An Explanation

If someone wants to dismiss me as a nutjob, so be it. People used to shout "faggot" and "pussy" at me and then knock me to the ground and kick and stomp on me, so if you want to call me a nutjob, you're a piker.

Any time someone points the finger at someone else I want to tear that finger off and stomp on it. Why? One scene that I saw in a few different movies was the angry mob gathering around someone who was peculiar. Then some woman, and in two or three different movies it always seemed to be the same actress, would pull a face, point a finger, and shout something like "Witch!" then the mob would storm their victim and pull him or her to pieces or throw them on a fire or something. This is a spectacle that is also arranged periodically in real life, to this day, as the public stoning, for example, of a girl who was raped by her male relatives, who complained about it to the police, then was convicted of adultery because after all she confessed to having sex with them.

The public stoning, public hanging, the dependency on ganging up on someone and showing his severed head around, these are anathema to me personally. They are indications that this society is going retrograde. Since around 1970 I have seen the signs of decreasing scientific literacy and competency, and similar problems with social skills. People work for less money and pay higher rent and utility bills. We have a lot fewer freedoms. The alleged misconduct of one person is used by our so-called legislators as an excuse to punish everyone who can be classed with that person, and we can't fight that by gang-beating someone who we identify as an offender because that won't stop the real ones and it definitely won't stop the ones that are put-up deals.

The evil ones, the animal liberation people who hate humanity and want us to die, depend on doing just this thing and it is easy to take away from them if we put away our desire to "go after" alleged animal abusers. I could give a crap what happens to animal abusers but it is not worth losing essentially everything that millions of people live for.

Think about that. People live for their animals. What kind of people live for their animals? Good people who do not deserve to be punished for the misdeeds of others who they cannot control in any way, shape or form. If the machinations of a few sociopaths end up punishing all of us severely, in the form of taking ruthless advantage of people who cannot afford decent attorneys, and we are reduced to shouting "Witch!" at a few animal abusers and perverts and burning them in a woodpile, we might as well not even bother to take out our anger. It's too little and too late. Every one of us who wants to attend that party would be a lot better off going home and cracking a few books, maybe some on science, on sociology and psychology, and some Chomsky for sure.

Not even the exercise of taking the most evil person on Earth, torturing him, watching his body being slowly eaten away by acid, poking him with icepicks, hearing his screams, would be better than that. Not even turning Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan into glowing craters will do your hearts as much good. Grow up, kiss your dog, open a book, and become a citizen again.

Landowners Killing Endangered Animals

On a recent episode of "The Mentalist" Patrick Jane got a man to admit to killing turkey vultures that were on his property because the endangered species laws would have prevented him from profiting from the oil sands that were buried there.

How could I possibly have sympathy for someone who would shoot, shovel, and shut up so that he and his family will have money for the rest of their lives? Maybe I've read too much Charles Dickens. Maybe I have a little too much sympathy for people whose lives have been ruined when jobs were sent overseas and the Department of Labor came up with tricky-dicky excuses for stealing their unemployment payments, including the young man who died in Kansas City in the fall of 2008 because he couldn't pay his utilities.

Wanting to be extremely wealthy is a logical and pragmatic extension of the desire to protect and nurture one's own family. A man in India shoots a tiger and lugs the carcass to a dealer, and if he doesn't get shot and does get paid, his family might eat for a couple of years on the tiny amount of money he gets. It's his family that he does it for. At the same time the law would force him to let the tiger walk unmolested through his village even though that is a far greater risk to human life than a tiger on a leash or in a cage.

Just one of the ways that an animal protection law can backfire is that if a citizen does his legal duty and reports that an endangered bird is living on his property, he may lose a lot of money because in spite of the law, they will take his land for public use without just compensation. So instead of reaching some kind of compromise where maybe the birds wind up moving, perhaps to an oil field that is being pumped but is fairly inactive, he either shoots, shovels, and shuts up, or accepts the fact that his family will not financially benefit from the land that he pays taxes on.

