THE MIDDLE OF THE ROAD IS WHERE THE SMASHED OPOSSUMS LIE.

     I'm a smart-ass. That is not the opposite of dumb-ass, and I may drift into dumb-ass territory occasionly, but i make no excuses. I'm not telling any of you something you didn't already know, but social media encourages some people to participate who have a narrow range of knowledge, and no understanding of humor.

     Recently I responded to a post on Tribel that said in large font, "I'm a Liberal". Somebody responded, "I'm in the center". I bet you can say with confidence what my response was. You are so right. I told the respondent that the center of the road was where the flattened opposums lie. Ordinarily we would all have a little chuckle and go about our business. It's a joke, not necessarily a good joke. But this particular respondent fired back that I clearly knew nothing about country roads. 

     I grew up on country roads. I rode my bicycle on them as a child and as an adult. I parked with girl friends in hop fields during those years my hormones were active. I worked on farms in the summer during high school and I drove those country roads to swimming holes and other diversions. I could not let this comment go unanswered. You knew that already.

     So I responded that country roads are usually two-lane roads and quite narrow.  Opossums, or armadillos in Texas, meet their tragic ends somewhere between the center-left and center-right because thats where the cars drive. They almost never get squashed on the shoulder of the road, whichever side you may search. If you see a squashed animal on the shoulder of the road, they were either tossed there or a drunk driver was having control issues. In such a case its possible that you might find a squashed pedestrian. If you live in Arkansas and don't see a dead opossum in the road, it was probably snatched up fresh and added to the stew-pot. 

     There was a time when being a centrist could be an acceptable political stance. In fact Democracy depends on it. Most people could be found straddling one lane or the other at the same time depending on the subject under discussion. You can, in a normal participatory democracy inhabit both worlds. You might be anti-abortion, but not in favor of harsh abortion laws and penalties. You can be anti-war and yet see the need for national defense. You could own a firearm, but acknowledge the need for sensible gun laws. Some of us seek laws that must pass, some of us see laws that must not pass.  These and other examples were more common prior to social media. Back in the 90s, when many of us were making our early forays into the computer world, but before Facebook and it's competitors, there was a fellow who led an anti-tax group called Taxpayers United, whose purpose was to peel off people unhappy with taxation from the Democratic party. Most of us aren't all that happy at tax time but it's one of those things necessary to the needs of the commonwealth. On the eastern shores the word commonwealth means "the people". In the midwest, it seems, commonwealth is a synonym for communism. During that time, this fellow, Grover Norquist, held weekly breakfast meetings in DC available only to republicans. In these meetings he preached that "bi-partisanship is the moral equivolent of date rape". Another thing he is known for is, "I want to shrink government till you can drown it in the bathtub. By way of comparison, I remember a Civics class, taught by William Croco when I was in high school. In this class we learned the evils of communism by studying the communist manifesto. One of the principles outlined in that manifesto was, "the withering away of the state". At first glance that is not a dangerous goal. We would all like to think we are capable of self-control and the state sometimes gets in the way of self-control. The problem arises when we try to apply this goal to every human being. In a democracy we try to maintain a popular democracy where we make government conform to that promise of, "government by the consent of the governed". More authoritarian governments prefer to see government by the consent of the government. And this is where we part company with Grover Norquist, and that lady in the middle of the road. Mr. Norquist is not anywhere near the middle of the road based on just those two statements. When compared with the communist manifesto, drowning government in a bathtub is more violent than allowing it to gradually (we assume) wither away. How small should government be to people who are convinced it needs to be drowned in the bathtub? How can you find bi-partisanship when it is the "moral equivolent of date-rape"? How can you even know what date rape is when you think about how some of those republicans treat women? What happens to democracy when you tolerate the polarization of democracy by limiting which groups among the electorate are allowed to give their consent, and which groups are interrupted in that exercise of governance. These are issues with which  we have struggled for our entire history. For a while we thought we had made progress. That goal was "withered away" by the party that allowed Grover Norquist to preach to it during those weekly breakfasts in the 90s. And then we got the President who started an insurrection to allow him to continue as president after he had lost re-election. Good government to them it seems, is what they want it to be. Bad government is anything that they disagree with. They are as intolerant of government power as an English teacher that would correct me for using an article to end a sentence, with. And so we find ourselves driving in one particular lane. Either out of stringent opposition to the opposite party, or as in the party of a certain ex-president who took it hard when confronted by the prospect of being ex-president, out of fear of what the party leader might say when opposed. This is not a comfortable place to be,  in the middle of that particular road. Ask Mike Pence, he's maybe the only Republican who would be laughed at if he displayed truck nuts on his F-150.

     As I mentioned earlier, country roads are narrow lanes. Cars going one way use the left lane and cars going the opposite direction use the right lane, it is not advisable to drive in the center of the road, or to pass in the opposite lane unless the visibility is good, and the road is not too curvy. 

     You seldom see opossums in the middle of an interstate highway. One reason might be you are going too fast, another might be that there are two or more lanes going in each direction with a divider between the two directions. We are taught, and some soon forget, that the right and middle lane are for slower traffic, and the left lane is for passing. In large cities the left lane might be for cars with two or more people. We have not sussed out the dilemma in republican states, of whether a pregnant woman can drive alone in that high occupancy lane. There are other drivers who use the right lane as a passing lane. While the passing lane may be moving faster than the slower lanes, it is not sufficiently fast for some people. These people can be found at meetings of the Ayn Rand society, and no doubt they left home too late to arrive on time, because they should be allowed to govern themselves.

     There is a recognized syndrome which we often see on social media; the Dunning-Krueger syndrome. Essentially it describes someone who "don't know what they dont know", yet they feel compelled to share it with the world. As social media has become the dominant mode of communication, we have seen many of these people elected to office on a Republican ticket. They are now posing as economists, pediatricians, legal experts, and climate change mystics. They are the children of Grover Norquist and we are screwed.

     

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