We cats are planning to attend the Rally to Restore Sanity on Saturday. (Yes, they'll have a special section for feline bloggers. Please note, however, that this does NOT mean that other rally attendees should bring their pets.)
"Sanity" seems like such a lofty goal in American politics these days that we're tempted to look to other countries, and other eras, for some answers. We find ourselves thinking a lot about Canada. Not just because this month is the 40th anniversary of the October Crisis, but because our neighbors to the north often seem to engage in the kind of national conversations we Americans should have — but which we always, out of fear or laziness, manage to avoid.
Specifically, today, we in the U.S. are struggling between reason and passion. On the "reason" side, we have a cerebral man in the White House who the Beltway media insist is disconnected from his constituents because he's too intellectual and remote. On the "passion" side, we have right-wingers demanding their country back and stomping on the heads of people with whom they disagree.
So in the middle of all this comes 'The Daily Show," asking the famous Rodney King question of whether we can't all just get along.
We cats think we're all missing the point: Reason and passion are not separate from one another. In fact, to successfully govern ourselves as a nation and a society, the two must go hand in hand.
Which brings us back to Canada. One of its most influential Prime Ministers — a famously remote intellectual, in fact — was long believed to advocate reason over passion. But it turns out that for years he was misunderstood.
"This is.... what I've tried to express for years," Pierre Trudeau said. "Reason shaping, controlling passion. Not thinking without passion. [But] reason and passion together... The uniting of mind and heart. A rational person has all this in balance."
We cats aren't seeing a lot of this balance in America today. But we can dream of a better tomorrow.
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