I'm not going to hold this against him. Everyone wants to make a small sacrifice to help the animals, and that definitely includes me. There is no need to sacrifice your family, your society, your technology, or your mind in order to help the animals. You can see how the people who gave up their minds behave. They would kill a man to save the turkey vultures. They would also starve him and prevent him from being able to pay his family's medical bills. That's what they really mean when they screech at anyone who makes money.

And on the other hand even a dirty, nasty, ratty dump of a place can save more precious lives than all of the refinement and high standards of an AZA zoo or a World Wildlife Fund project, neither of which have significantly helped any species. It's kind of inevitable because looking at a smattering of history there is a strong tendency to pretty but totally unproductive projects like the Necropolis. So if I were given a choice between a new 100 million dollar facility that looks really good or one that "mills" out the tiger cubs, I'm buying into the mill with all of its alleged mess and squalor because the mill will actually produce. The other choice is a high priced mausoleum whose exhibits are alive now but will not pass on their genes.

Disappointment in Ohio

The HSUS was set to lose their ballot initiative by a narrow margin. The Farm Bureau, the Livestock Care Standards Board, and Governor Ted Strickland had to act quickly to snatch defeat from the slavering jaws of victory on behalf of farmers. They handed the HSUS an unearned victory and now the Farm Bureau is trying to explain it away.

The governor plans to ask or order the Ohio Department of Agriculture to set fees for licensing exotic animal possession. The public is apparently not going to be asked for its input on this in any meaningful way. Licensing fees can make it impossible for a pet owner to own a pet if the state decides to raise those fees too high. This is one of the things that exotic animal owners have been fighting in the legislatures. This is an end run around the legislature. It could be very costly to set this one right. This is way too much of a victory for the carpetbaggers from the HSUS.

These people do not own Ohio or its citizens. They have no right to turn the citizens or their pets over to the control of any pressure group. The pressure that the group exerts is just one of several good reasons not to do it. The HSUS's ideas are not just wrong enough that they have to be forced on people. They are designed to be forced on people. They are designed to persuade those who have a little bit of power to jerk other people around.

If this had been such a good idea, and their best explanations for it are that they were trying a squirrely maneuver, it could have been an open meeting, something that Wayne Pacelle hates. The HSUS has been in more than one secret meeting with California legislatures that violated California law. I've got some news for the Ohio Farm Bureau, too. God will not strike them dead with a bolt of lightning if they do the research and find out what kind of criminal organization the HSUS is, then disseminate the information. I don't think that I've ever seen any evidence that the agricultural "authorities" in Ohio have ever had a bad word to say about the HSUS, which they could if they just looked around the net. They're afraid to try to change the "political climate" that they do so much handwringing about. Had they done the research would they have refused to sit down with the HSUS? I would like to think so.

The Ohio Farm Bureau either didn't bother to take one hour to research the HSUS or they just like it. I'm voting for the "they just like it" because they held a secret meeting and announced the results afterwards. This is the only thing that they could have done to ensure an HSUS victory of some kind in Ohio. They threw exotic animal owners under the bus. This to "protect the viability of Ohio agriculture? What about researching and getting the dirt on the HSUS and using that to protect the viability of Ohio agriculture? What about having the balls to stand up to the HSUS and announce to Ohio that they are going to protect the citizens of Ohio and Ohio agriculture from these fiends?

How Do We See Ourselves?

If you judge humanity by its worst people, you see a mostly bad people. If you judge humanity by its best, you see mostly good people. There is a lot of overlap.

We've had two atrocity stories in the last week. In one a man forced his dog to die of starvation and thirst in the heat just a few feet away from water and food. I'm having trouble even believing this. It sounds like a hoax. Photographs can be hoaxed. In the other a man and a friend of his, probably drunk, shot a dog six times for "not settling down." How about pushing all of an animal lover's emotional buttons in one week? There's also the guy who got put away for a parole violation for associating with people who have sex with animals, and as we all know, as we've all been told a thousand times so that we cannot forget, sex between a human and an animal is a lot worse than killing the animal in a hotbox or shooting it six times, so the horror of this heatwave week has been capped off nicely.

