That’s a question that became a famous song from the folk tradition of Pete Seeger.

We say, “There are two sides to everything.”

“Let’s reach across the aisle,” and “meet in the middle.” Compromise. Détente.

Hey! Wait a minute!

It’s not that simple. There’s right and there’s wrong. Should we be half right and half wrong?

That’s wrong.

But then we have the problem of definition.

What you might think is right, I might think is wrong.

You argue that slavery is a jobs-development program. It supports the economy, the stock market, the profit margin, and the American Way of Private Enterprise. Money is the bottom line, and when it’s dotted, you sign on it. And when you have it, you call the shots.

That’s true, when truth is how you define it. “It’s true because I say it is.”

A dilemma has two horns.

There’s a unifying force behind both sides. Power and money.

There’s always somebody who defends the other side. Even after the War, some Germans defended Hitler. “He got the trains to run on time.”

Some people jump to conclusions, find a flaw, and throw out the whole shebang.

Amy Goodman supported Palestine. Out!

She supported Edward Snowden and his release of secret documents, WikiLeaks, cybersecurity, interviewed him with Daniel Ellsberg who leaked the Pentagon Papers which led to Nixon’s resignation to avoid prison, but the timing of Snowden’s whistleblowing impacted an election. Snowden, Out!

Foreshadowing the Hillary emails strategically released just before the election, hence the present.

But Amy Goodman risked her life trying to find peace with North Korea, and we always brought her flowers whenever she spoke anywhere near us, and joined her for dinner and bought her books which she signed.

Ralph Nader was a spoiler. He drew off votes and cost the election. Out!

History should tell us something, and I don’t like to throw out the baby with the bath.

Shirley and I would listen to the weekly broadcasts on KPFK of the Ralph Nader Hour. He promoted worthy causes and we joined his project, the Oaks. We were Sprouts that would become Trees. We became colleagues, almost friends of Nader. He signed our old thumb-worn paperback copy of his seminal book, Unsafe at Any Speed, which underwrote his winning lawsuit against the government and awarded him enough money to establish and support a liberal force. He particularly liked the fact that we owned his mother’s cookbook and tried her recipes. We shared his youth.

So we were in the fold, though not in the inner circle. The inner circle set the agenda and called the shots. We were assigned to chauffer a handicapped woman Oak who became a friend and meant well. She convinced a local restaurant across the street from her second story apartment where she had to use the elevator, and when it wasn’t working, we helped her down the stairs, the restaurant donated food for the meetings and we collected it and drove it over.

We were assigned to a group of Oaks that met in upper Altadena at the house of a Sikh. He wore a turban. Not that that matters or makes any difference necessarily. His wife was not a member, brought out treats, and retreated to the kitchen. The Sikh led the agenda, and we saw right away that we were required to discuss subjects we had not and would not have chosen. We were generating statistics and would be quoted. We sat on the floor and were a motley group.

Then we met in the upstairs room in a house on the corner of Holliston and Calaveras, the street that crosses over to Hill and the Altadena Country Club and Golf Course. Drinks, treats, waiting for the television broadcast by Nader on his current initiative that he was trying to get into legislation.

The small crowd, many of us standing in the not large room, milled while a photographer took pictures and asked specific and probing questions and recorded our answers. We avoided him. He acted like a spy.

Then Nader came on the TV and made his pitch. We said, “Meh.”

Then we were assigned to go through the neighborhood and collect signatures and money. All donations gratefully accepted, sign here.

The petition was for NOTA, None Of The Above. The idea was to add a third alternative to a ballot which had two choices when we didn’t want either one. It took some explaining, especially since Shirley and I saw the dangers, didn’t want to take people’s money and sign a proposition that was before its time.

We grudgingly canvassed because there were not adequate liberal alternatives, and we tried to take the long view.

We wanted to go to another neighborhood, but they confined us to our own. We marched up and down Highland Avenue, knocking on doors. The Nader Group said, “You’ll have more success because you know your neighbors.”

We said, “That’s why we should try another neighborhood.”

We didn’t have the promised success.

Some neighbors closed the door on signatures and friendship.

One accommodating resident across and up the street in a two-story Victorian house that had been moved there from across the city, donated twenty-five dollars, not so much for liberal politics, but for neighborhood solidarity.

We had gained a mixed notoriety.

I tried to tell Nader that he had chosen the wrong cause, that the ENRON issue was a ready-made winner and would establish a presence and a precedent.

He and his inner circle would not listen. NOTA lost, and generated bad feelings. We did not win for losing. Nader had become nadir.

So we stopped being Oaks. But we still listened to Nader on the radio.

I hear Bing Crosby’s voice floating through the air, Der Bingle. Johnny Mercer, lyrics, Harold Arlen, music, a movie, Here Come the Waves, in 1944, a time of crisis:

Ac-cent-u-ate the positive

E-lim-inate the negative

Don’t mess with Mister In-between!

Words to live by.