Well done, Sabrina. What gets me is why people get dogs if the intent is to punish them every day of their lives. And you're right, children are traumatized by seeing abused animals. I'm Black and I don't see it as a race thing at all. I see it as stupid people who happen to be Black, not realizing the human factor. Serial killers are known to kill animals first on their way to murder for pleasure. Thank you, Sabrina, for pointing out the social correlation related to crime. Those Black folks in Gary better heed your warning, or the city will lose people and go to the dogs.
Cruelty is cruelty. Black or White. Ruler or ruled.
(rewritten scene from King Leery)
King Leery: So tell me daughters, what will you give me and take from others?
Tull-See: I take away the invaders of this country who use it as a stomping ground - scientists, researchers, students, musicians, engineers, innovators who come from elsewhere and aim to make a fortune, and easiest of all, immigrants who seek a better life. They’ll be sent to hell.
King Leery: Well designed, Tull-See, and most comprehensive. Will there be any of us left?
Tull-See: Enough to enjoy the pot of riches which is our due, divided among far fewer.
King Leery: And you, Pam? What will you give me? From whom will you take?
Pam: I make Tull-See’s gain puny, father, for I exercise retribution on every single citizen. Retract rights that were their due. Destroy privileges that were guaranteed. Sweep away every ounce of dignity they saw as the reward of citizenship. I shall make them weep and toil.
King Leery: Excellent, daughter. But will they weep and toil?
Pam: Who cares, father, since we retain the rights they lose and shall use them. You see, I’ve also defrocked the courts. There is no longer anyone to judge you.
King Leery: And you, Kristi? What will you give? From whom will you take?
Kristi: Nothing, father.
King Leery: Nothing? Nothing will come of nothing, Kristi.
Kristi: That’s the point, father: give no one nothing. You are MALE, I am FEMA. Give no help to those in need; turn people to nothing; kill animals. (exit King Leery, nodding)
Pam: You dip deep, Kristi.
Kristi: Nothing is expertise, Pam, a crater without bottom. Him I have by the balls.
Tull-see: Oh, does he own such? They are not nothing?
Kristi: I conjured an exhibitionist named Nan Seem-Ace who loves to parade her nudity for all to see. Thus he is kept busy while we do our mischief.
Pam: Your words are sparse, Kristi.
Tull-see: But your deeds well strained. (exit daughters)
Thank you for this article! When you drill down to some people's most basic argument, it goes something like this: At some point in history, people who looked/believed/lived like us were treated cruelly and inhumanely, and this therefore excuses acts of cruelty and inhumanity on our part.
I once saw a bumper sticker that changed the way I think about our fellow travellers: Animals are just little people in fur coats.
Yes, the analogy is imperfect. Some of these people are not little. Some have feathers or scales or exoskeletons, etc. It was a bumper sticker.
The point being they are independent creatures with just as much right to life and self-determination as we bipeds, in all our various forms and colors.
There are lots of articles about allowing prisoners to have pets ( https://www.google.com/search?q=allowing+prisioners+to+have+pets ) and many of us remember the true story of the "Birdman of Alcatraz" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stroud ) which was made into a movie starring Burt Lancaster. Psychopaths are well known to be among the most resistant to psychological treatment of any group. Many mental health professionals consider them to be untreatable. In fact, they rarely get into therapy voluntarily.
I've seen a few borderline psychopaths when their wives forced them to come to marriage counseling but none of them stayed for more than one or two sessions. I saw one famous client who I can write about because I am referenced in the book "The Burning Bed" writen by her and author Faith McNulty. Her story was made into a movie starring Farrah Fawcett). She was the first person charged with murder to be acquited as an abused partner. Her abusive boyfriend used to pick her up from therapy in his pick-up truck with a rifle on the back window. I thought he might come into my office and shoot me some day.
