You can't even grant the animal the dignity to call their body parts by their name? You have to make a joke out of it?
They talked about how at the last DNC in Denver they had a rodeo as part of the celebration.
It got me thinking (and I was in no mood for that). The Democrats and Republicans will battle it out in this election, tooth and nail, debating all the big issues Washington never seems to be able to actually make any ground on, the rhetoric will be heated, maybe it will get kinda ugly, maybe there will be some negative campaigning and attacks by political action committees, so forth and so on. With our country in two wars and a recession and maybe a third war with Iran and things don't looks so good with Russia right now either, and gas prices, and the foreclosure crisis there is a lot at stake right now.
A lot at stake for us. Absolutely nothing at stake for the animals. Ask a chicken, pig, cow, fish, ostrich, elk, or buffalo if they want Obama or McCain to win and the answer would be "I do not give a fuck." (That would be the answer if those animals were angry and a touch cynical like I am.) To the animals, Obama and McCain do not represent hope, or change or integrity, they represent one more possible graveyard for their body parts: one more example of a human who claims to care and represent the voiceless and whatever they say they are all about, but who does not care about the other animals on this planet enough to, at the absolute minimum, boycott their suffering and death.
Indeed, I guarantee you, right now the carcasses of animals are rotting away in the bodies of both candidates. Hope? Hope for what? asks the sow in a gestation crate or in Obama's stomach or in the hotel kitchen in Denver being chopped apart to be served to a bunch of people who want change. Change what? asks the cow who has it's babies ripped away at birth for horrible fates of their own. Hope and change. It's got to be a bit of a sick joke to the animals.
In McCain, the animals at least see honesty. Stay the course. He will, in regards to not caring about them, as will his rival. If they end up doing the cattle drive through downtown Denver during the DNC, enjoy the show Barrack. Enjoy the parade of doomed animals on their way to getting their throats slit so you can eat their muscles or organs. Whatever you order off the menu, keep telling us all about hope with blood in your mouth.
John, keep coming with the straight talk. But don't feel compelled to include the animals who are bound, beaten, menaced, burned, and tortured, hey, like you were while bravely serving our country. Let it keep happening to other creatures, they do not deserve consideration.
"I do not give a fuck" goes up the chorus on election day from the billions of animals slaughtered every year whose suffering seems to be forever invisible to our brave leaders who do not see fellow earthlings exhausted, dismembered bodies on their plates, only meals brought to them by the hands of brutes.
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9 people felt it was time to chime in.:
Wow - awesome article. I guess that just about sums up why I haven't taken my Kucinich bumper sticker off my car.
So now we need our presidential candidates to be vegetarians? I'm sorry...I work at a nature center caring for birds who can't care for themselves...I love animals, but I find this absurd. "Tell us about hope with blood in your mouth"? Come on. This is why vegetarians get a bad rep and why all this bullshit is going wrong all over the world...because people can't have simple respect for one another's personal beliefs and choices. Way to add anger, and yes, even bigotry to the mix.
Your attitude will never further your agenda. You want people to treat animals with respect? Then you treat those people with respect. Show them the value of love for all things...don't try to bully them into it. When has browbeating ever been a successful tactic for change?
You know why animals are cool? Because they don't get all self righteous and pissed off about people whose views differ from their own. Dogs don't give a rat's ass who eats meat and who doesn't. Perhaps you should take a lesson about love and tolerance from those animals you seem to adore so much.
kaitlin:
Not respecting someone's decision is not the same as not respecting them. I will never respect the decision to partake either passively or actively in the decision to torture, destroy, and eat the animals you and I love. (http://www.meat.org/). I'll never respect lots of decisions people make. Will you?
If I want to keep my dog in a cage where he can't turn around, in the dark, in his own shit, crammed in with a bunch of other dogs, and then I wanted to one day take him out and kill him rather brutally and eat him, would you be respecting my opinion and demanding others do the same?
Do you eat birds yourself? The conditions I just described keeping my dog in are a lot like the conditions chickens live in in battery cages. If you are asking me to respect the decision people have made to keep my fellow earthlings in those conditions, I am going to tell you I can't.