I guess that we're supposed to judge an animal activist charity by its best people but the rest of humanity by the worst. If we blind ourselves to the misconduct of a charity to the point that we can't see it when they do wrong, and if we sensitize ourselves to what ordinary human beings do wrong to the point that we can't see the ones who do right, then we have a huge problem.

This is really convenient for the charity. If you put anyone anywhere who has any human decency on the payroll of, for example, the HSUS, and you occasionally hear that this human did something decent, they're golden, aren't they? We become subservient to them. Then we are all rotten little pieces of dirt who are lucky to occasionally be sprinkled with gold by the golden ones (sometimes we get showered with gold, just often enough to make it believable), and we regularly buy indulgences from people whose best qualifications for their jobs include a rotten attitude towards life and humanity, no conscience, no real compassion for humans or animals, and a lot of greed. Check out Martha Stout's "The Sociopath Next Door" for the type.

What does the HSUS tell us about the horrors that they hire, like John Goodwin who teaches college-age people to burn down their own society? Don't judge the HSUS by what Goodwin "used to do" and don't judge Goodwin by what Goodwin "used to do." Judge an ordinary human harshly and forever by something that he did when he was a teenager, or something that he thought of doing when he was a teenager, or something that someone said he did, or something that someone else did that he has no control over. It's all good. It's all profit.

One way to look at a "hoarder" is to understand that he or she has given up their life for the animals, which is exactly what animal activists want us to do. The persecution of hoarders is like the persecution of people who are overly pious and actually want to live a Christian lifestyle. We see both all the time. Even more, it's simply because the so-called hoarder really does care about the animals and keeps them going because the hoarder does what life does. He or she is a real part of the living world. The people who persecute them are something else.

Do we judge ourselves by the worst or the best? At work do I judge myself by the work that I had to leave behind for lack of time or by the way that I straightened things out and made an extra effort for the customers? Did I leave a mess for someone else to clean up or did I clean up more than half of the daily mess? At home do I judge myself for not putting away the dishes or do I judge myself for making sure that all the humans and animals were properly fed and for fixing the bathroom sink?

In the game of life the worst mistake is to let an adversary tally your score. Keep your own score. Give yourself the benefit of the doubt. Stop taking the blame for others and start giving yourself credit for the good that you do.

The Argument Least Likely to Win

It seems like the argument that "we want our animals" is the least likely to win. There are few of us who are completely free of just a little bit of shame and guilt, just enough to believe that this argument is dead.

Maybe this is actually the best argument to use. If we argue that the HSUS or Humane Society doesn't have the facilities, that implies that it's OK if they have the facilities to take our animals to, or if they round up a volunteer and make temporary facilities. At those facilities a lot of animals have died and gotten pregnant, too.

The argument that we want our animals seems like a weak link. Don't they say to break a chain at its weakest link?

The entire substance of that link is the desire to own and use animals. It is a link in the chain whether we want to admit that to ourselves or not. It breaks first. It needs the most reinforcement. All of the reasons why we might want to run away from it are the reasons why we must cling to it. It's the first thing that they attack. We are as strong as our weakest link and we have only one option in regards to that link. It can't be replaced. It has to be made strong.

The Point System

It's one of those things that we always know is there and it is usually not written about. There is a point system and a scorecard and it can be made into a computer program or just totted up on a "sacred board" if that's what you want to call it. If there is such a thing as a "sacred board" it's simply a way of depicting the progress of a business or a religion or a swindle.

People on the side of ownership rights have voluntarily deprived themselves of ways to score points. You know what I'm talking about when you read this, don't you? Our consciences often inspire us to continue to lose points in the game because we think that it is for the sake of the dogs, or the children, or a higher morality to give up those points. We get nothing back for that because trading in that currency allows the animal activists to keep score. They cheat.

Trading good money for marijuana or cocaine, alcohol, or the chance to win millions of dollars are ways to trade money to feel good. We trade money, personal autonomy which means control over our lives, our worldly goods, and our say about the care of our animals to feel good about ourselves. What we actually trade them for is permission to feel slightly better than slime mold and that permission is granted to us at great cost to ourselves while it costs them little. That's a basic principle of business.