I was encouraging her to build her self-esteem, stand up to him, and take community college courses. He burned her books but the final straw leading her to set him afire in his bed was him killing her dog and her new puppies. He was a psychopathic dog killer. Perhaps we could give a Kristi Noem an MMP, a psychological test, to see if that dog killer also meets the criteria for calling her a pschopath. (I would favor laws making it illegal to kill your pet. Only vets should be allowed to euthanize animals.)
Nobody has reported that Donald Trump ever had a pet. Wiki tells us that only James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Donald Trump did not have any presidential pets while in office, but that Johnson did take care of some mice he found in his bedroom). Many mental health professionals, myself included, have explained the reasons Trump fits many or most of the criteria for being called a psychopath in addition to ticking off all the diagnostic elements for having a narcissistic personalty disorder.
In the highly unlikely event Trump ever goes to prison I wonder if part of mandated psychological treatment that might increase the chances of success would be that he had to care for an animal. It could be a dog or cat or even a horse. I lean towards the later because this would include total care from grooming to cleaning out the stalls.
The Law & Order TV show has produced some very powerful episodes over the years, but the cultural mindset of Gary Indiana, has similarities to the 1997 episode "Ritual". In this episode it is the accepted cultural norms of the mothers side of the family that adolescent girls undergo a forced circumcision.
As Sabrina mentions, in many parts of America it's considered perfectly acceptable to leave a dog outside (regardless of the elements) its entire life. Keeping it also chained to something this entire time is also the norm.
Adding to the mix is that in Gary Indiana, if you question this practice you are immediately labeled a racist.
The commonality running through all of this is that just because something is culturally acceptable does not make it right or legal.
Hypothetically, let's say I own a dog. I love him and hug him and pet him and pat him and call him George. He has food and treats and toys and sleeps on the bed every night, and I take him for walks every day. But according to the customs of my culture, I must forcefully kick him five time a day. Is that also acceptable? Is it any different from the abuse these other dogs face because it is considered acceptable to keep them chained up outdoors their entire lives?
Coincidentally, the geographic areas of the country in which cultural norms (such as animal abuse) are the strongest are also those that wouldn't blink an eye about making slavery legal again. What's the common denominator? Abuse of any other living human or animal is perfectly acceptable if I'm the one that gets to dole out the abuse.
The feelings Sabrina has for Gary Indiana, are quite strong, but no amount of logic, pleading, arguments, or anything else is going to change any minds there.
In its own way, Gary Indiana is a microcosm of much of America. Gary Indiana can't be "saved" by well-meaning people like Sabrina. It must experience a heart-wrenchingly painful self-destruction before it can go in a better direction. Scores of individual farmers are suffering because USAID has been shuttered and exports have dried up, but they'd be lined up at the polling booths at 7:00am to vote for Dementia Donnie again. Millions of others will no longer have Medicare or Medicaid coverage in the coming months, but they too will be lined up at the polling booths to once again pull the lever for Trumpty Dumpty.
It is said that there is no cure for stupid. Sadly, thanks to Fox "news", NewsMax, podcasts, right-wing radio, etc, an entire swath of America has lost the ability to think rationally and will continue to eagerly vote against their own self-interests as long as they get to "own the libs" (and make billionaires even wealthier).
I disagree. Minds in Gary are changing, and have changed significantly over the past 20 years. young, intelligent, black progressives aren't having the cruelty, and they aren't quiet about it. the problem is the government, listening to a few loud voices that drown out others. (the most common pushback is: how can you spend tax dollars on animals when there are people who are __ fill in the blank. second most common: catering to anticruelty folk will make you look like you're catering to white people, and black people in gary hate that. third most common: that dog is my property, and I have so few rights, you can't take away my right to treat my property any way I see fit.)
The competing voices just give-up too soon, afraid anytime something gets racialized, instead of being willing to sit uncomfortably to talk it through. as I see it, it's the same shortcoming we're experiencing nationwide, and the maga backlash is, at least in part, attributable to our inability to talk through our differences.
Sorry for the delayed reply. I was traveling for the long weekend, enjoying a couple of first-of-the-season cookouts (at least for up here in New England), and I really try to unplug when I'm on the road.
