What wise men are saying these days

  A wise man once said, "If a communist calls you a fascist, you must be doing something right."

What I was referring to was surely over the long course of WW  II many commies called Hitler a fascist, but contrary to this wise man I do not believe Hitler was doing something right.  And that phrasing.  Instead of saying that you thought something you invent a wise man who said it, not unlike a certain politician who often couched his statements by saying "Many smart people are saying..."

As for that Meloni lady, one source says one thing and another source says the opposite.  

When that Ford truck starts making funny noises and one mechanic thinks the trouble is the transmission and another thinks that problem is the color it is painted, the wise man does not shrug his shoulders and flip a coin.  He looks into the matter and figures out which source is more likely telling the truth.

Not that long ago on the Sunday talk shows you would have liberals disagreeing with other liberals and conservatives disagreeing with other conservatives, and even liberals and conservatives politely disagreeing and even agreeing with each other. 

Fox News ended that.  At first Fox had several liberals on their shows.  Does anybody remember Hannity and Colmes?  Maybe that was a remnant of the fairness doctrine which never should have been done away with.  But in every case the liberals were outnumbered by conservatives in the panels, and then disagreement became interrupting and yelling over your appointment, like a nasty bunch of third graders.  

And then they took their bad manners over to the talk shows on the more civil networks and then the liberals joined them in their bad habits at first just to defend themselves, but then I think they got to like it and so they did it all the time too, and all that yelling made for bad feelings so that there is less talk about what is good or bad about the policy and mostly it is just what is bad about the other party and it's all pretty boring and my Sunday mornings are not as much fun as they used to be.

And that was before Trump.  When the Trumpers learned the only way Trump would listen to anything had to say was to go on the talk shows they lined up.  And of course they weren't interested in what any of the moderators or other guests had to say, so they just praised Trump and demonized his opponents, and knowing that Trump liked people who were rude to the press they strove to be ruder than their fellow Trumpers.  They got kicked off the shows a few times, and it was a relief like when the obnoxious drunk gets the bum's rush out of genteel tavern.

Thankfully they are all gone now.  There is the occasional republican who is in the bag for Trump, but they don't yell as much as they used to.  But they are still just one party line against the other party line and not very interesting.

I subscribed to The Atlantic for several years.  I suppose it was more lefty than righty, but pretty close to the middle.

I was kind of fired about to tell about my trip to the nation's capital, but the morning is getting late.  And anyway I am not much of a monuments man, and downtown DC is the most boring downtown I have ever been to.