The next time you hear someone blither on about how “both sides” are equally to blame for how colossally [bleeped] up government is, or how the “extremists on each side” have driven them to distraction with their hysterical gibberish, remember this moment in time, and remind them. The “fringes” of each wing, right and left, are currently in full display and it couldn’t be easier to judge the nature of wing-nut “extremism”, if making a reasoned judgment were actually ever the point.

Out there on the left fringe/extreme is Bernie Sanders, a sitting U.S. Senator chronically PO’d at the way his party and the political system in general is forever grabbing its ankles for any big money influence that knocks on their door. To listen to the nuance-free argument of the “both sides do it” crowd, most of whom give off the odor of dime deep apologizing for the status quo, Sanders is a dangerous if not senile radical, barely more coherent than the rumpled drunk railing at a parking meter. Again, that gives them credit for ever once listening to what Sanders is saying, which I sincerely doubt they’ve ever done.

Nonetheless, Sanders is the current face of the “left wing extremist”, replacing people like Michael Moore and, oh I don’t know, Bill Maher or anyone who writes for The Daily Kos.

Meanwhile … 180 degrees to the right, among a dense herd of loudly-braying like-thinkers, we have … Donald Trump, currently nudging up in the polls of likely Republican voters with his “really classy” rants about drug-dealing, raping Mexicans, Obama’s birth certificate, his torrent of law suits and absolutely anything else that will earn him free TV time.

Candidates like Ted Cruz, Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee are just as silly, and Scott Walker is far more sinister, but Trump is the guy of the moment telling the modern conservative base exactly what it wants to hear. He’s the guy with mojo in the polls, to the point that his comrades-in-candidacy are attacking him, and (I sincerely believe) putting pressure on Republican National Chairman Reince Preibus to call Trump and tell him to “tone it down” … and then go on national TV and tell political junkies that he … told Trump to tone it down. (Sort of like The Doomsday Machine in “Dr. Strangelove”, you defeat the purpose of such a call if you keep it a secret.)

As far as I know, no Democratic leader has as yet called Bernie Sanders. Mainly because Bernie, as “extremist lefties” are wont to do, has not made genuinely screw-loose, racially-offensive charges against anyone, much less an ethnic group composing 15% of the population. Nor has old, frazzled-looking Bernie made a habit of absurdist fantasies about birth certificates or hired dozens of chumps off the street to wear campaign t-shirts and shriek his name as he glided down a gilded escalator. (I could get into hairstyles, but in fairness to Bernie I’m guessing he spends a lot less time getting his bouffe looking camera-ready.)

Now, I’m not saying either gentleman has even a remote chance of winning their party’s nomination. Trump is playing this summer’s version of The Loudest Fool, because every available metric tells conservative candidates that they can not sound too unhinged, hysterical or racist if they want to fire the imaginations of the GOP’s almost exclusively white, exurban-to-rural base. But as the real Big Lebowski tells The Dude, in the end, “The bums will always lose.” And Trump most certainly will, leaving the field to Jeb or, don’t think about this before you go to sleep, Scott Walker.

The (very obvious) point here is simply that the left extreme’s avatar, Bernie Sanders, is by the starkest of contrasts, making entirely reasonable complaints about the way we govern ourselves, if anyone can say “govern” without laughing. What is “appealing” to the “extreme left” bears no resemblance to that which excites the “extreme right”. Your classic lefty may be smug, sanctimonious and a simmering pot of righteous contention. But he/she isn’t willfully ignorant.

Personally, I don’t know where exactly I disagree with Sanders. (The exception would be leaving gun control to the states. A set of federal regulations is the only way to apply even a modest level of sanity.) His criticisms of the system and the Clinton’s coziness with the most cancerous elements of the system are entirely well-founded and fair. The crowds he’s drawing and his rise in the polls are a reflection of the large (but not large enough) appetite among liberals for, at the very least, a vigorous discussion — with Hillary Clinton — over what exactly she would do to re-align the distribution of wealth in this country and how, exactly, she would clamp down on our pay-to-play political game.

Bland, conventional thinkers, whose first order of business is truckling to customers pretty much like themselves, are simply too lazy to make qualitative assessments of “fringe” characters like Sanders and Trump. They certainly aren’t going to explore Trump’s appeal, beyond “telling it like it is”.

Characterization is so much easier. Even better: Counter-balancing characterization.