WHEN LEFT AND RIGHT SPEAK THE SAME

 I have always associated ends meet with the idiomatic phrase to make (both) ends meet, meaning the attempt to balance income and expenses. Yesterday, however, listening to Karoline Leavitt, Press Secretary in Trump’s administration, I was reminded of Elma Sáiz Delgado, spokesperson minister of the current Spanish communist government.

Ms Leavitt, a rightist who does not mince words, attacks the left as peddlers of lies, fake news, and unethical behaviour. Her Spanish counterpart, Ms Sáiz Delgado, a socio-communist, uses precisely the same epithets against the so-called fascist right: lies, fake news, mudslinging.

The political right and the political left prove that ends meet: at one end the right, at the other the left, yet both employ the very same irate vocabulary. That can only happen because opposites meet. Politically, I am wary of both “right” and “left”: they are merely reflections of one another. Different cultures, different languages, but the same political mindset.