First, it's super-fantastic to see that there are people in Gary that are open to change.
Second, you hit the nail on the head. As we become more polarized and more socially isolated, our ability to have a simple dialogue has suffered. These days in particular, you really are lowering your armor when you try to initiate a discussion. It takes two to tango, and both people need to meet in the middle. Chance are it's going to be a very uncomfortable situation for everyone, but sometimes the first steps are the hardest.
Lastly, guess what? You disagreed with my initial reply. Instead of flying off the handle or digging in my heels, I appreciated the additional info you provided. :--)
Cruelty is cruelty, no matter the color or race. And it's NOT just in the Black community. I still believe that many of the people who abuse animals were themselves abused as children, and either don't understand or even think about what they're doing, or they don't make the connection. Abuse is normal to them. I suspect it's a generational thing, just repeated over and over, with no one even noticing or trying to put an end to it. It's just what they've always done.
It's time we ALL wake up and try to inform and assist others in realizing how they are perpetuating the cruelty, and how it affects their lives in other areas. As noted before, the lack of respect for animals often leads to the increasing lack of respect for other humans, and that degrades life for all of us.
It’s always a bit of a surprise how holy godly the population of the US are especially the southern states. Yet how endemic animal cruelty is, for some even more so considering their own ancestral history of suffering unimaginable cruelty. The correlation between seriously dangerous individuals up to serial killers and certain characteristics has been known for a long time, they are arson, adult bed wetting and deliberate cruelty to animals, those with all three are the most dangerous. It is perhaps an indicator of how civilised a society really is, by how it treats all those that are under their control. After all we are all gods creatures, who is to say one life is more important than other, any life for that matter.
It has been reported that canines (dogs, wolves) will fight to establish dominance, but rarely kill each other. Our species has yet to learn from them. NEW FILM:
Resisting dictatorships can impact an entire family. In I’M STILL HERE (a Brazilian film nominated for Best Picture) a former congressman is removed from his home in front of his family, and never seen again. His wife also gets questioned at length by authorities, but protects their family, eventually reinventing herself. Timely ?! (I think we watched it on Netflix, free this month, but it’s also available on Prime.). ~eric. MeridaGOround.com
I will certainly speak up for the real people, both black and white, who live in Gary. 99% of them will support Sabrina's quest for animal lovers. As someone who has worked many years supporting science and math, (both high school and middle) school teachers with state and federal grants for summer teacher workshops and more, I know of hundreds of dedicated teachers whose support for children's learning was a joy to behold. They were, and still are fighting mainly against the state write-off of the children of Gary, Hammond and East Chicago and other local communities that did not fit their now dominant extreme Republican State and Federal "Authorities" ideas of "ideal white communities" such as the rich suburbs of Indianapolis.
Those education grants disappeared even during the first Trump Presidency - Now any education money (which is even less than 10 years ago) has to be shared with the increasing private (profit making, religious and irreligious) schools across the state. For example, the population of Gary has halved but the child population of the Gary schools has gone down by 80% in the past 15 years. Almostthe same statistics apply to all the north-west Indiana school districts... Their debt is accentuated by the many empty school buildings that they have to maintain while they try to sell to non-existent buyers - who think they can "buy" them for free and amke dollors on cheap housing conversions.
Thank you Sabrina for your wonderful descriptions of the great needs of our country to bring ALL of us together again. We will WIN these battles against immorality, grift and ignorance!
There is abundant evidence that humans and dogs have co-evolved -- for up to the past 40,000 years -- influencing each other to an unmatched degree. Dogs are not only our best friends, they are in many ways our makers.
Well done, Sabrina. What gets me is why people get dogs if the intent is to punish them every day of their lives. And you're right, children are traumatized by seeing abused animals. I'm Black and I don't see it as a race thing at all. I see it as stupid people who happen to be Black, not realizing the human factor. Serial killers are known to kill animals first on their way to murder for pleasure. Thank you, Sabrina, for pointing out the social correlation related to crime. Those Black folks in Gary better heed your warning, or the city will lose people and go to the dogs.
