Learning From Dogs About Our Own Idiosynracies The Day After an Election. It Just Doesn't Feel Right

Over the weekend, while Glamis played with her best friends, Jake and Mae, Patrick said we should throw off their canine universes by putting all the collars on Mae. We did.

Mae began to sulk and paced around the room with nervous energy, while Jake and Glamis were perplexed. "Um, we're used to this feeling around our neck? Where did it go? What are we to do without that strap behind our ears?"

They, too, began to nervously pace. It made me think that I probably have my own shenanigans that I'm used to and when something goes askew, I get nervous.

That's how I viewed the debate last night between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Both of them make me nervous, and although one makes me excessively more nervous than the other, I felt my mind pacing around my house wondering, "What the heck is going on with our nation this year?"

I'm not the type to get excessively political or to join the bandwagons on either side. Perhaps it's my middle child nature, or maybe it is my interest in viewing everything from multiple angles. As I run through Stratford and see signs in yards of people (much more minimal in this election cycle than year's past) I wonder how it is they can be so convinced to stand adamantly behind either of the candidates. It seems this year I'll be voting reluctantly to attempt to do the least damage to our nation.

Turn on the news any time of the day, and evidence of such damage is rampant. Aristotle said that "Every civilization bears the seeds of its own destruction." Hmmmm. It seems to me that the privileges and affordances of the American people are truly challenging what democracy actually means. With that comes questions of freedom, rights, prejudice, hate, and fear. I think it is the fear being spread that has me thinking I'm with the dogs on this one....

...wandering around the world saying, "This doesn't feel right. What am I supposed to do?"

And I know what I will do. I will participate with the rights I have (while I have them) and try to make sense of this alteration of materials around my neck. I will pant, I will pace, I might panic, and I'll look to others to help me understand what Marvin Gaye once sang, "What's going on?"

I have no idea, but my inner ethnographer is trying to make sense of it, even when none of it seems to make much sense.