Of Alligators And World Peace October 6, 2019October 4, 2019 Friday’s post — Of Alligators and the Humane Center — may have led non-readers to assume it was about some ASPCA-affiliate dedicated to the decent treatment of alligators (among other creatures), and so to pass it by . . . . . . when in fact it was about Trump’s idea for a moat; Moscow Mitch and the many important House-passed bills he has killed this year; and the humane center of the political spectrum, into which North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz believes most of us fall. (I’m Not The Radical Left, I’m The Humane Middle.) Take another look? Carl — whose continued admiration for Trump I do not share and upon whose sense of humor I have commented before — emailed to say the alligator moat thing was a joke. Could I be so tone deaf as not to know that? It’s funny to think about desperate people, after walking 2,000 miles to within sight of a better life, being stymied – or eaten — by alligators. I’m not so sure Trump was joking, because apparently some of his aides took it seriously enough to go cost it out. Either way, it made me think of a different outlandish idea . . . equally impractical, but coming from a more loving place. In a 1996 L.A. Times interview, Elaine May asked her one-time comedy partner Mike Nichols: “How would you go about achieving world peace if you had the time?” To which the late, great film director replied: “I would institute a huge tax break for interracial marriages as well as marriages among warring factions. Eventually we would have one very good-looking group of people who get along fine. I admit this would take time but I am patient.” Think about it. And then think about this, the David Brooks column everyone is talking about. Democrats should, for sure, speak to Trump voters not just with policies (most of ours being far better than Trump’s for those worst hurt by global economic forces and automation and the decades-long rise in inequality) but also, importantly, with respect.