I suppose we all have a wild hare that needs to be tamed by some responsible adult.  That role fell to my mother during the years my siblings and I were growing up.  You tame a wild hare by enforcing rules.  

Mom imposed such statutes as 1) no watching the Three Stooges, 2) no imitating what you saw that time you watched the Three Stooges with Grandpa, 3) no pretending that your crayons are cigarettes, 4) no playing “doctor” with the neighbor kids, etc. etc.  

She also taught us the words of that great hymn, “O Be Careful Little Hands What You Touch,” with additional stanzas reminding us to be careful little mouth what you say, be careful little eyes what you see, and be careful little feet where you go. Children have all sorts of wild impulses luring them to misbehave.  The beasts that burst forth from the jungle of the human mind must be tamed, and parents do what they can.  

The notion of a wild hare is murky.  Some say it should be wild hair, others that it is a wild tear.  But since I’m the author of this piece, it will be a wild hare, so try to control your opinions while you’re reading this.  I was going to write “your damn opinions, but my mother believed that word was a wild hare that must not be allowed in public. 

A literal wild hare is something that will eat your garden if you don’t fence it out, or scare it away with hyena urine, or practice your Second Amendment rights with it.  As a metaphor, a wild hare is what must be controlled if civilization is to be saved.  They are those escaped and unpredictable impulses of the human id (see Sigmund Freud) that must be constricted if our way of life is to survive.

So, if parents are in charge of controlling their kids, who controls the adults.  After all, the wild hare does not go away just because we get to be teenagers.  In fact, the older we get, our brains don’t just disgorge the occasional wild hare.  They spew forth a warren of rabbits, a husk of hares, a herd of jackrabbits.  Even if you live through all your stupid adolescent ideas, and your idiocy during a mid-life crisis, there’s always dementia down the road to unscrew whatever inhibitions you’ve managed to attain over the years.  So, who controls the adults?

I don't know how adults control each other in other countries, but in the U.S. we've gotten it all worked out in the last 40 years. Democrats are in charge of controlling the wild hares of Republicans, and Republicans are in charge of controlling the wild hares of Democrats.  Isn’t that special?

If you are a Republican or Democrat who is easily offended, you may want to stop reading at this point. I have some wild hare ideas for both sides.

When I was a kid, it was the religious folks who tried to police people’s "out there" notions.  My own evangelical tradition regulated everything from sex to the Sabbath, from alcohol and tobacco to the proper place for women.  But nowadays, evangelicals have turned it over to the Republican party to control everyone’s wild hares.  Or more specifically, the Democrats’ wild hares.  If you fell asleep sixty years ago and just woke up, you’d be surprised at what happened when evangelicals outsourced "wild hare control" to the Republicans.  The pews are now filled with wild hares--all sorts of "creative" interpretations of Jesus and his ethics. And there are even feral jackrabbits preaching from evangelical pulpits.  Only Democrats are wild hares, according to Republicans. As long as you are a Republican and sincerely desire to roll back the calendar to the 1950s, any other hairbrained thing you want to do is permissive. 

Now, before all you Democrats start shouting, “Amen,” I’ve got a thing or two for you as well. (My calling from God these days is to make sure that both political parties think I’m an indiscriminating piranha.)  Democrats are prone to scold anyone who is not as enlightened as they.  “Tolerance” is the party platform, but this doesn't include everyone.  It does not include you if you are a sincere Christian, if you live in a rural area, if you do not have a college degree, if you are seen as a dimwit who needs institutionally approved experts to tell you how to live, if you are not a member of an "approved" oppressed demographic… The list goes on. The Democrats have many ways you can fall into the "deplorable" category, and thus subject to the regulation of their language police. Democrats see themselves as the self-assigned protectors of American ideals, and they are maddeningly condescending toward anyone who even smells of the opposite party.

So, there you have it.  We might just as well defund the police as well as all the social workers.  After all, the Republicans have their guns and the Democrats have their experts.  No wild hare has a chance in today’s culture.  There’s always someone lurking around the corner to get you… either a Republican or a Democrat.  So don’t be wandering  around in the dark, trying to figure out life’s complexities.

 Meanwhile, as Democrats and Republicans keep beating on each other, there is collateral damage against the curious, the inquiring, and the big picture people.  The curious aren’t interested in judging others.  They want to hear the stories behind the labels we put on people and places.  The inquiring aren’t buying the propaganda that saturates the media.  They can smell propaganda of every sort, and they want evidence, science, and honest history instead.  The big picture people are disgusted with our spats.  They can see seven generations ahead and know the importance of finding common ground--right now with our fellow humans.  

To the curious, the inquiring, and the big-picture people, do not lose heart.  The Republicans and the Democrats, and their lackies in churches and social movements, will continue to insist that their ideology trumps evidence.  They will continue to traffic in conspiracy theories and caricature.  They will entice new recruits into their side in these culture wars.  There will be open season, year round, on the other side’s wild hares.

But in the end, a wild hare is just a wild hare.  Most of what people say and do, even if we can conjure an outlier anecdote, is just a wild hare.  Why must we shoot at each wild hare brought to our attention?  I can justify chasing the rabbits and jackrabbits out of my own garden, if they infringe on my growing food and flowers.  But in fighting the wild hares of the other party, we're turning into raging elephants. And we're bringing everyone down with us: splitting up whole denominations, polarizing whole country, declaring hostility against the rest of the world.

There are worse things than a wild hare.  The evil is in the damage we do trying to control other people's wild hares. Insisting that we get to be the language police for others, that we get to judge everyone who has a different lifestyle than us, that our race or religion makes us superior to others, that our way is the only solution to a complex problem, that other people's choices that do not harm us nevertheless justify our judgment, that we and we alone know the complex and mysterious mind of God... this approach doesn't make us better. Maybe, just maybe, the wild hares we see out there aren't worth the damage we're causing trying to fight them.