On the one hand, I’ve always been an idealist in the sense of believing in honor and fair play. That part of me continues to be puzzled and outraged by those who trample such basic human standards. I’ll give you an example of how naive I’ve been.

Some years back I yielded to cajoling and agreed to play on our racquet club’s tennis league team. First meeting I attended, people were complaining about the practice of “stacking lineups.” (The rule was that teams would assign players top to bottom on the basis of ranking and success rate. “Stacking” means putting the weakest player in 1st position as a sacrifice, then moving everyone else down a level so as to gain an overall competitive advantage.) I raised my hand and said, “I can’t believe anyone would cheat that way! The only thing at stake is a cheap-ass plastic trophy and personal satisfaction. But how could anyone take satisfaction knowing that he or she had been able to win only by cheating?”

Obviously I was a rookie as well as an idealistic liberal. My comment was greeted universally by derisive laughter.

Fast forward to when I began to get practically interested in politics. We live on a busy street, and candidates began to ask if they could put signs in our yard. We supported the candidate, we agreed. We didn’t support the candidate, we politely declined, explaining why. I felt good. We had (have) always voted, but now we were participating more directly in the democratic process. We were being responsible citizens.

But then they began to steal or destroy our yard signs, or in some cases to replace them with nasty homemade insults. Fuck! Another kick in the jock strap for my fatuous idealism.

I imagined all sorts of ways to identify the violators and make them answer… but life is short, responsibilities are many… The guy who shot this video actually followed through, though. Right here in the strange state of Florida, where my wife and I were born, reared, and continue to live. The cool thing is that this is one Republican catching another Republican and spouse, well, acting like Republicans.