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.
Catch a Falling Star 
Explaining the Words
I used to have political arguments all the time with my father that would end only in frustration… for me. He was happy to see his offspring boiling over ideas with smoke coming out of both ears. Because no matter what I said, he would always take the opposite position just to oppose me. I know this because I tested it. I would counter an argument he had just made by rephrasing it so that it was in different words, but meant exactly the same thing he had just said to me. Naturally he came up with opposing views immediately. One time I even flat out stated, “I agree with you!” Which naturally led to an immediate and complete reversal of the position on his part. I think now that he was training me to think more deeply about things than just parroting talking points heard on television. Either that, or he really really loved to argue.
The most important thing I learned in the endless arguments about Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Two Bushes, and Bill Clinton was that you have to establish the meanings of the terms you are using. Hence the reason for this post.
The words that made the most difference in my discussions with my father were “liberal”, “fascist”, “conservative”, and “communist”. When my dad used those terms, “conservative” always meant “good guys” and the other three words meant “bad guys”. But when I listened to the policies and concerns he wanted to talk about, whenever he said the word “conservative” he was really saying “moderate”. And because he was pretty much in the center of the political spectrum, he thought of fascists and communists as being the same thing. If my father ever was truly wrong about anything political, it was when he followed Ronald Reagan’s affable, smiling “Morning in America” politics towards the far right and abandoned the moderate principles he held dear. He had been deceived by Nixon, and regretted it… in fact, we all were deceived and we all regretted it. But that did not prevent him from being deceived by later Republicans. We both have had a long-standing admiration for President Eisenhower, Senator Bob Dole, Senator Chuck Grassley, and Senator John McCain. They represent the moderate wing of the Republican Party. But the GOP has marched relentlessly towards fascism and oligarchy of the rich, and we both feel that has tainted both Grassley and McCain. My dad ended up voting for Barack Obama twice. Obama, to him, is Eisenhower reincarnated. The problem, we both agree, has come anytime American politics have moved away from the center.
So let me begin defining terms by ridiculing the Loony Left.
Being liberal means promoting change. Hence, the Marxist devotion to revolution and the desire to have an on-going revolution of constant change. Unfortunately constant change is another way to define chaos. That is the main reason that communist-socialist experiments have generally ended in violence, economic collapse, and fascist-type strong-man oppression. The poor raggedy communist in my cartoon, standing on the left end of the spectrum is always doomed to poverty and violent death. If you don’t believe that, just ask Leon Trotsky if it isn’t so. Oh, wait, you can’t. Stalin had him murdered. Stalin ended the Russian experiment by cracking down on everything, making himself the antithesis of actual socialist ideas. I included the ultra-liberal philosopher and hedonist Alistair Crowley on this end of the spectrum because he fought against all social norms and rules. That sort of religion leads to sexual depravity, vice, and corruption to a degree that got Crowley labeled “the Most Evil Man Who Ever Lived” in a BBC documentary.
Sometimes being liberal is needed desperately. Then you get the kind of liberal change agents that JFK was (and thankfully, LBJ carried out his liberal changes to an American society crippled by racism and xenophobia). Martin Luther King Jr. was also that kind of agent of change. Bernie Sanders is a parallel agent of change to JFK in that Barack Obama’s policies are almost a mirror image of Eisenhower’s in the 1950’s. What the media today labels as a liberal is equivalent to moderate Republicans before Nixon. Very similar changes are needed in social and economic areas today. We have yet to see if Sanders can get elected in 2020 and then assassinated shortly thereafter.
You can probably tell that this article is not yet complete. I have a lot more loony liberal pontificating to do (and please note, I said “pontificating” not “defecating”. I am not a Trump voter.) But I am well past the 500 word goal for today, and so, I must leave the rest of the crap to be said in a part two article. Maybe also a part three. Please stop me before I reach part twenty-six.
I do so enjoy making fun of Trump and his tiny, tiny hands. So here I am sharing another lampoon at the expense of the Great Orange Face of America.
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