While most of the topics here are political, every once in a while we'll touch upon the nature of cruelty -- or more precisely, the deeds of cruel people, people who get their kicks preying on the weak and powerless. I make no bones about it, it's part of the reason why I am so pro-death-penalty (at least in principle, while acknowledging the huge flaws of the machinery). As far as I'm concerned, animal abusers are only a half-step above child molesters, a crime which I strongly feel should be a "two strikes and you're out" deal.
(Despite the title, I am not being even a little bit polemic here. Just fucking end these people already; they're no damned good (NSFW) to anybody, and no one will miss them. Even two strikes is too many.)
I don't care what the causes or backstories of these vicious assholes are. A person -- whether 15 or 50 -- who duct-tapes a puppy and bakes it in an oven is a waste of oxygen, and should be dispensed with as quickly as possible. Resources are tight, space is at a premium, the planet is overpopulated, and we're supposed to waste time, effort, and money figuring out what makes evil people do evil things?
No doubt there is some perpetuation of victimization at work here, but there is more cause to believe that the results will be worse as time goes on. The puppy-baker is not suddenly going to flip a switch and become a useful member of society; he's going to wake up and decide one day that his next-door neighbor's kid might be more fun and challenging game. These people enjoy inflicting pain on weaker sentient beings, pure and simple. Push comes to shove, it's "explained" by their inner misery or whatever, yet somehow, they never seem quite miserable enough to do the rest of the planet a favor and kill themselves.
It's good to see that at least law-enforcement agencies are taking this stuff more seriously. It may turn out to be a useful preventive tool in some cases, which, if they're not going to take my advice and just machine-gun these troglodytes into a hastily-dug ditch, would at least be a step in the right direction.
I spent more than a decade being involved in pit bull rescue work, mainly just providing temporary shelter for strays or for dogs removed from Michael Vick-like conditions. My ex was a vet tech, so we took advantage of her access to treatment and employee discounts to get them back into a state of physical and mental health before placing them in a home (and it never failed to amaze me how resilient they were, mentally speaking. I've never seen one yet, no matter how wretched their former life, that couldn't figure out what a couch or bed was for and enjoy it to the utmost).
ReplyDeleteSo as you can imagine, I've seen some of the absolute dregs of humanity, from ghettos to trailer parks. It reminds me of Ivan Karamazov saying that he could only love his fellow man in the abstract; up close, the sight of his ugly face sickened him. That kind of work will make a misanthrope out of anybody.
(I petitioned every deity I could think of to let Vick get paralyzed from the eyebrows down on the first snap from scrimmage, but I guess I've been too blasphemous for too long.)
That's noble work, though it can't help but undermine one's faith in their fellow human, one would think. The older I get, the more I'm convinced that Dostoevsky, like Mencken, was an optimist.
ReplyDeleteSome karma will catch up with Vick soon enough, in that he's out of last chances, and he's too mediocre of a quarterback to ever revive his career. Paralysis from the forehead down would serve him right.