And dogs are just idiots

There are some immutable truths in life. How did I learn this? The less than sympathetic mother-“life just isn’t very nice, is it?” or the under achieving teacher from grade school -“you’ll never learn this material, will you?”- made valiant, if sadly misdirected, efforts to clue me in. Then there were the bosses who put the icing on the cake -“That isn’t the way I would have written it.”. I believe we are born with a personal Greek Chorus nearby, ready to reaffirm our worst suspicions that it’s all for naught.

Some truths I learned on my own. You can’t make a cat chase a ball. You also can’t make a dog watch the romping puppies on the tee-vee screen. The cat thinks you’re an idiot for trying and the dog is an idiot. Horses can be led to water. Children can be forced to play a musical instrument against their will, but you will be the idiot - paying for your sin in so many clever but cruel ways.

Husbands will still be who there were when you married them. Only more so.

In this same theme, Tea Party followers will never be able to redirect their considerable creative sign making energies to doing the simple research or homework necessary that would undercut the whole premise of their gawd given but wildly inaccurate ‘theories’ of the Constitution or democratic governance.

We need to quit trying, rather like scrambling past the frozen faced passenger on the burning aircraft. You yell for him to get out of the seat, run for his life. But he can’t. You must leave him there. Focus instead on those with wit enough to climb through the smoke and out onto the wing.

Help them make the leap to the ground.