ARE WE SMARTER THEN A CAT?

The local newspaper has a “sound off” section in which people can submit their complaints about anything -- in 50 words or less. Some are very funny. Some make you wonder just how we have managed to survive as a nation as long as we have. The one that caught my eye this morning was the woman who wrote to complain how annoyed she was that her cat would only eat canned tuna.

Dr. Benjamin Spock, the baby doctor who wrote the book on raising kids that became the bible for many parents in the 1950s and 1960s, including my wife and me, wrote that no baby ever starved to death from not eating. Children often turn up their noses at food they have decided they do not like, even before tasting it, but a hungry child will eventually eat what is before him. Cats will do the same I suspect. A cat may prefer tuna but will eventually eat what is in the food dish if it if that is all that is available.

Cats, like kids, try to train the adults who care for them. This woman has been well trained by her cat.

Many of us have been well trained by our political leaders, by the political pundits and by the news media to accept partisanship bickering as the political norm. We accept what they put before us.

We need to start rejecting some of the nonsense we are asked to swallow. Unfortunately, we have become so “conditioned” that like Pavlov’s dogs we start salivating whenever we hear our favorite pundit punishing the president. We applaud any comment by a political leader that trashes an opposition party proposal. The so-called Party of No is popular because some of us are so happy to see our political opponent be slapped down that we do not bother to ask what the alternative is. Moreover, both political parties earn that title as the Party of No; it is whichever party is not in power at the time.

We have become so conditioned to this state of affairs that our political leaders no longer even seem to be trying. They know that a significant number of their constituents will respond favorably so long as they come out against whatever the party in power proposes. We cheer, we salivate, and we ask nothing more than that “our” politician trash the opponent’s idea.

We shun compromise, negotiations, and honest debate. What we want is a decisive victory. Sack the quarterback. That we understand. We don’t have time for complicated negotiations that actually take into account what is good for the country or the economy. We favor sound bites and legislative posturing. We applaud news reports that make the “other guy” look bad and “our guy” look good, totally ignoring whether there was any constructive result.

We actually look to a plethora of print, television and radio pundits for our information about what is happening in Washington or the state capitol rather than the political leaders we sent there. Doesn’t that tell you that something wrong?

We accept political ads – negative and/or misrepresented – in lieu of political debate. Why not insist that our political candidates tour the district, state or country actually debating each other rather than going around making canned speeches that play to the crowd. Why? Because we have been conditioned to accept that nonsense as sufficient food for our voting decisions.

We have failed to train our leaders to feed us facts, truth or measurable accomplishment. Instead, we accept the crap they feed us as if it were tuna. Can’t we learn to be as smart as a cat?