Nancy Pelosi is married. So is Chuck Shumer. And Donald Trump? He’s on his third wife.

You would think by now that these three would understand the benefits of compromise. Could you imagine a marriage where you get your way all day every day? Most of us wouldn’t even want to be in such a relationship.

At our house, I sometimes have to compromise just over where we’re going to dinner. OK, you pick this time, but next time we’re going out for chicken wings and beer.

It works.

And it can work on funding for border security.

Trump himself has claimed he is an expert at negotiating a deal. Show it.

Pelosi has claimed the Democrats are not soft on border security, just the wall. Show it.

To be honest, I don’t think Donald Trump or Nancy Pelosi know how to best secure our borders – even though both claim to know just that. Leave the means – be it a wall, boots on the ground or drones in the air – to the professionals who work along the border daily. Talk to the border patrol officers who care less about politics, they just do their jobs. The ones we see on television – right-leaning and left-leaning stations – are picked because they think a certain way. It makes a good story, but leaves us with conflicting and confusing information.

The southern border with Mexico is  long and varied, and it shouldn’t be a place for people to have easy access to enter when we don’t know who they are. Fix it. Both sides need to quit focusing on “The Wall,” although walls surely would be part of any common-sense border security plan.

If you’re worried about illegal drugs entering over the border, put more security at the legal borders – where trucks enter our country by the thousands. An individual could carry some drugs on their person, but not in the amounts that is causing our problems.

If you’re worried about terrorists sneaking over the border, the wall may be part of the answer. But don’t forget our northern border, our airports and our oceans.

If you’re worried about murderers, rapists and child molestors sneaking over the border, by all means, secure it. Too bad we can’t send those American born and bred rapists, murderers and child molestors over a border somewhere.

Most of the undocumented immigrants in the country today didn’t sneak in through cracks in border security. They came legally, with work visas, and never went back, even after the visas expired. That’s a problem, but a different problem.

Too many of us are grossly misinformed on the whole ordeal. The far right thinks the far left wants open borders where anybody can cross anywhere at any time. They don’t, though you couldn’t tell that by all the fake Facebook news feeds that say just that. The far left thinks the far right hates everyone who isn’t like them or doesn’t think like them. They don’t, though you couldn’t tell that by all the fake Facebook news feeds that say just that.

Folks, quit using Facebook as a news source. It isn’t. It is too hard to tell what is real news based on facts vs. what Todd Snider calls inspiration (when folks make stuff up). I have left and right friends on Facebook, and it’s amazing some of things they post as truth, and these are reasonable, educated people.

The political extremes aren’t dividing our country, we’re already divided because of those extremes. But those people on both sides are pushing many of us away from politics as we know it. Republicans, yuck. Democrats, yuck. There are more of us stuck in the middle than either side wants to realize. We’re tired of our political hotshots wanting nothing more than power or the feeling they were right. They don’t make moves because it is right for the country, they make moves because it is right for their political party and its future.

Who wins the government shutdown battle over The Border Wall?

It sure isn’t the American people.

– Mike Barnhardt