If you’ve read more than, say, a quarter of one of my essays, you likely know I was part of the Air Force Academy’s Department of Political Science for a number of years (a total of 17 to be precise, 15 as an active duty military officer, and two stuck on at the end as a “civilian professor”). I put the quote marks in because I was technically a civilian teaching there, but with more than 25 years of uniformed service, the cadets still called me “Colonel Bidlack” more often than they called me “Dr. Bidlack.”

I walked out of my last classroom at the Academy (USAFA for short, pronounced “U-saf-ah”) in 2006, so it’s been a while and perhaps things have changed dramatically, but I rather suspect they haven’t, based on the recent flurry of news reports regarding the Trump administration’s plans to sharply reduce the number of civilians on the faculty (and also at West Point and Annapolis) to make the place “more military.” With more than 25 years in uniform, I’m pretty sure I have a better idea of what “more military” means than does a guy who snuck out of active duty entirely because of alleged “bone spurs.”

One thing I enjoyed very much during my years on the faculty was the chance to teach the first class of the incoming Four-Degrees, which is military for freshmen and freshwomen, and the course is titled “American Government and National Security”, and it covers, well, just what the title says.

Oh, and what are seniors called? You know, the folks about to graduate? They are “Firsties” of course. I promise it will become easier to follow.

Now that I’ve gotten you sufficiently confused, let’s pop into my first class of the year, with all the wide-eyed Four Degrees in their first classroom experiences.

I started the first class with a chalk line I’ve drawn from one end of the classroom to the other. And I explain to them this long line represents the total range of possible of political views. I spotted them the first two, totalitarianism and anarchy, and I put totalitarianism way out to the right end of the line, and anarchy way out left.

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We then talk a bit about what these terms mean — the actual meaning, not what you might have heard on Fox News or MSNBC or some other potentially biased news presenter. Because, gosh darn it, words matter.

OK, so the first term, totalitarianism, is government control of everything from which textbook every third-grade teacher in the country is using down to the price of potatoes. Simply put, totalitarianism is total control of everything.

The opposite extreme, anarchy, not surprisingly, is no government, no governmental control of anything. And I point out to the students neither extreme actually exists. There are no countries that control everything (North Korea and Turkmenistan might come the closest, though over a beer sometime, we can argue which is at which end) and there are by definition no countries with zero control, though perhaps some small country run by criminal syndicates might come closest. Simply put, totalitarianism and true anarchy are more thought experiments than actual depictions of what is going on in some nation-state.

Then I got sneaky… (Editor: really? I’m shocked).

I grab a cadet who has been more vocal than the others and give him the chalk and I ask him to draw lines for today’s Democratic and Republican Parties here in the United States. After some cajoling, the selected cadet often draws the Republican line way out right, near totalitarianism, and draws the Dem line way out to the left.

I then ask him to explain and justify his placement. The cadet usually rambles on about liberal Dems and conservative Reps and the vast distance between them. And then l let the poor kid sit down and I “fix” the lines.

I draw both the Dem and the GOP lines quite close together, just barely on either side of the middle point. I explain that compared to the U.S., most European countries have political parties that are much farther out. Fundamentally, when you talk about truly core beliefs, the Dems and the GOPers in the U.S. are actually pretty close together, even if it doesn’t feel that way to start. I ask what things actually unite our two main parties, and the cadets usually catch on. Voting is a usual example that pops up early. Both parties believe in the fundamental right to vote, although I admit the current Trump-cult is less committed to the franchise, but that will likely change when the Dems return to power.

We discuss the things our current political leaders agree on, such as religious freedom and freedom of the press. Heck, most of the Bill of Rights is still mostly supported albeit means slightly different things to different people.

And in today’s confused and muddled political battlefield, there is more agreement than you might think. And, I’m sad to report, yet again, there are those who seek to redefine certain political terms for their own benefit. But words have meanings, and let’s discuss just a few, shall we?

The term socialism is one that gets automatic boos at lots of places, until the people involved learn what the word actually means. I admit, this is a tricky one, but essentially socialism means the government has some measure of control over certain aspects of society. At the extreme, socialism is misused to imply communism (we’ll get to that one), but it doesn’t. Having a fire department in your town, or a county sheriff is socialism. You pay taxes, and certain essential services are provided, via socialism. So, if you like the cops (I was a military cop myself), you have some socialist blood pumping through your veins.

Communism (see? I told you we would get to it) is actually what Karl Marx was talking about. He predicted class warfare would erupt and the working classes would eventually cast off their chains and become part of a collective majority. Unfortunately, the idea of communism has long outlasted its inventor, and we have just had the nasty one-party dictatorship that is, in theory, still trying to reach the political utopia communism could be. Bad news though: it just doesn’t work, and you can ask Mikhail Gorbachev if you don’t believe me.

I’ll do one more: fascism. Oddly, fascism is similar to communism, in that it is, in theory, a system of government proponents claim would lead to a utopia, albeit a different one than communism.

And I argue no word in political science has been as misused as fascism. Hitler messed that up (and a whole lot of other things) when he tucked the word socialism into the name of his political party that was actually fascist. The “National Socialist German Worker’s Party” was neither socialist nor national. A fascist is one who believes in core principles of deep nationalism, an authoritarian point of view, a powerful military ready to do the bidding of the leader. Sound increasingly familiar?

So, as I heard someone on YouTube the other day, if you call someone a fascist and a socialist, you are demonstrating you don’t actually know what those terms really mean. You can’t be both. I actually heard a Trumper call a No Kings demonstrator a “fascist, communist, socialist, totalitarian,” which, as noted, can’t exist.

As I noted above, I’ve taught quite a few students through the years, and I would be frankly curious if any of them remember the definitions I just spat out. I hope so, but time will tell. One of the major problems the “Yes to Kings” faction has is they don’t really know what President Donald Trump is, politically.

Happily, I don’t think he does either.

Hal Bidlack is a retired professor of political science and a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel who taught more than 17 years at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs.