Letters to the Editor
Penny Barrett Hornsby
Published Letters: 45 Editor's Choice: 3
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Boycott China
[Read the article: An Olympic disgrace]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It seems to me that the almost immediate knee-jerk reaction is to 1)ask what's the difference between a domesticated cat or dog and a lamb or a calf or a pig, and 2) the usual heralding of the human and its suffering as opposed to animals. As a vegan, I continuously deal with people taking this approach of "you care more about animals than people". It's such a flawed argument. The human being's capacity for love is limitless. I love people - most people - and animals. I don't believe either need to be tortured. I don't believe either should be wrongfully incarcerated and killed. I care a great deal for the plight of citizens in China that are being swept up, tortured, and imprisoned. I cannot fathom why we trade openly with a ruthless totalitarian government that crushes demonstrations with sweeps of brutality, while a little country off our coast is economically sanctioned.
If you have not watched the Chinese fur video (available at PETA), I am telling you from someone who has seen every conceivable animal rights video, it is the most upsetting, cry out loud in shock, display of human cruelty that I have ever seen. But let's get one thing straight, we as Americans consumers, are responsible for it, as well as the brutal torture of billions of animals in our own country. An animal is a thinking, feeling creature with as much capacity for fear and pain as we human beings. Our treatment of them, from the abuse of elephants in Thailand and for Ringling, to the barren, dark, pungent holding cells of pigs and calves and other sentinel beings all across this country to the fur farms in Russia and Missouri - we are responsible for the CARE of animals, not their demise. I decided, after the Tibetan fiasco, that I can no longer pretend that China is some innocuous entity supplying cheap crap for everyone via Walmart and other purveyors of substandard goods. I will not be a party to the rampant cruelty that is inherent in this sort of dictatorship - a far crueler rule than Saddam. I will not buy Chinese anything, as hard as that might be and I am boycotting the Olympics. I have no interest in watching a charade, while athletes cough and splutter through a pollution thick environment, all the while knowing that anyone who has spoken out is now facing violence beyond our comprehension and that dogs and cats are being skinned while fully cognizant and thrown upon a pile of disposable flesh, fully aware and alive.
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Remarkable
[Read the article: An Olympic disgrace]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]What I will always find remarkable is how often the response to blatant cruelty is to somehow affix some objectionable and minimizing label. Transferring "human" feelings onto animals, raising dogs and cats up to demi-gods, etc. And then we have the "oh my poor ears" people who are so deeply distressed by any inference of negative actions towards animals that they will have nightmares.
Hmmm.
Let's see. Where to start. Anyone who has been around an animal - cat, dog, pig, cow, chicken, horse - knows with absolute certainty that they have individual personalities, expressions, and yes (gasp!) feelings. Anyone that has witnessed the slaughter of pigs, lambs, cows, chickens knows with not one shred of doubt that those animals experience absolute terror and pain. Do not rock back and forth in your sweet little plastic world believing THAT for one more second. If you heard the screams of animals being dissected, castrated, stripped of their skins, you would never ever be able to say that there's a question as to whether they "feel" or not. Is that said so often by so many as some kind of blanket justification? It makes no sense, unless, you are woefully removed from the reality or so desensitized to others that you can move through life holding onto something so terribly untrue and misguided.
I do not "worship" my dogs. I don't say prayers to them. I do, however, say prayers for them. And for the multitudes of innocent beings that are brutalized every second of every day because they are weaker. Caring for other beings does not mean that you care for only a few - most people that care for animals care pretty deeply for people as well. I do not believe that my dogs will someday be sitting with me holding a conversation about the middle east. However, just because I don't understand what they are saying does not mean that they are not saying anything. How ridiculously arrogant is that? Think about that for one moment and you realize that you are buying a common misconception that essentially was cast out decades ago. Whales communicate to each other constantly, chickens have different calls for aerial and ground predators. Come on now, let's at least deal in facts.
My feeling is that we as a country, as part of the global community can do so much better. I am not judging any country's traditions. I am saying that when cruelty is part of a tradition, you need to change it.
And for the sensitive souls that find this type of material devastating, you better not be partaking in any form of any animal's flesh or you can officially call yourself - PART OF THE PROBLEM.