Watch that video again and tell me how I'm supposed to respect that decision? And how speaking out against that kind of decisions is "why all this bullshit is going wrong all over the world."
I would offer that all this bullshit is going wrong in the world because people sit around talking about respect and pacifism and how bad war is and how bad torture is and then don't behave in accordance with those things.
oops. new last sentence: "then don't behave in accordance with those stated beliefs."
I don't disagree with the sentiment. I disagree with the venom with which it was stated, and the way you seem to equate someone's personal choices with who they are as a human being. It did not sound as if you were merely attacking their choices, but attacking their character. Just because they eat meat does not make them any lower on the moral totem pole than you. Animals die for you too. It's not as black and white as you seem to want to make it out to be.
I just wish people could state their opinions on things without such vitriol. Your blog came off as very hateful and bigoted, whether you intended it to or not.
PS, I really respect that you allowed my reply to be posted despite how vehemently I disagreed with what you had to say.
kaitlin: you are thanking me for respecting your vehemence and telling me mine will "never further (my) agenda."
this entry made me cry, josh. way to go.
but seriously, thank you for posting it. i think i've allowed myself to get a little swept up and misty-eyed about the possibility of an intelligent, liberal, eloquent, ostensibly kind politician leading our country. i didn't really expect a candidate to get this far who agreed with me on animal rights and veganism - sorry, Kucinich. however, that really doesn't excuse me from glossing over this (rather serious) bit of willful ignorance on Obama's part, which omnivorism definitely is and which is my biggest pet peeve in the whole world. i still support Obama, but it is important to acknowledge this fact and possibly attempt to have some influence on his decision to eat meat. he is, as i said, a smart guy, so maybe he will listen to reason. josh, do you know if anyone in the ar movement has ever approached him about it?
That would be awesome if someone talked to Obama about animal rights, but I doubt he would convert before the election (if he does at all). Too many people still view vegetarianism/veganism as "radical" and "liberal" and he's labeled as such already by many right-centers (and he needs some of those center voters). You would think that at least vegetarianism would not be seen as "extreme," but it is in many parts of the country - like here in Colorado, where I get mocked, challenged, and lectured about it from everyone from relatives to friends to nurses who taught medical assisting school (which blew my mind: I said, "You're a nurse, you should know that it's healthy..." meanwhile, they smoked cigarettes incessantly and said, "But are you getting enough protein?" x.x). Anyway, I hope that someone does approach him but I think in his appeal to the "traditional" people, any hope of him changing his ways will not be soon coming. Alas.
Btw, Denver has the most awesome veggie restaurant, that has its own bakery as well: Watercourse Foods. I wonder if anyone told the delegates to go there? Probably not. : (
Kaitlin:
If someone's choices don't determine their character, then what does? Some people think it's ok to kill or enslave other humans. Do you have respect for THEIR personal beliefs? I guess we shouldn't really judge them either, because though they commit atrocites, they are really just warm and fuzzy inside and we shouldn't judge them because "their views are different" than our own. Their actions and choices have nothing to do with who they really are.
I DO think vegans are higher up on the "moral totem pole" as is anyone who actually chooses not to participate in activites that are cruel and wrong. I'm not really sure how else to gauge morality.
What the hell is wrong with taking things to the next level, wishing everyone, especially those in power, would make the connection between the violence that humans commit every day against animals and the violence we commit against each other and the earth? What is wrong with wishing the world were a different place on a very basic level? I found your comments really trivializing--it's fine for us little bleeding heart vegetarians to care about animals, but silly for us to want those in power (who could actually change things) to care.
Animals DO "care who eats meat and who doesn't" when it is THEM on the other end of the fork. ALL living beings value their life above all things. All want to live and be happy. Since they can't really stop what's happening to them at the hands of humans, who is supposed to help them? I'm glad you're helping some birds. There are a lot of other birds (along with other animals) who have no hope of anyone helping them, who live an unimaginably miserable existence and will die a horrible death so some humans can chow down on their lunch, or their campaign picnic, or whatever. The animals don't care...whether they are slaughtered to feed a presidential candidate or a factory worker or a teacher or a prisoner.
I identify with the passion in Josh's article. It's easy to get sick of caring so much that it hurts, and living in a world of people who don't give a shit.
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