A scenario every parent with an older child, though yet small, and one who is a few years younger, and much smaller knows all too well:

Janey: “Mommy, Derek punched me in the stomach.”

Mommy: “Derek, why did you hit your little sister?”

Derek, looking sheepishly up at his mother, whispers, “Dunno.”

Mommy: “What? Derek, why did you hit your little sister?”

Derek, only a bit louder: “Dunno.”

Mommy: “Derek, you must have had a reason. You just don’t hit your sister for no reason at all. Now what is it?”

Little kids we might conclude, shaking our heads in puzzlement.

But it’s not just little kids who behave along those exact same lines. Adults all too often — my personal anecdotal evidence suggests the overwhelming majority of adults — construct their lives and their opinions and behaviors with not a whit more genuine thought than Derek did in the scene above.

Young men and women, those in their middle years, and those in the senior end of their lives as often as not neither know anything worth knowing that is necessary to the gift of democracy they’ve received as a bequest, nor do they even want to know. In other words, contrary to the sycophantic accolades lavished on them by candidates running for elective office, that “the American voter makes a wise choice,” I contend the American voter is more often than not an extraordinarily ignorant dolt, incapable of registering an informed notion concerning what we used to call ‘civics.’

This morning a neighbor asked me who I thought “was going to win.” My spirits grew in hope that I might find a conversation worthy of some level of discussion, regardless how brief or passing. I replied, “On the one side, there’s John McCain.”

“Is he a Democrat?”

My initial hopes slinked back into wherever they’re stored in my gray matter. But I pursued it for just a few steps farther. “He’s a Republican. My greatest fears with McCain concern his positions on the judiciary, and who he’d name . . .”

A blank stare, like a television turned off, met mine. The 60+ year old woman had neither a clue nor a care.

She was, I was assured nonetheless, a Democrat.

I let it go, reflecting on the old Biblical adage about “casting pearls before swine.” This woman could have opined endlessly on the delights offered by Rachel Ray, on who was on Oprah or Dr. Phil, and what the topics were. I have suffered equally with men who complain bitterly about “that dumb-ass call” in last weekend’s game, but who have no cognitive reason why they are for this candidate or that ballot proposal, except that they either heard someone on the Right side of the radio dial vocalizing this way or that, or they had been raised in such and such an environment, and never thought to analyze even the first part of the notion.

I have two wonderful sons, 20 and 23 respectively. I remember them as infants, in their cribs, amused by the dangling red ball, the yellow triangle, and the blue square just beyond their grasp. That’s what the United States seems mostly composed of, but in full grown bodies. Just substitute the plastic geometric shapes for a string of equally mindless television programs, and you’ve got chortlings or wails as the products. What you do not have is much in the way of adult thought.

And I wonder why they were ever given the capacity for thought in the first place, if they had neither the intention nor desire to use it. 

Listen, it ain’t George Bush. It ain’t Dick Cheney either. Nor is it the conservative curmudgeons breaking wind on the right side of the dial or on Fox News. Then again, it ain’t the corporations either. They’re all doing whatever they can get away with. Don’t expect a coyote to not act like a coyote, or a rat to not act like a rat. Nope — it’s those we pretend are our friends, our relatives, our associates who, no matter what their political allegiances are, cannot explain in the slightest intelligent fashion why. Because they cannot, those forces with the zeal to work their way, and the intellect to manipulate toward their agenda just keep right on a doin’, and the wheel keeps right on a spinnin’, and the sheep keep right on shufflin’ to the shearin’ and the slaughterin’. “Baa-ahh, baa-ahh, baa-ahh . . .”

“Did you see who the biggest loser was last week?”

“Didn’t need to Babe, it’s all of us. I’m going to the garage . . . to scream at the walls.”