We had a bit of a crisis here over the weekend; Desi, one of our two cats, had disappeared.

It all started (we suspect) on Friday night. My cousin was staying the night before catching a train to New York, sleeping on the living room couch. About 11 pm, I smelled something. My wife did too.
“It smells like a skunk,” she said, as she went for her asthma inhaler.

I recognized the smell immediately; my cousin was smoking something. I went down to check on him.

Now, I'm not the type to get all law-and-order about the recreational use of tobacco alternatives. But Paula's lungs were constricting, and…well, the smell was something awful.

“You smelled it?” he asked, nonplussed. “I was blowing the smoke out the back door so I wouldn't bother you.”

“Well, we didn't put up our plastic and duct tape,” I said. I told him it was aggravating Paula's asthma, and he agreed not to smoke any more. “Nada mas,” he said.

Well, the next morning, I drove my cousin to the train station. Paula and I then took Zoë to the National Zoo for the day. We got back that evening, and were greeted by one cat.

We have two cats.

After a thorough search of the house, we concluded that Desi was not in the house. And that led us to the conclusion that he had gone out the back door while my cousin was…otherwise engaged.

Angst ensued.

I went out and searched the neighborhood for about two hours, shining a flashlight under cars and bushes and calling for Desi. Despair began to set in.

I thought about how I was going to explain this to my boys when they got home on Sunday. I thought about everything else that you think about when a pet gets lost. All the other grief of the week swept back in.

I cried.

I went back into the house, and started printing out “lost cat” posters to put out. Then, just after 10:00 pm, in my stocking feet, I went out the back door and tried calling for Desi again.

“Mweeow?” came a distant-sounding reply.

I called again, and stood quietly in my driveway, trying to pinpoint where the mewing was coming from. Under my neighbor's car, Desi huddled in the cold. I got down on the ground next to the car and called to him again; he nervously crept over to me.

I carried Desi into the house and called to Paula. She poured cat food for Desi, which he devoured. We wept in relief.

I made us Manhattans.

A few days ago, Dave Winer connected some dots in an interesting way; he said:
They say that they love the American people but hate our government. They don't understand the US. Read the Constitution. Check out the first three words. It's our government. You can't like us and not like our government, and vice versa.

Ahem.
If only that were true, Dave. Unfortunately, the last time I checked:
1) We didn't elect our president by popular vote; we've inserted a level of abstraction called the Electoral College (and the Supreme Court) between the people and the process to prevent regional interests from being usurped by popular will. The framers of the Constitution didn't trust the rabble to pick their rulers.
2)At the time those words were written, the idea was that the US Senate “
shall be composed of two Senators from each State, chosen by the Legislature thereof, for six Years” (Article I, Section 3, Clause 1 of the Constitution); so there was a level of abstraction inserted between the upper house of the legislative body and the people.
3)As much as 4% of votes in the presidential election went uncounted.
4)In many states, the rules by which candidates qualify for the ballot favor those from the established dominant parties.
5) Since the Emergency Banking Relief Act of 1933, every president since FDR has used executive orders to essentially suspend parts of the Constitution by declaring “national emergency.”

…and so on. As has been demonstrated in the past (Vietnam, Civil Rights, et al), the only way to affect a change in position by the government is by a substantial popular movement placing immense pressure on “our” government to act or face open insurrection. That is not the hallmark of a government of “the people.”
Right now, the country is evenly divided on the issue of war. If this were a government of the people, would the question of whether we go to war not at least be decided by Congress? Shouldn't all the facts be laid before the American people so that we can judge for ourselves whether a war is warranted?

That won't happen. And unless it happens, I decline to have my identity as an American tied to this administration (as I would if this was the administration before it). The government should serve the will of the people–and only then should the people serve the will of the government.

We should be thankful that the Constitution at least guarantees us the right to speak out against the policies of those who rule us without fear of incarceration or death. But I forgot…the Constitution can be suspended.