August 23, 2026

Humans

When I was growing up, American culture was neatly divided into two distinct groups — cat people and dog people.

On one side of the cultural divide were dog lovers. They were morally upstanding, trustworthy individuals who believed in things like loyalty, cleanliness, and comradery. The cat lovers on the other hand — well, nobody trusts someone who would let their pet repeatedly take a dump in your toddler’s sandbox.

Then there were the outlying groups — those who claimed to like both cats and dogs…or those who hated both species. The first group quite obviously suffered from multiple-personality disorder because no sane individual could like both creatures. That would be like some fool who professed to like both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles.

The second of the outliers (the haters) consisted of compulsive cranks who spent their time finding fault with any and everything. They were like some knucklehead who claims to dislike both chocolate and vanilla ice cream. These people were never to be taken seriously.

The point is that everyone tended to coexist in a strained but mutually beneficial harmony. We tolerated each other’s shortcomings and moved on with life. Admittedly, as a dog lover, I might have occasionally thrown a beer bottle at the neighbor’s cat but never while they were watching (except that one time when their Tomcat was having sex with a neighborhood stray right beneath my bedroom window).

Today, we seem to have shrunken our circles of acceptance — it’s now long-haired dogs versus short-haired dogs, or black cats versus Siamese cats. And whoever isn’t within the consensus boundaries of our emotion-herds is fair game for cancelling.

We even have to preference everything we write or say with trigger warnings lest we offend someone from our own herd — even though our herd can no longer define what it means to be a cat (dogs were never in question).

I was even going to begin this story with a warning like “No cats or dogs were injured in the making of this tale”, but then, I remembered my neighbor’s cat and realized that sometimes, getting injured is a just consequence of copulating in public (regardless of your definitions).

Dogs believe they are human. Cats believe they are God.

— Anonymous

(I wonder if that translates equivalently to dog people and cat people?)

Let’s talk. I’d really like to hear what you have to say, and it might even give me something to write about. Email me at guy@lawsoncomm.com.
I’ll buy you coffee and we can compare notes. I promise not to steal your ideas without permission.

The Republic

— Plato

So much for easy reads. If you want to understand cultural decay and political disarray, there’s no better place to start than the guy who predicted it nearly 2,000 years ago. This book is not a light read but it provides a lot of food for thought. Warning: Keep a dictionary handy.
Russell will like it because the Audible version is 11 hours and eighteen minutes long. That’s a whole week of commutes.