Chauncey DeVega is another great voice reminding us in every episode of his podcast that other creatures are "our human animal friends".
Thanks Sabrina for always saving some time to remember the creatures. They're the best of us.
Cruelty is cruelty. Black or White. Ruler or ruled.
(rewritten scene from King Leery)
King Leery: So tell me daughters, what will you give me and take from others?
Tull-See: I take away the invaders of this country who use it as a stomping ground - scientists, researchers, students, musicians, engineers, innovators who come from elsewhere and aim to make a fortune, and easiest of all, immigrants who seek a better life. They’ll be sent to hell.
King Leery: Well designed, Tull-See, and most comprehensive. Will there be any of us left?
Tull-See: Enough to enjoy the pot of riches which is our due, divided among far fewer.
King Leery: And you, Pam? What will you give me? From whom will you take?
Pam: I make Tull-See’s gain puny, father, for I exercise retribution on every single citizen. Retract rights that were their due. Destroy privileges that were guaranteed. Sweep away every ounce of dignity they saw as the reward of citizenship. I shall make them weep and toil.
King Leery: Excellent, daughter. But will they weep and toil?
Pam: Who cares, father, since we retain the rights they lose and shall use them. You see, I’ve also defrocked the courts. There is no longer anyone to judge you.
King Leery: And you, Kristi? What will you give? From whom will you take?
Kristi: Nothing, father.
King Leery: Nothing? Nothing will come of nothing, Kristi.
Kristi: That’s the point, father: give no one nothing. You are MALE, I am FEMA. Give no help to those in need; turn people to nothing; kill animals. (exit King Leery, nodding)
Pam: You dip deep, Kristi.
Kristi: Nothing is expertise, Pam, a crater without bottom. Him I have by the balls.
Tull-see: Oh, does he own such? They are not nothing?
Kristi: I conjured an exhibitionist named Nan Seem-Ace who loves to parade her nudity for all to see. Thus he is kept busy while we do our mischief.
Pam: Your words are sparse, Kristi.
Tull-see: But your deeds well strained. (exit daughters)
Methinks thou art clever!
Great article.
Thank you for this article! When you drill down to some people's most basic argument, it goes something like this: At some point in history, people who looked/believed/lived like us were treated cruelly and inhumanely, and this therefore excuses acts of cruelty and inhumanity on our part.
I once saw a bumper sticker that changed the way I think about our fellow travellers: Animals are just little people in fur coats.
Yes, the analogy is imperfect. Some of these people are not little. Some have feathers or scales or exoskeletons, etc. It was a bumper sticker.
The point being they are independent creatures with just as much right to life and self-determination as we bipeds, in all our various forms and colors.
Thank you! I love dogs and it is inhumane to maltreat them.
There are lots of articles about allowing prisoners to have pets ( https://www.google.com/search?q=allowing+prisioners+to+have+pets ) and many of us remember the true story of the "Birdman of Alcatraz" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Stroud ) which was made into a movie starring Burt Lancaster. Psychopaths are well known to be among the most resistant to psychological treatment of any group. Many mental health professionals consider them to be untreatable. In fact, they rarely get into therapy voluntarily.
I've seen a few borderline psychopaths when their wives forced them to come to marriage counseling but none of them stayed for more than one or two sessions. I saw one famous client who I can write about because I am referenced in the book "The Burning Bed" writen by her and author Faith McNulty. Her story was made into a movie starring Farrah Fawcett). She was the first person charged with murder to be acquited as an abused partner. Her abusive boyfriend used to pick her up from therapy in his pick-up truck with a rifle on the back window. I thought he might come into my office and shoot me some day.
