One reason I'm no longer a Republican

Back during my early college years I was a proud member of the Young Republicans or whatever it was called. I was a student at the University of Arkansas in Little Rock. Our group planned to attend a meeting at the main campus in Fayetteville which is at least 3 hours away by car. One of the group leaders had a pilot’s license and a plane so he agreed to fly us up for the meeting to cut down on travel time. It was dark by the time we got to the northwest Arkansas region. I could tell the pilot was getting disoriented and was uncertain about the airport location.

I am not a pilot, and hadn’t been in a private plane since I was about 8 years old. But I’ve studied maps my entire life and I know the shapes of cities and can usually identify them from the air, especially at night with the city lights. I swear I recall flying into Chicago once on a commercial flight and could easily spot Chicago from the surrounding suburbs because the street lights in Chicago were a different color from the surrounding ‘burbs.

Anyhoo, northwest Arkansas is pretty easy to figure out because, at the time, Fayetteville was the largest town at the southern end of a string of towns, with Springdale just a few miles north, and Rogers a few miles north of Springdale. I can’t remember where our destination was, but I think it was Springdale for some reason. The pilot passed over Springdale and was heading towards Rogers. He had no idea, but I knew. We ended up landing at an airport and of course it was the wrong one.

I think that was one turning point for me with the Republicans. These people wanted to control the country and the leader, while blessed with obvious wealth, had no sense of direction or analytical skills. And I haven’t flown in a private plane since.