Herding Cats

The current Presidential election campaign is moving rapidly in the direction of most campaigns. Simply put, one candidate pointing the finger at the other making statements (most only partially accurate, while some are outright lies) to break down their opponent. God forbid we build ourselves up. Winning today in politics means you break the other person down, pitiful. I like to look at elections in a far simpler way; which of these people will conform to what I see as the role of our government (federal state or local). My vision of government is much like that of a cat herder, a very difficult job. If you have ever owned a cat or known a cat owner you know what I am talking about. If you have ever worked inside any level or segment of the government (military included) you also know what I mean. If you have two kids or more under the age of six this will seem familiar as well. The two difficulties with this job are how to keep the cats within the lines, borders, rules, or laws and what are the aforementioned restrictions? For me, the restrictions part is simple I use the Constitution with a common sense approach as the subjective part to interpretation. Most Americans probably see the restrictions part similarly. I think we have a lot of common ground with the restrictions, but some people want to make tons of restrictions to control the cats.

I honestly believe that most people (even the current administration) think what they are doing, proposing or passing is good for the country, but most people think so because it is individually good for them. This mindset leads a fish loving cat owner to provide only fish to his/her cats (my cats prefer chicken), find the positive sides of fish fed cats and promote it for all cats, zealots would outlaw chicken or beef for cats, leaving only fish as an option. The problem with this mindset isn’t that fish is bad for cats; the problem is there are more options for cats and who the hell told you to prevent my cat from eating chicken!  Multiply that example times 310M people and then again by an infinite number of topics. A real cat herding mess becomes apparent. The framers of our Constitution knew this to be true and as such designed our government with a macro-perspective of the cat herding issue (while herding cats, make a huge fence, provide many options, and let them be cats). You can’t control everything the cats do and you can’t make them do everything you think is good for them. Our current administration thinks (for some reason) they are the most intelligent, informed, and educated people on the topic of herding cats. They want to decide all cat herding issues; from what we eat to who pays for our contraception. Their motto should be “let them eat fish”.