David McElroy

When I looked at Bessie’s injured paw Tuesday morning, I was horrified. What had been a slightly swollen but normal-looking paw had changed. It now looked more like a limb that had been caught in a meat grinder. The bones of her paw were exposed, because she had stripped away the dead flesh. It was gruesome. (Here’s a picture if you’re interested.)

You might remember how this whole mess started. Bessie somehow got her paw caught up in the threads of some fabric under my bed. The harder she pulled to get away, the tighter the threads became. She was trapped, but never made a sound. I even saw her underneath the bed 24 hours before I realized there was a problem, but she acted so normal that I didn’t suspect a thing.

When the vet saw her last week, he thought the flesh was still healthy enough to survive, but he told me to watch out in case it turned hard or crusty. Bessie noticed it was dead before I could, and she chewed it off by Tuesday morning.

I had her back at the vet’s office just a few minutes after I found this. I thought she might have to have much of her paw amputated, but I still didn’t understand how bad it was.

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I ran into a friend Monday afternoon who I hadn’t seen for awhile. I knew he had gotten married about 18 months or so ago, but I hadn’t heard any news of him since. He had some news for me. He and his wife had a baby boy a few months back, so he’s a father now.

I was happy for my friend, but I was also envious — because having my own family is something I’m really eager for. I’ve always known that I wanted children, and I want them even more as the years pass.

I’m glad I didn’t have kids when I was much younger, because I’m not sure I’d adequately dealt with my own childhood baggage to be a good parent. I fear that I might have left them just as damaged as I’d felt if I’d taken on the responsibility years ago. I feel ready now, but I’m under the impression that convincing the right woman to be the mother is a key prerequisite.

As I thought about all this again, I wondered — not for the first time — why human beings seem so driven to have families. Having children isn’t logical. They cost us money. There’s rarely a “return on investment” in the pragmatic sense. So why do most of us feel so driven to create families?

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In the last 48 hours, Paul Ryan has been crowned the great hope of fiscal conservatives. If they honestly believe that, they’re more desperate than I thought, because the only way to see Ryan as fiscally conservative is to completely ignore his record.

It seems that the presumptive GOP vice presidential nominee is seen as a fiscal conservative simply because of his budget proposal in the House. His proposal would have balanced the budget without raising taxes, but it was an absolute fairy tale of a proposal, partly because it would have required decades of future presidents and Congresses to stick to it as laid out. Is there anybody in the world stupid enough to believe that’s even remotely possible?

Mainstream political reporters are painting the selection of Ryan as a turn to the “radical right” to placate the Tea Party’s supporters. A writer for Time magazine even said that Ryan was the choice of the “libertarians on the Wall Street Journal editorial board….” (I haven’t run into any actual libertarians yet who are excited about Ryan.)

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