mississippi. I would later use a selection from Roughing It as part of a thematic unit on Mark Twain where I used Will Vinton’s glorious clay-mation movie, The Adventures of Mark Twain as a way to painlessly introduce my kids to the notion that Mark Twain was funny and complex and wise.
Catch a Falling Star 
“They” Don’t Think Like “We” Do
I was recently asked how I can live surrounded by conservatives when I am obviously liberal-minded. I hardly have to think about it to give an answer.
You have to realize that conservatives are people too. To begin with, I hope you didn’t look at the picture I started with and think, “He must think all conservatives are stupid and look like that.” The picture of Doofy Fuddbugg I used here is not about them. It is about me. This is the comedy face I wear when I am talking politics. You live a life filled with economic, physical, and emotional pain like I have, you have a tendency to wear a mask that makes you, at the very least, happy on the outside. People talk to me all the time, but not because I seek them out. In social situations, I am not a bee, I’m a flower. And because of my sense of humor, people feel comfortable seeking me out and telling me about their pain and anger and hurt to the point that they eventually reach the totally mistaken conclusion that I have wisdom to share.
I do think that corporate bank CEO’s look like this, and I am not sure they count as people.
I hear lots of detailed complaints from my conservative friends in both Iowa and Texas. I know what they fear and what makes them angry. Here are a few of the key things;
I have always understood these feelings because I began hearing them repeatedly since the 1980’s. They are like a fire-cracker with a very short fuse, these ideas conservatives live with. And certain words you say to them are like matches. They will set off, not just one, but all of the fireworks.
So, here is how I talk to conservatives.
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