Ok, I've finally heard enough about the Vick case to piss me off that I had to comment on it. Not the case specifically, but the issues surrounding dog fighting that it brings up.
The Vick case has been talked about so much that I'm about as sick of it as most people, but I don't think people are thinking about the underlying crime in the right way. A lot of people compare dog fighting to hunting or dog racing or even slaughtering food animals. The proper comparison would be to cock-fighting or ultimate fighting. The purpose of dog fighting is to watch violence, to take enjoyment from the two animals maiming each other. Now food animals are sometimes raised in pretty bad conditions, and I agree that we should always strive to keep animals from suffering unnecessarily, but the purpose of the process is to provide food. Animals shot hunting certainly suffer when they're shot, but no more than an animal killed in the wild by a predator would have, and the hunter (hopefully) enjoys the hunt, and hunts for food rather than for the enjoyment of making an animal suffer. We walk a fine line between what types of violence or depictions of violence are acceptable, and of course hypocrisy abounds. In this case though, I find it hard to take when people compare the savage enjoyment of dog fighting to the meat industry.
The real reason that anti-cruelty legislation needs to be harshly enforced and taken seriously isn't as much to protect the animals as it is to curb violent behavior and sadism. Torturing animals early in life is a big indicator of psychological problems and can predict violent behavior towards people in adulthood. People who engage in these kinds of activities are almost always more prone to commit violent acts towards others, so to permit them legally or socially is irresponsible. Michael Vick may not have done enough to justify the punishment that he deserved, but too many people write dog fighting off as harmless when the issue needs to be taken seriously.
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3 comments:
Hey bud.
CHC preview. Satisfy the masses.
As a kid I had a hamster. One day I was letting it run around, and when I went to pick it up, it bit me. I was pissed! Who was this dinky little animal to bite me, especially when I wasn't doing anything wrong to it! So I got it in its cage, and didn't feed or water it for a week. I enjoyed the power I had over this being's existence, and it's suffering. That ended when it died. I think in the back of my head I knew what would happen, but was genuinely surprised when it actually occurred. I think I was planning on letting it suffer for its sins, then allow it to live as a sign of my mercy. But that all changed when it died. I realized that I really don't have any power over other's lives', nor should I make any decision that puts them in jeopardy. I was a big turning point in my life, and I will never forget the lessons I've learned from the death of what i thought was a simple hamster.
Ok, I may feel bad about this if I'm wrong, but I call bullshit on that story. That didn't actually happen to you mr./mrs. anonymous. But it's a cute little anecdote that you like to trot out whenever an opportunity comes along to pretend it offers some insight into matters of morality and power. And in the case that it did: Unless that event happened when you were in your late teens and had the emotional maturity to make those conclusions, then you would only have made them looking back at an event from your childhood, trying to explain your sense of morality using events from your past. And if it did happen in your late teens, that's pretty sick, you should have known better. Also, what teenager owns a hamster?
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