By Morf Morford, Tacoma Daily Index

I have a cat that chases its own tail. For whatever reason, every once in a while a flicker of peripheral movement catches her attention and she pursues her own tail as if it were some alien presence and potential threat – or treat.

Usually she chases it until she “catches” it. And then she loses all interest in it.

I have to admit that my easily distracted cat is a fairly accurate metaphor for too many of our responses to almost every issue of public policy.

We seem to have whole categories of neighbors, regions and a few political parties that become, like my cat, hysterically obsessed with certain issues and then, usually for no apparent external or factual reason, what seemed so important, suddenly doesn’t matter.

You might think that the polarization that the media proclaims on about every news show is about liberals/progressives against conservatives. Based on the issues, and the positions taken on those issues, I would argue that our polarization has almost nothing to do with the traditional liberal/conservative divide.

I am convinced the real philosophical divide is between those who hold to semi-eternal principles, like justice, equity, and equality of opportunity and legal/constitutional protections for all and those who, again for whatever reason, seem to be in a near peripatetic, gold-fish like state, finding themselves transfixed by the next glittering thing.

As a bonus, I’ve noticed that the “next glittering thing” in many recent cases has a name that is fun to say. A few of these words are “Benghazi” and “Antifa”.

The word “woke” may or may not be fun to say, but I hear it exclaimed almost as an exclamation mark within any given sentence as if it had a shared, or in fact, any meaning.

I’ve asked several people who seem to love/hate the word “woke” what it means. Every time I ask them, I get a different answer. The one consistent theme is that “woke” means whatever they don’t like – which seems to change every day. In other words, “woke” like many words is, like beauty, a reflection of the beholder. From job security to potholes in local streets to the current state of music or popular culture, they blame it all on “woke”.

In tail-chasing we trust

And when it comes to larger, more pressing social issues, from homelessness, to drug addiction or gun violence, the same logic seems to prevail. Whatever the issue, you may have noticed that, as the volume rises, rational responses recede and the noise level takes over with ever more shrill (and incoherent, often contradictory slogans).

One college level textbook I used for several years made the observation that slogans are where thinking stops.

As a teacher, parent and concerned citizen, I don’t want “thinking” to ever stop.

But I see conversations, and essential political (and personal) dialog freeze up when slogans enter.

From “states’ rights” to “parent’s rights” to “tough on crime” to dozens more, these terms pretend to have simple answers for immensely complicated issues.

Have you noticed that politicians (and other public figures) across the pollical spectrum have a new-found love of the term “sanctuary state”? Like the other terms and slogans, “sanctuary state” means, and refers to anything. Or nothing. Or everything.

The term “sanctuary” as used here, comes from what most of us know as the Old Testament (Exodus 21:13 and Numbers 35:19) where an accused murderer could find (sometimes permanent) refuge. To put mildly, that is not how most use it today.

One website, with glaring headlines, proclaims warnings of “sanctuary states” that welcome/coddle/protect “criminal illegal aliens”.

Washington state has been an illegal alien sanctuary since 2017, they warn us.

And I’ve seen them in my neighborhood. I see them almost every day doing yard work, landscaping, replacing old roofs and building fences. How much “refuge” they actually have, I do not know. But I do know that my neighbors hire them and (especially the older ones) depend on their labor and skill.

Aliens among us

I’ve often wondered how any human being achieves “alien” status. It seems like the ultimate fantasy of a typical boy in the third-grade.

In a reasonable, rational world, one would assume any “pro-life” adherents would stand up in defense of the “sanctity of human life” and defend any actual living human being against the inherent dehumanization of being defined as “alien”. And that “pro-life”, if it meant anything, would demand that children are kept safe in schools and public spaces.

When the leading cause of death among children is gun related (with auto related deaths as a close second), adults causing child deaths puts to shame any “thoughts and prayers” to protect them.

Maybe it’s just me, but tolerating a society where children are terrified by the thought of going to school and encountering violence or death there should not fit anyone’s definition of “pro-life”.

But, in our swirl of fantasies and slogans that say, and mean nothing, you’d be wrong.

Too many of us, even politicians and religious leaders, seem to act like my cat; chasing the ephemeral distraction that, in most cases, doesn’t even exist. And they, like many “citizen” groups, seem particularly eager to make laws and rules that apply to everyone except themselves.

Maybe we need something like a duty-free, industrial/foreign trade zone where anti-vaxxers, flat-earthers and chem-trail conspiracy theorists can pass all kinds of laws that only apply to them, and they can chase their proverbial tails and let the rest of us have a stable rational and fair society and economy.

Tail chasing and conspiracy spreading must be lots of fun, but someone needs to get things done.

When it comes to persisting social issues, from homelessness to addiction to crime to public violence, our intervention should reduce, if not entirely eliminate, their impact and presence. Instead, as we have seen in too many situations, our laws and policies seem to make these situations more extreme and more embedded, if not intractable, in our public spaces.

We seem to be spending our energies and tax dollars and achieving objectives no one wants.

Even my cat figures out that chasing its tail doesn’t accomplish anything, eventually.