I was encouraging her to build her self-esteem, stand up to him, and take community college courses. He burned her books but the final straw leading her to set him afire in his bed was him killing her dog and her new puppies. He was a psychopathic dog killer. Perhaps we could give a Kristi Noem an MMP, a psychological test, to see if that dog killer also meets the criteria for calling her a pschopath. (I would favor laws making it illegal to kill your pet. Only vets should be allowed to euthanize animals.)
Nobody has reported that Donald Trump ever had a pet. Wiki tells us that only James K. Polk, Andrew Johnson, and Donald Trump did not have any presidential pets while in office, but that Johnson did take care of some mice he found in his bedroom). Many mental health professionals, myself included, have explained the reasons Trump fits many or most of the criteria for being called a psychopath in addition to ticking off all the diagnostic elements for having a narcissistic personalty disorder.
In the highly unlikely event Trump ever goes to prison I wonder if part of mandated psychological treatment that might increase the chances of success would be that he had to care for an animal. It could be a dog or cat or even a horse. I lean towards the later because this would include total care from grooming to cleaning out the stalls.
The Law & Order TV show has produced some very powerful episodes over the years, but the cultural mindset of Gary Indiana, has similarities to the 1997 episode "Ritual". In this episode it is the accepted cultural norms of the mothers side of the family that adolescent girls undergo a forced circumcision.
As Sabrina mentions, in many parts of America it's considered perfectly acceptable to leave a dog outside (regardless of the elements) its entire life. Keeping it also chained to something this entire time is also the norm.
Adding to the mix is that in Gary Indiana, if you question this practice you are immediately labeled a racist.
The commonality running through all of this is that just because something is culturally acceptable does not make it right or legal.
Hypothetically, let's say I own a dog. I love him and hug him and pet him and pat him and call him George. He has food and treats and toys and sleeps on the bed every night, and I take him for walks every day. But according to the customs of my culture, I must forcefully kick him five time a day. Is that also acceptable? Is it any different from the abuse these other dogs face because it is considered acceptable to keep them chained up outdoors their entire lives?
Coincidentally, the geographic areas of the country in which cultural norms (such as animal abuse) are the strongest are also those that wouldn't blink an eye about making slavery legal again. What's the common denominator? Abuse of any other living human or animal is perfectly acceptable if I'm the one that gets to dole out the abuse.
The feelings Sabrina has for Gary Indiana, are quite strong, but no amount of logic, pleading, arguments, or anything else is going to change any minds there.
In its own way, Gary Indiana is a microcosm of much of America. Gary Indiana can't be "saved" by well-meaning people like Sabrina. It must experience a heart-wrenchingly painful self-destruction before it can go in a better direction. Scores of individual farmers are suffering because USAID has been shuttered and exports have dried up, but they'd be lined up at the polling booths at 7:00am to vote for Dementia Donnie again. Millions of others will no longer have Medicare or Medicaid coverage in the coming months, but they too will be lined up at the polling booths to once again pull the lever for Trumpty Dumpty.
It is said that there is no cure for stupid. Sadly, thanks to Fox "news", NewsMax, podcasts, right-wing radio, etc, an entire swath of America has lost the ability to think rationally and will continue to eagerly vote against their own self-interests as long as they get to "own the libs" (and make billionaires even wealthier).
https://i.imgflip.com/90hm54.jpg
I disagree. Minds in Gary are changing, and have changed significantly over the past 20 years. young, intelligent, black progressives aren't having the cruelty, and they aren't quiet about it. the problem is the government, listening to a few loud voices that drown out others. (the most common pushback is: how can you spend tax dollars on animals when there are people who are __ fill in the blank. second most common: catering to anticruelty folk will make you look like you're catering to white people, and black people in gary hate that. third most common: that dog is my property, and I have so few rights, you can't take away my right to treat my property any way I see fit.)
The competing voices just give-up too soon, afraid anytime something gets racialized, instead of being willing to sit uncomfortably to talk it through. as I see it, it's the same shortcoming we're experiencing nationwide, and the maga backlash is, at least in part, attributable to our inability to talk through our differences.
