12/16/13, 10:28 pm
“Your anger will cool into hardened passionate insight if you wait a day. Most of the things that make me angry, I try to let them sit. The heat that remains will be sufficient. The stuff that evaporates is the stuff that would have simply offended or made it histrionic.” -Keith Olberman
I am an avid reader of just about anything. Newspapers, magazines, books, websites, nutrition facts, etc...Being a reader opens one’s eyes to things that non-readers may not be privy to, and every once in a while you may come across something that moves you to changing a viewpoint in your life...or creating a new one that may have not been there before.
Recently I read an article that moved me to the point of a change. After I read it I went apeshit, my head spinning circles, spewing fire from my eye sockets, the hate inside me born of a spawn from lucifer himself. I ran around and punched things and screamed and kicked and cursed. I was reading about cruelty to farm animals, and it caused me to have a cow, and this cow is now living humanely in my living room and will continue to do so for the rest of his natural life.
The above quote from Keith Olberman is fitting for my situation because after I read about the things that are done to cows, pigs, and chickens so we can get cheap meat (and very possibly pay for it with our health) made me so angry that all I wanted to do was write a 12,000 word manifesto that damned every person on earth who eats mass produced meat straight to hell...In hindsight this may have been an exaggeration.
I did start the thing though, and plastered it with quotes from said article along with my own personal beliefs and as I was doing it I realized that I was so angry that what I was trying to say wasn’t coming across very well (It didn’t come across well after several beers at a friend’s engagement party Saturday night either). You’ve got to press on though when you feel strongly about something.
And please do not get me wrong. There are terrible things happening to our fellow humans in other parts of the world as well as right here at home at this very moment. My point is that these things will continue to happen to both man and animal for as long as all of us decide that we’d rather not hear about it because it might upset us. I am guilty of this too. I was discussing this topic with a coworker today and it went something like this:
Me: “Pigs are just as smart and affectionate as dogs and cats and what happens to them blows my fucking mind!”
Coworker: (Concerned sounding) “Really?”
Me: “Yeah. The mother is immediately shocked and kicked and prodded away from her babies, which she is trying desperately to get back to, and meanwhile the baby piglets have their tails cut off without any kind of anesthetic and they’re screaming bloody murder and a lot of the workers take pleasure in this.”
Coworker: “I don’t want to hear anymore.”
I can’t say that I blame him. I had a professor show my philosophy class a video that documented a lot of this senseless slaughter once, and for whatever reason it didn’t take for me at the time. I was much more worried about catching my next buzz. Maybe it was divine intervention or some other serendipitous phenomenon that brought it back to me now, when I’ve been desperately trying to get pumped up about something. Some folks become born-again Christians...I write blogs about animal cruelty.
I’ve ranted on this long and haven’t even mentioned where I read said article. I found it on Rollingstone.com, and it is titled: In the Belly of the Beast, by: Paul Solotoroff. You may be thinking that I am just reading liberal propaganda and adding in my own imaginary catastrophic crimes against nature, but I am speaking from watching the videos that are presented along with this finely written article. Mr. Solotoroff interviewed a group of undercover workers sent into these slaughterhouses by the Humane Society of the United States. They caught workers taking pleasure in seriously injuring animals, animals living in multiple inches of their own shit (mmmm boy, who wants a steak?), and multiple other chilling scenes that if you are able to watch without it moving you in some way that you may possibly not be alive or have had the part of your brain that projects compassion removed and replaced with evil…
And what really gets my goat (see what I did there?) is that the large meat manufacturers that carry out this sickness along with their lobbyists have our politicians in their pocket. Laws are in place to protect our household pets, but not livestock, no matter how heinous the offense (Read the piece.) Lawmakers in several states are also attempting to make it illegal to video and document the cruelty in these places. I believe in privacy and not having to worry about watching your back all the time, but not when you are torturing a creature that is scared, defenseless, and more times than not is struggling to find a way out of its surroundings, which it never will. Cows, pigs, and chickens are kept in much smaller quarters than are livable. This leads to cannibalism, tramplings, and contaminated food supply when the corpses are left to sit there with the ones that are still to be slaughtered. This all goes down in the name of efficiency. Because we can. Why churn out less food to the public than we can? If we can up our output to the absolute tipping point, why not do just that? Because what is happening is fucking barbaric. That is why.
I am not proposing that everyone become a vegan tomorrow. What you feed yourself is entirely up to you. I am proposing that everyone think about what goes on behind the scenes. I am proposing that we educate ourselves more about things. Things like this, as well as other things we may not want to hear about for fear of hurting our fragile little feelings or giving us a tummy ache. Animal cruelty is just my wake-up call. Yours may be something else. I strongly recommend you go to Rolling Stone and read this article though, because even if you care nothing for animals, you should care about the backroom bullshit that causes these things to happen, and you should also care about the health issues that the constant stew of chemicals being pumped into our meat and dairy supply could raise or already have.
I was raised to be an animal lover and I am sure that is why this issue has touched me in such a way. It just isn’t right though. This is an instance where greed has become so rampant that we are willing to completely disregard other living things’ well-being. There’s no reason to treat them the way that we do.
So much for the quote from Olberman I guess...If this rant or some other thing that you have seen or heard has moved you the way this has me, please don’t just let it fall by the wayside. We let things fall there much too often, and this is what breeds injustice.
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