Extreme Society

By Douglas V. Gibbs
Author, Speaker, Instructor, Radio Host

Reason, and reasonableness, seems to have gone out the door.

I used to be a truck driver, and my joke to folks was, “If you think there are a lot of idiots on the road, go get a Class “A” license.  Once you are in a truck, the first thing you notice is that it’s worse than you thought.  They start coming out of the woodwork.”

Over the last few years, it’s gotten worse.

It seems like, on the roadway, there are nothing but idiots, jerks, and maniacs.

Sure, we’ve always complained about people who can’t drive.  But, doesn’t it seem like everyone is either too aggressive, or too careful?

The same goes on in grocery store lines, restaurants, and with pedestrian traffic.  It seems like everyone had gone either extremely aggressive, or extremely passive.

When it comes to politics, in my lifetime, there were always those who supported the President of the United States, and those who disagreed with his policies.  Then, there would be those voices who would say they were somewhere in between.  Not moderates, per se, but they weren’t on one side of the other in an extreme manner.

While I was a great supporter of Ronald Reagan, I was not as supportive of his successor, George H.W. Bush.  Bush had a globalist streak in him that bothered me, but he was still better than the Democrat Party alternative.  I was definitely not a Bill Clinton fan, but at least he could be persuaded to move a little bit in an acceptable direction.  He was very concerned about his legacy, and he knew how to negotiate.  Clinton, while a President that was not even close to my conservative and constitutional beliefs, was at least willing to budge a little.  Therefore, my opinion was not favorable, but not extremely against him.

George W. Bush was a conundrum.  I appreciated certain things about him, but he bothered me on domestic issues.  While I leaned towards supporting him, I was not an extreme supporter.  And, despite all of his claims of being conservative, he was nothing of the sort.

Then Barack Hussein Obama came along.  His politics were extremely to the left, and his followers were extreme. . . to the extreme.  As a result of his extremely liberal politics, the response seemed extreme, as well, with the emergence of the Tea Party, which used rallies and meetings to get their message out.

In a scenario much like war, the response to Obama’s extreme message had to be a candidate with an extreme personality.

In 2016, Donald J. Trump emerged onto the scene, and his willingness to treat the liberal left Democrats, and extreme socialist Hillary Clinton, with an extremely firm hand, earned him the support of the Tea Party, and Americans fed up with the extreme leftism of the Democrat Party.

The response?

With each response comes an increase in how extreme it is.  Therefore, the snowflakes are now responding with an extreme, in your face, violent strategy that would make the hippies even cringe; one inspired by the teachings of Karl Marx and Saul Alinsky.  Even worldwide, the Trump revolution has emerged, and the response is violent.  In France, Marine Le Pen is being met with violent protests.

The pendulum swings, but with such extreme measures and tactics in place, will the pendulum also encounter an extreme swing again in the other direction?  Will the next Democrat in power be the extreme totalitarian they are seeking?  While it may take an extreme personality like Donald Trump to fix much of Obama’s damage, be aware the response will be even more extreme.

– Political Pistachio Conservative News and Commentary