"Sick to my stomach!'

While writing for the Louisville Courier-Journal, the late columnist Joe Creason told an amusing story that speaks to where we are today as a country.

Two candidates running for office in Kentucky traveled up and down the states, ripping each other verbally to shreds as they did their campaigning.  One day, they were both campaigning at a rally in am in a Kentucky town.  

One of the candidates had a habit of taking a drink of bourbon before getting up and speaking.  The rally was outside, it was a hot day, and the candidate was not wearing a hat.  The heat made the bourbon inside him act up, and suddenly, the candidate became sick in front of the entire audience.  

When he recovered, he stepped up to the platform, held up both hands, and said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this just proves what I have been saying all over Kentucky.  The man just plain makes me sick to my stomach!"

Yeah, that pretty much sums things up, doesn't it?  "The other guy just plain makes me sick to my stomach!"  

There is another part of this story that also speaks to where we are as a country, or rather, where we are not as a country.

Creason described the two men who traveled all over Kentucky verbally ripping each other to shreds on the campaign trail as "warm friends who often traveled to campaign sites in the same car." (I cannot remember if he was referring to an automobile or a railroad car.) 

Does anyone remember the days when Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neill battled it out in the political arena; Ronald Reagan as President and Tip O'Neill as Speaker of the House?  Reagan and O'Neill stood firmly on opposite sides of the political spectrum . . . and at the end of the day, would sit down and have a beer together.

Contrast that with our current President and Speaker, who haven't spoken to each other in a year.  

Contrast that with the current division in our country, where the results of Election Day 2020 shows a country almost evenly split down the middle, with some friends and family barely speaking to each other, if at all; with people fearing that the wrong word could ignite an argument, or that posting the wrong thing on social media will get you canceled.  

Is this what we have come to?  

Where we are so entrenched in our beliefs and our opinions that we will not even entertain that the other side might just have a point?  

In this environment, two opponents for political office can't be warm friends who travel together to the same campaign venue.  They can only be two people who verbally rip each other to shreds, both on and off the campaign trail.

That should make anyone sick to their stomach.

Just my .04, adjusted for inflation.