“Do you know how to cure a chicken-killin' dog? Now, you know you cannot keep a dog that kills chickens, no matter how fine a dog it is otherwise.
Some people think you cannot break a dog that has got in the habit of killin' chickens, but my friend John Henry always claimed you could. He said the way to do it is to take one of the chickens the dog has killed and wire the thing around the dog's neck, good and strong. And leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.”
This delightful piece of writing was none other than the late, great Molly Ivins way back in 2004. She was using the chicken allegory to talk about the Bush Administration in particular and Republicans in general. At that time, Bush was gearing up to gut Social Security after winning a closely fought election with John Kerry. People THOUGHT when they voted they were keeping a commander-in-chief in place in the middle of a war. What they were getting though was the money guys picking their pockets in the middle of a war.
The problem we’ve had for decades is that bleeding heart liberals are always rushing in to save the chicken (and the dog) before any harm can be done. Yes, it’s the right thing to do under most circumstances but the problem is the dog never learns to change its behavior.
We moved from California to Oregon when Arnold Schwarzenegger was elected governor. We knew what was bound to happen with yet another Republican governor and a legislature that had just enough Republicans to continually throw a wrench in the system. Everything panned out just about exactly as we expected it would (all except the governor’s love child with a maid but heck, I’m not that clairvoyant). The state’s economy went into the toilet for years.
Along came Jerry Brown. Now Brown could have done like most Democrats do, spent all his time battling with Republicans trying to gain inches of ground against the Republicans as they furiously tried to push him back. Instead, he decided to let them have their heads and let the people of the state truly experience what it was like living under Republican rules. Needless to say, that didn’t go over well and it wasn’t too many years before the Democrats gained a veto-proof majority. As it stands today, Republicans are virtually extinct in the great state of California.
The current Speaker of the House is from California of course. She witnessed all of this up close and personal. I know most people think that she is wisely not giving an inch to Drumpf so that he will know that his tactics will not work in future. I think, however, she found an opportunity for the people of this country to experience that dead chicken around our collective necks. The Democrats have had enough, they are not going to save us from Republican “policy” anymore. Until people understand what it really means to continually elect Republicans to office, they are going to keep doing it.
“Leave it there until that dead chicken stinks so bad that no other dog or person will even go near that poor beast. Thing'll smell so bad the dog won't be able to stand himself. You leave it on there until the last little bit of flesh rots and falls off, and that dog won't kill chickens again.”
Yep.
