Politics & Power Quote by Charles Bukowski

Bukowski takes the sentimental postcard of human-dog loyalty and grinds it into something cheaper, darker, and more transactional: devotion as a payroll arrangement. The opening move is classic Bukowski bait-and-switch. “Much admired” sounds like a Hallmark compliment until he snaps it into “a perfect set-up”, recasting affection as manipulation. The phrase “the hand which feeds him” isn’t just quaint; it’s a brutal image of power. The hand gives, the dog submits, and everyone calls it love.

“13 cents a day” is doing heavy cultural work. It’s a pocket-change figure that reduces caretaking to minimum wage morality: for almost nothing, you can purchase a creature’s worship and violence. “Hired killer who thinks you are god” lands because it splices two fantasies Americans like to keep separate: the innocence of pets and the pleasure of having force on your side. Bukowski is pointing at the same dynamic that underwrites bosses, cops, soldiers, and anyone trained to obey authority while believing the authority is benevolent.

Then he swerves into politics: the dog can’t tell “a Nazi from a Republican from a Commie from a Democrat”. It’s not a neat equivalence so much as a drunk, furious suspicion that ideology is often branding on the same collar. The sting is the final admission: “many times, neither can I”. Bukowski isn’t preaching purity; he’s confessing how easily the human mind, like the dog’s, mistakes feeding for virtue and proximity for truth.