Squeaky Wheel

Hi Humans,

It seems that humans who are the loudest, most selfish, and most uncompromising seem to be heard and get their way more often than those who are realistic (the “squeaky wheel”effect). We dogs don’t seem to get away with that kind of behavior. An uncooperative dog often ends up at the pound and eventually… Well, I don’t like to talk about it. Nice dogs (like me) do better at survival (and it does not hurt to be cute like me either).

This “squeaky” wheel effect can occur on a small personal scale. An example would be the human who always gets his or her way because humans around him or her give in to avoid the withering fire shooting out at them from his or her tongue.

On a domestic political scale, political groups with the most extreme and uncompromising ideas have recently taken over politics in our country. It is amazing to see the foolish ideas that otherwise intelligent humans with big brains will believe and accept as normal.

The same is true internationally. Look at the recent war in Gaza. Hamas, which uncompromisingly believes that it can conquer Israel and turn all of the land between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea into a Fundamentalist Moslem Arab country in which Jews are either absent or reduced to a subservient minority, caused or supported the murder of 3 Jewish teenagers near Jerusalem. One could say it is crazy for a Jew to hitchhike across any part of the West Bank (real or perceived), but that is no excuse for murder. It seems that the murderers did this to stir up animosity between Jews and Arabs. And they were successful in their goal. Some Jews with “goyishe kopfs” accommodated Hamas with a pogrom against Arabs in East Jerusalem. And even worse, some pinhead Jewish murderers grabbed an Arab teenager and murdered him in a rather grisly way. This gave Hamas the excuse they were seeking to beef up their rockets across the border creating a situation where the Israeli government had no alternative and had to go to war with bombs and shells and when that didn’t work a ground invasion to destroy rocket sites and tunnels. Of course that resulted in the death of about 2000 Palestinians (apparently acceptable in the Hamas plan) and about 70 Israelis. It also was convenient for anti-semites in Europe and elsewhere outside of the region to attack Jews and call for boycotts of Israel.

So where are the sane humans in all of this? Why are they pulled to the brink and beyond by the crazies? They did exist in the 1990s when there was a climate of reconciliation and compromise on both sides leading up to the Clinton/Barak Plan which would have brought peace and the creation of a Palestinian state next to Israel. Yasser Arafat fumbled the ball because he lacked the courage to make the deal, creating a tinder box to which Ariel Sharon lit a match with his unannounced visit to the Dome of the Rock, to which the crazies on the Arab side responded with an intifada of suicide bombers. Then the sane humans on both sides just allowed themselves to be dragged along into endless conflict.

And those are just a few example of how you gullibles act. Well Humans, I don’t have an answer to your problems. After all, I’m just a dog. Maybe some day the sane ones among you (who I hope are really the majority) will get together and figure it out.

Chloe