42 Comments

Sorry, Wayne, but if Trump wins we all lose. He is the most dangerous man in the world right now (with Elon right on his heels).

Except for the deadly climate change happening right now, animal rights are my priority in this election. There is absolutely nothing in Don-old’s history that would lead me to conclude that animals would be better off with him as POTUS. NOTHING.

Trump would sit in front of you and eat a Rhinoburger while you talked to him about animal rights. He has no consideration for animals outside of eating them.

Kamala is going to win. Then we get active making our case to her. That’s the way it has to be, my friend.

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For an electric vehicles promoter, Musk is some hotrodder. He could be exposed by asking him what he'd do about oil companies' decades of lies; asking should Trump buy Zuckerberg's troves of personal data for his revenge plans; howdoes Musk feel about Manchin's coal craze?

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motherharp, the amount of compromising that the Dems had to do in order to get Manchin’s vote on critical legislation was staggering. Even if we were to lose his seat in West Virginia, it’s worth it just to get rid of that coal burning motherfucker.

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I'm sorry if I was vague or unclear. My point was as follows. Trump really put "billionaire" on the nightly news. It's significant that the financial alpha male -- Musk -- in our species is orbiting the bottom of his own pyramid. Musk is acting to temper, to lighten, and to support Trump's outrageous male supremacism. Musk, like a whole crowd of fakes beneath him, doesn't want to be subject to Harris and her goals for women. Possibly, he is hooked/cornered on his own macho, lab animal testing, pheromones. Another immediate connection to the "animal" world, so "distant" from these "civilised" humans. He is getting sucked into Trump's vortex of self-smudging. He is a menace, but reasoning will do more and more to expose him. Manchin is out; but if asked, will Musk further compromise and echo Trump's coal claims? And will his "clean energy" image be completely trashed so as to protect the Big Oil billionaires' men's club that "clean energy" has begun to dislodge? And how many of his X users' private info will he stand for Zuckerberg -- boxing threat enemy -- handling/peddling? If they get power, by all their indicators, just to distract people from their own corruption, they will start a sort of debonair national SUV driving lynch mob which will save workers at govt agencies like FEMA and NOAA and NIST for last. The more that can be done to reveal the unethical obsession with credit derived from speciesism towards other species and towards other humans, the better.

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If Trump wins then the cause of animal rights will be set back decades. For one thing, protesting will become increasing more risky. Once he has consolidated power by replacing civil servants with loyal party members then democracy is probably dead as free and fair elections will be a thing of the past. His plans to deport 20million immigrant workers will,as there are less than 6 million unemployed Americans to fill the jobs left empty, along with tariffs, tank the economy. So people will be too focused on their own survival to fight for animal rights.

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Fair points.

But note risk is not bad for protest movements. With no risk, there's no reward.

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I live in France which is relatively moderate but protests for animal rights and the environment are not favoured by the government. So we’re tear-gassed, kettled and shot at with rubber bullets which have maimed people. Sometimes prominent protestors are put under house arrest. A Trump government will go much further than that… how much risk do you think that people are willing to accept? It would be much better to have the flawed Democrats in power than an extreme right autocratic personality cult.

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Humans are _always_ focused on either their own survival or their own comfort. This is apparent when you hear the false dichotomy, "I care about animals, but we have to solve human problems first."

I do think your prediction that "protesting will become increasing more risky" may be true.

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Hope no matter what happens the animals will always have a chance.

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Very interesting article. I concur that the two party system has become entirely dependent upon large amounts of money from corporations to campaign for office. Subsequently, they’re beholden to the big $ corporations and donors. As you note the majority of people don’t trust either party. That being said,Interesting. I hope your prediction about the presidency is wrong. Republicans are deplorable.

I hope democrats win, learn and progress ✌🏼

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I'd like to be part of a pro animal election zoom party Wayne!

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If Trump wins, things will be more dystopian than ever, for animals and humans. I'm sorry but animal rights needs to to be put on the back burner right now and I'm kind of shocked at any analysis of what the future will hold for animals if Trump wins.

As someone from eastern european jewish roots I feel the danger — viscerally ... frighteningly, and tearfully. And I'm aghast at the stupidity of people who don't.

Read: No Furor Over the Fuhrer

https://oldgoats.substack.com/p/no-furor-over-the-fuhrer?r=2vwcqd&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&fbclid=IwY2xjawGV7FlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHZoV9wWJ0v-mIJa9LOoO3I0rI-HM9QNGcGF-ujybgiwKQm3_uOrOJ9Nh0g_aem_GIpMJ08gk4xvOnnJfPxEYg&triedRedirect=true

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Also, in your previous article you said "I don’t know if Trump or Harris will win. And, in truth, I mostly don’t care." I am shocked by this Wayne. Please reconsider.

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Wayne as harsh as it may sound you are Correct.

Thank you for standing up to say this

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I am very pissed off and enraged about the Democrats not stepping up for climate and animal "welfare" in Sonoma California, measure J. They are just as corrupt in regards to animal rights. They have proven that. Gavin Newsom received contributions from the likes of Foster Farms. I hope Jill Stein gets a huge chunk of the popular vote so maybe the parties will "see" us.