If a point system is established, as in gin rummy, golf, Dungeons and Dragons, and those of us who are human can access and understand this point system, we have a much better chance of winning the game. This is like having a bank account that we have to spend money from. We obviously have to keep track of what goes into and comes out of the account and we have to be able to see the books. We have to know what is in the account to know whether we are adding money or taking money out.

Part of the morality of subservience is that the subservient never audit the leadership's books.

Among other things, the deceivers have persuaded us that every pet lion, tiger, alligator, snake, and other exotic animal is a liability. At best we lose more slowly, using their point system, a system that we don't understand or realize that it exists. If we do just one thing and regard each pet, exotic or domestic, as an asset, the way that the shelters and scamtuaries do, then we start with a whole lot of points, not quite as many as we had ten years ago, but a lot. If we think of them as liabilities it's a bit easier to pry them from our warm living hands.

If one part of your mind sees things as assets and another part sees the same things as liabilities, or you just plain see assets as liabilities, then you don't know what you're investing in and what you're going to get out of it. Misdirected altruism lets dishonest charities take advantage of people and when exercising that altruism we don't allow ourselves to see our own balance sheet. We even disdain the idea of a balance sheet. At that we still expect something back, which is permission to feel slightly better about ourselves, with our worse enemies deciding what constitutes "better." This leads to outrageous behavior on the part of people who are struggling for scraps of God's favor.

We see people who want to pet our animals or live with them as potential liabilities, also. Yes, that's a bit self-serving, but someone has to say it. They might be plants from animal rights groups. The threshold for the label of "animal abuser" is ridiculously low these days and it's easy to see the label and not the person even when you know this. Various dirty tricks, rumors, and even laws are designed to set up barriers between private menageries and the public. The people who got the laws passed exempted themselves from those laws, too. They took our assets away from us. They're stealing our customers, from any of us who breed and sell animals or who keep menageries and want to display them. It's easier when we don't see them as assets.

The solution is obviously to keep our own books and our own history, along with our own morality. Our pets are assets. Our friends are assets. Our dreams are assets, and we have a better morality than they do.

Animal Cruelty Kills Us (Revised)

That's the trouble. Animal cruelty kills us. Have you thought about what that means? Someone else is cruel to an animal, we die inside. Accuse us of cruelty, we die inside. They use this thing as emotional button-pushing in books like The Lady and Her Tiger. It genuinely hurts us, a psychic injury that they can exploit.

The people who push the buttons live on and for animal cruelty. We see that they actually perform the deed, using their ill-gotten powers to cover it up. They live on the backs of the animals that are cruelly treated and on the backs of animals that they cruelly tear from the arms of people who love them. Finger-pointing literally transfers our power to them for them to use and we give it away and we give up potential friends and allies. The current crap about hoarding mentally prepares us to give up our friends and relatives.

Because they profit from it, the swindlers literally do not consider factual innocence to be proof that any of us should be exempt from penalties that they assess against us. They don't consider our good works to be an exemption. Good works actually incense them as we've seen proven by their attacks against breeders and well-run menageries. The incensing takes the form of stimulating their greed for our property and money. (They see value that can be stolen.)

When animal cruelty kills us it enriches them. When animal cruelty kills us it makes us vulnerable to manipulations by those who live on and for animal cruelty. We let them do what they want because we are weakened by the way that animal cruelty "kills" us. When they see someone who does not allow himself to be vulnerable like that they descend upon him, accuse him of being an "animal abuser" and do what they can to make him miserable, to mentally break him. This sometimes gets physical. This has obviously never happened to me (joke). They have to break that one person because he is the tiger who guards the pass such that a thousand deer cannot cross, or maybe the cat who guards the mouse-hole so that a thousand vermin cannot get in. When others follow his example the exploiters become powerless.

When we are kind and caring owners, we do not deserve to be vulnerable to verbal attacks by the usual suspects who act like jerks and expect us to give them goods and services as a reward. We deserve to be able to hold up our kindness, our caring, and our innocence as a shield against false accusations, malicious accusations, and exaggerated claims based on a twisted morality. We also deserve to keep these as the basis of what we do with animals. We have earned it. We must defend our minds and our properties from these swindlers.