Sniffing Dogs

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

Sniffing Dogs

[I smell bipartisan compromise! Source]

Elections turn everyone else into political animals. Since we’re clannish and tribal, we should assume we’re political dogs, because they’re about the most social animals we know.

As humans, we’re taught to behave ourselves and to be polite. For some of us this training works better than for others. But for the political animals? Political animals have every excuse there is to justify acting like, well, animals. Political animals like to stink up the joint, to clear the place with noxious fumes of personal political off-gassing. Political animals do the human equivalent of communicating by scent: having political opinions.

Perhaps there’s political truth to the factory-floor wisdom: Opinions are like [butt]holes: None smells worse than the next guy’s.

Except that in the case of dogs, there’s a profound existential joy in enjoying bad odors. Which is why they like nothing more than to get a whiff of the next guy’s or gal’s rear. In polite and civilized packs, each butt owner is expected to wait patiently while his rectum is given a thorough olfactory once-over.

It’s sort of like how humans wind up scrolling through Twitter/X: to examine the shocking political odors emanating from others. It’s why political news and opinion keep the presses and cable news shows humming along. Now, it may be that the political opinions are particularly malodorous, make-you-weak-at-the-knees kind of stuff. And yet the political animals read and watch and scroll and scroll to learn more. It’s an inexhaustible curiosity, often punctuated by some scent marking on the part of the sniffer, too, if you get my drift.

If we had the sensitivity to smells that other animals had, we’d be able to learn a lot more from that sort of behavior: the sniffed bottom’s owner’s health and trustworthiness, his or her family lineage, his or her reproductive frame of mind, and the other places he or she might have marked territory that one has encountered. It’s helpful to know some important details about your neighbors and acquaintances for future reference if you’re a social animal.

Since we don’t have the olfactory prowess to get to the bottom of all that—and to appreciate it for all its nuance, for all the volatile organic gasses the bouquets contain—we have to have political conversations that go on and on. It would be much more efficient just to have a brief sniff and be done with it. Because political opinions may not be especially informative, but—boy!—they sure are can be smelly.