The Things That Make Us See

By Sniffles

The political leaders we cats admire have more faith in the American people than we do. For example, they believe that the recent outrage over migrant family separations is representative of our citizens' innate goodness — their willingness to put their feet down when something horrendous crosses the line.

We hope that these leaders we look up to are right. Except... we don't think they are. "The American people" have never been interested in anything except their own — well, interests.

Whole books have been written about US isolationism, so we won't try to reframe those arguments here. We'll just say that nobody wanted to fight the Nazis until the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and Adolf Hitler was stupid enough to declare war against the United States four days later. From our vantage point today, it all looks so simple and clear — but take it from us, back then the geopolitics were as complicated as they could get.

We're reminded of all this because with the corruption and incompetence of the Trumpsters and the destruction they have wreaked, approval of impeachment currently sits at 42 percent. That sounds impressive until you realize that at the lowest point of his Presidency, just 43 percent of Americans wanted Richard Nixon impeached. Oops.

In short, the majority is never going to be on the right side of history — at least, not while it's happening. It's only later, when outrageously unconstitutional excesses (Nixon) or unparalleled genocide (the Nazis) are revealed that most folks take stock and say, yeah, getting rid of those creeps was the right thing to do.

We cats are not claiming any special clairvoyance about today, or an ability to predict the future. We're just saying that there have been many times that we've said thus-and-such-a-thing — only to be dissed and then validated later, when everyone else has come round to our way of thinking. And right now, we fear that our liberal and accepting attitude toward those who seek asylum at the Golden Door is not shared by very many of our fellow Americans.

Demonizing immigrants is nothing new in American history. Let's just hope that in 2018, with the stories and images that have come out (and with more to come, we hope), the Trumpsters' horrific treatment of migrants at the US-Mexican border will be this hideous Administration's undoing. We cats HISS and PURR at the same time.