Hi Sabrina,
Sorry for the delayed reply. I was traveling for the long weekend, enjoying a couple of first-of-the-season cookouts (at least for up here in New England), and I really try to unplug when I'm on the road.
First, it's super-fantastic to see that there are people in Gary that are open to change.
Second, you hit the nail on the head. As we become more polarized and more socially isolated, our ability to have a simple dialogue has suffered. These days in particular, you really are lowering your armor when you try to initiate a discussion. It takes two to tango, and both people need to meet in the middle. Chance are it's going to be a very uncomfortable situation for everyone, but sometimes the first steps are the hardest.
Lastly, guess what? You disagreed with my initial reply. Instead of flying off the handle or digging in my heels, I appreciated the additional info you provided. :--)
Cruelty is cruelty, no matter the color or race. And it's NOT just in the Black community. I still believe that many of the people who abuse animals were themselves abused as children, and either don't understand or even think about what they're doing, or they don't make the connection. Abuse is normal to them. I suspect it's a generational thing, just repeated over and over, with no one even noticing or trying to put an end to it. It's just what they've always done.
It's time we ALL wake up and try to inform and assist others in realizing how they are perpetuating the cruelty, and how it affects their lives in other areas. As noted before, the lack of respect for animals often leads to the increasing lack of respect for other humans, and that degrades life for all of us.
It’s always a bit of a surprise how holy godly the population of the US are especially the southern states. Yet how endemic animal cruelty is, for some even more so considering their own ancestral history of suffering unimaginable cruelty. The correlation between seriously dangerous individuals up to serial killers and certain characteristics has been known for a long time, they are arson, adult bed wetting and deliberate cruelty to animals, those with all three are the most dangerous. It is perhaps an indicator of how civilised a society really is, by how it treats all those that are under their control. After all we are all gods creatures, who is to say one life is more important than other, any life for that matter.
IQ45 uses DEI as a stand-in for what he is really against. Decency, Ethics, and Intelligence are his main adversaries.
Funny thing is, the stance of Vance these days supports placing the American people in a dog house with a chain around their necks.
It has been reported that canines (dogs, wolves) will fight to establish dominance, but rarely kill each other. Our species has yet to learn from them. NEW FILM:
Resisting dictatorships can impact an entire family. In I’M STILL HERE (a Brazilian film nominated for Best Picture) a former congressman is removed from his home in front of his family, and never seen again. His wife also gets questioned at length by authorities, but protects their family, eventually reinventing herself. Timely ?! (I think we watched it on Netflix, free this month, but it’s also available on Prime.). ~eric. MeridaGOround.com
I will certainly speak up for the real people, both black and white, who live in Gary. 99% of them will support Sabrina's quest for animal lovers. As someone who has worked many years supporting science and math, (both high school and middle) school teachers with state and federal grants for summer teacher workshops and more, I know of hundreds of dedicated teachers whose support for children's learning was a joy to behold. They were, and still are fighting mainly against the state write-off of the children of Gary, Hammond and East Chicago and other local communities that did not fit their now dominant extreme Republican State and Federal "Authorities" ideas of "ideal white communities" such as the rich suburbs of Indianapolis.
Those education grants disappeared even during the first Trump Presidency - Now any education money (which is even less than 10 years ago) has to be shared with the increasing private (profit making, religious and irreligious) schools across the state. For example, the population of Gary has halved but the child population of the Gary schools has gone down by 80% in the past 15 years. Almostthe same statistics apply to all the north-west Indiana school districts... Their debt is accentuated by the many empty school buildings that they have to maintain while they try to sell to non-existent buyers - who think they can "buy" them for free and amke dollors on cheap housing conversions.
Thank you Sabrina for your wonderful descriptions of the great needs of our country to bring ALL of us together again. We will WIN these battles against immorality, grift and ignorance!
"The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.". Gandhi
There is abundant evidence that humans and dogs have co-evolved -- for up to the past 40,000 years -- influencing each other to an unmatched degree. Dogs are not only our best friends, they are in many ways our makers.