There are many hunters out there.
There are many meat eaters.
We seem to condone these behaviors quite largely as a society.
We are never far from a fast food burger joint.
We watch as our Vice President goes out on a good old animal killing spree and he can even shoot his friend while he’s at it.
We just laugh.
Hah, no big deal.
I’ve never been in a slaughterhouse, but I hear they aren’t the most pleasant places to be if you are a cow. Turkey’s, chicken’s, and game-hens don’t exactly live the lap of luxury as they await their imminent deaths in tiny little cages, dirty with their own filth. How about pigs? One of the smartest animals (some say they are as cognizant as 3 year old children), they are trapped in concentration camps precisely designed for their mass murder.
I eat meat. I legitimate it somehow. Tastes good. More filling. I accept this cruelty to animals, and I am complicit in it. We pen them, we murder them, and we eat them. Except for dogs, which have over the years gotten on our good side; to the point that we keep them in our homes, let them sleep in our beds, feed them special food, pet them, and adore them. In general we do.
Other people beat them, abuse them, and even fight them to the death with other dogs. Since his co-defendant rolled over, pleaded guilty, and has already come out and said that the star quarterback bank-rolled the whole dog-fighting operation, it is looking like Michael Vick is one of these people. Underperforming dogs were killed by brutal means, dogs were fought for money. Michael Vick is indicted by the feds, and can face up to five years in prison and up to $250,000 in fines; because he likes fighting dogs.
I’m a dog lover myself. They are great friends to us, generally. But how many dogs have been murdered in our country for being a bit too violent? Dogs have been killed in the name of the law innumerable times. If a dog acts too much like an animal, if it bites a child for example, we generally kill it. Isn’t there something funny about a person potentially being sent to jail for being cruel and inhuman to an animal, when we are cruel and inhuman to animals all the time? If Michael Vick is being punished, we should all be punished.
Dog fighting is not for me, I’d rather take a dog from it’s family, train it to act the way I want, to hold it’s bodily functions in check, to eat only when I let it, to fence it in boundaries with an electronic shock collar, to train it to retrieve dead birds for me. Dog fighting is not a common American pastime, but at least the dogs have a 50-50 chance in the fight, which is more than can be said of the prancing deer in the scope of a rifle with an 8 round clip. Punishing Michael Vick for his cruelty to animals is a sick symptom of our own hypocrisy.
Dogs have it damn good. When we have crushed every wild animal species into extinction, dogs will probably still be by our side, and the pigs, cows, chickens, and turkeys will still be in concentration camps, awaiting slaughter. We have trained Michael Vick to be a warrior. He is a football player after all, and we pay him millions of dollars to go out to battle on the field. If we want to eat meat, kill animals, build houses, cities, roads, and infrastructure which consequently kills and displaces animals, then who are we to say that Michael Vick can’t fight dogs, and kill them if they don’t perform the way he wants?
2 comments:
Dogs are awesome, dude.
Ah, Señor Jumpsuit is at it again, liquefying all actions together to muddle the concept of morality. So if one person in society does something bad, are we all guilty? Killing animals for food, then eating the meat is not cruel - it is life. To live, something else must die. Even vegetarians kill plants to survive. A hunter is not a monster; he is just someone who removes the impersonality of corporate animal slaughter out of his personal food chain. Most hunters are avid environmentalists. They work very hard to track and kill an animal. In the process, they are quiet, stealthy and, aside from the technology, very close to our wild human ancestors. If you eat deer that you shot yourself, aren’t you removing the cruelty of the giant slaughterhouses that Herr Jumpsuit just condemned? Doesn’t your argument actually raise the hunter up to a higher level than the CitiMarket shopper?
Now about our pets. I grant you that we are very confused about out pets. Many pet owners treat their pets better than their own families. If they get sick, no medicine is too expensive, no procedure too radical. And when they die, they grieve terribly. So of course this kind of person would abhor dog fighting. But on the other hand, our pets are treated as property under the law. If my dog chews up your fence or your lawn, it is the same as if my car hit your fence or spun a donut on your grass. My property damaged your property. If my dog is trained to kill and he kills you because I couldn’t control him, I can be convicted of manslaughter. My property was used negligently.
So here we have two opposing sides: the loved creature and the impersonal property. And in the US, ownership of property is very, very important under our laws. Michael Vick loves his property (dogs), and used them for his pleasure, without harming anyone else or their property. He might argue that it is not cruel to let an animal explore its true nature (fighting).
But we have laws against cruelty to animals. Because we can’t stand seeing a creature suffer unnecessarily, we made it illegal.
I am not advocating cruelty to any animal, I hate it. It is our worship of property that created this dichotomy in the first place. The larger question is: do we have the right to own another creature?
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