I grew up in a firmly Republican household. Democrats were fools and maybe pinkos. (It was the fifties.) Black marchers in the deep South were just outside agitators from the North.

Watching people being firehosed for asking to be treated as humans convinced me that the last part was wrong. Just observing the world convinced me that the first part was wrong.

But it didn’t make me a Democrat. Just because X is wrong, that doesn’t mean Y is right.

My background does make me want to scream when some talking head says that were are “so polarized, more than we ever have been.” Really? Perhaps they should read a history book. America has always been polarized. We even fought a war over our polarization back in the 1860s.

When my parents hated Democrats, and Democrats probably hated my parents, they were just being the same kind of abrasive American we have always been.

So I have chosen to be neither an Elephant nor a Donkey, just a stubborn schmuck who listens to both sides.

Let me put that in the fewest possible words:

Every opinion has another set against it.
Learn only one opinion, and you think you know everything.
Learn the other and you find yourself right back to knowing nothing.

As Spock said to Kirk, “The answer probably lies somwhere in the middle.” But where in the middle? That’s the hard part, and it is up to you to figure it out.

That is, unless you want to stamp a Donkey or and Elephant on your forehead and stop thinking altogether.