Quote of the Week...from John Boehner

You'll never get into trouble for something you don't say.              ---John Boehner

Ohioan John Boehner was the Speaker of the House of Representatives from 2011 to 2015 and was prominent in the national news as an opposition leader to the then-Obama administration.  He's recently come out with a memoir book On the House, which I just read and reviewed on this blog this past Monday.  In it I mentioned that I like Boehner: I'll go further in stating that if the Republican Party's politicians had consisted mainly of people with John Boehner's character and philosophy then I would have been much more inclined to vote for them as I had done for conservative GOP candidates in earlier times...instead we've been inundated the last decade or so with those Boehner calls "the crazies", first from the Tea Party movement and now from the ongoing Trump personality cultists.  At the end of his book, the author listed a few of his own sayings, which he terms "Boehnerisms"...the above quote is one of these, along with others like "There's a fine line between stupidity and courage", "Never get into a pissing match with a skunk", and "It doesn't cost anything to be nice." The quote I picked to discuss doesn't necessarily imply that I should never say anything to avoid getting into trouble, but rather that I should choose my own battles, so to speak, and prioritize the situations that merit a reaction from me.  Boehner himself has often been very outspoken, often in a profanity-laced manner, but he also is a "live-and-let-live" kind of guy who values respectful relationships and can sort out the relevant from the petty...and nobody should let themselves get mired into petty confrontations.  Over the course of my 64+ years of life, I have...like just about everyone else...encountered times of adversity and injustice, but my regrets are almost always centered on my own responses to them.  This is especially true in those circumstances when I displayed lack of judgment and said things either hurtful to myself or others when I should have let time cool off my righteous anger and kept my mouth shut.  That's why these short quips like the above one from the former Speaker are helpful...they're a good little reference to keep mentally stored until the situation calls for them...