Yes, I should know better. Don’t talk about politics or religion. It’s too controversial and all that. I got into some real trouble doing just that back in the 1960s. Some people never learn, and I am one of “those people.”

This election season, aka the “silly season,” just keeps getting more and more unbelievable. The debates have turned into debacles of grade-school whining, lying and name-calling. And that’s just on the Democratic side! I don’t even know how to describe what is going on with the Republicans.

I have no solutions for this silliness, but I have thought about our system of electing people. Primary season is quite a mishmash of voting or caucusing. Some states have chosen to have early selection, I guess so they can claim bragging rights as a bellwether state and begin the delegate count. Add in the so-called superdelegates and you have a crazy way of counting delegates that seems to work but doesn’t seem all that democratic to me.

I caught a story on TV about how Brits limit their political campaigns to something like 90 days or less. Oh, if only that were the case here. We are still nine months away from the end of all this madness. Don’t get me started on how much money is going into TV and radio ads, the cost of Secret Service protection for candidates, the time away from duties, the overall cost of campaign workers and travel. What a waste of precious resources that might otherwise feed, house and help people.

What about the religious piece I alluded to? I will tell you. Most of the candidates extol their Christianity and another, his Jewish beliefs. All profess to be concerned with the plight of the poor and powerless. All have different ideas on how to make things better for the middle class and the poor. Yet there is almost no concrete plan for how to do that. Wages in this country have not kept up with costs to raise a family for a long time now. Efforts to increase the minimum wage are thwarted by state and federal politicians. Yet the very, very rich keep getting richer. Have we seen how tax breaks for the very, very rich have improved the middle class? We have not. There is little evidence that helping and caring for the poor is much on the minds of candidates.

We hear from candidates that a bigger and better wall on our southern border is needed. The flow of drugs in and the flow of money and guns out of our country keeps up its steady flow. The wall isn’t working. The Bulletin recently printed an article about the Great Wall and how it did not stop invaders in China. So using it as an example of how we could build a wall to protect us is not a good example.

Pope Francis recently criticized us having a wall on our southern border. Rather, he said, we should be building bridges of understanding and cooperation. Hello, candidates, listen to the good man. He has a point.

— Miles Hutchins is a retired Redmond resident who grew up in Central Oregon. milesredmond@gmail.com