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It's infuriating, for sure.

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I'm with you! The 6th Mass Extinction accelerates under either Harris or Trump. A vote for Jill is a vote for our values.

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I hope Cornell West gets a huge chunk of votes…

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Thank you for the silver lining re: " a reassessment within the Democratic Party of its alliance with the economic elite. And it will provoke a backlash by the genuine progressives."

I wonder though why this didn't happen two elections ago.

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What would a pro animal zoom election party consist of? Just animal rights activists hanging out on Zoom?

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yep!

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Wayne, If you do have an animal rights election night Zoom, count me in. FYI, another vegan running for office is long time Green Party member Vincent Beck-Jones is running for U.S. House of Representatives, CD-4. Thanks for this article, and as always, when you visit HHAS, I'll have food waiting!!!

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I didn't know he ran! I know him from AZ!

The two-party system isn't working. We need more voices, more perspectives. The "debates" are a joke, with two people simply hurling insults at each other. Of course that was Trump's fault. But more candidates presenting different ideas would have made things more issues focused. Other countries have viable animal rights parties. Jill Stein didn't even appear on my ballot in NY. We'll never get anywhere if we don't press for more parties.

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HI. I bet that is frustrating not to have a good choice for Pres on your ballot. The Stein campaign worked hard to get enough signatures on the petition to be on the ballot in NY, but it was so difficult to collect enough signatures after the NY legislature (Dem majority) tripled the requirement for signatures 2 yrs ago. The Dems pursued so many lawsuits to get Stein kicked off the ballot, once she was on, in a number of states including PA and NV- I guess the Dems are part of the anti-democracy parties since they favor voter suppression. Hmmmm.

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And please count me in for the zoom meeting, Wayne!

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Oh wait - was that for watching the election? I'm obviously late in reading this... I'm all for a post-election discussion anyway!

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There are a few illusions to remember here. A lot of the ferocity of Trump's attack (and the persuasiveness of Harris's retort) comes from the fact that his advisers are telling him that his class has to get a certain kind of negative control over world populations and their access to knowledge of facts. But they cannot control the biosphere. Many pacific island communities, and Native American communities, and even American small whitish communities, have long since put two+two together and found the value in the science of climate change. The oil companies, --- remember Trump's first VP please, --- are frantic to prevent this occurring in the populace here. When (if) Trump gains power, he's going to have to fill in his big promises of nationalistic rejuvenation with a lot of cool while tries to make science and weather look false --- somehow falsified by NOAA wizards was a recent clown ploy. That's a real problem for Trump. Ferocity and bluff, promotion of tobacco and with it all kinds of addiction, thru the promotion of tobacco's bluffers who are big oil's bluffers, --- that tone and behavior is not going to be fresh and thrilling forever, even to the kind that like to shoot at deer and bears from the back of a 4x4 . . .

I feel that a really important ingredient in the near future is going to be the communication done by individuals --- and you are one of them --- who have directly experienced the contradictions between what Trump, Green, de Santis, and company say, and the reality on the ground. Those people have in the Southeast for example seen nonsense about attacking FEMA workers and NWS offices, nonsense identiifiable with the January 6th hunting trip attack on the Congress. And this is actually a matter of FEELING. Feeling is what leads people to rescue animals. People can rescue themselves, but as David Gilmour said, not without sensing,feeling, hearing, seeing. I hope and I suspect that people can quickly develop a sense of talking from the conditions on the planet when they discuss together the claims made by a class of experienced and entrenched salesmen, fraudsters, multi***Illionaires.

Democracy is a work in progress . . . it is a matter of many people realizing an ideal in a multitude of instances, where a huge population is adequately or superbly spoken-for. its famous and war-entrenched origin was in a well stratified state where slavery was absolutely accepted. But many other less "advanced" groups in other places already had more "democratic" lifeways. Greece was bullt up on the suppression and incorporation of several ethnic and/or culture groups that inhabited that peninsula before "Greeks" deforested and "civilized" it. The word Democracy does not at all guarantee an absence of Tammany Hall, terrorism against activists and journalists, saturation of politicians' and their unions' wallets with payments from organized crime, or the election-toning deception-ism honed and appllied for decades by auto makers, oil companies, tobacco companies, and pharmaceuticals companies. And until ecology is part of general feeling and sensibility, Democracy will not speak for Nature, rivers, trees and animals of all kinds.

All of this is intended to help you with some perspective, and maybe help you grasp this moment on earth, for your own and the animals you're committed to.

I think Booker saw that the inquiry about his diet was in fact a media attempt to, again, shrinkwrap and trivialize veganism, and get him to pass it off as "like" other politics by fitting it into a summary statement; whereas really it has the most profound validity and all around relevance in terms of what I just said above, that is people living by sensing, which is what life is about. Sorry if I'm being long-winded

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ecology, and things implied by it, the web of life, have a great chance of uniting people.

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please excuse me, above I referred to Trump's 'first VP', I meant his first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, a representative of the billionaire class Trump is selling himself as a Hollywood Hitman for (the reality is far worse). Musk is orbiting, pondering, seasoning

Trump because Trump has brought billionaires into the spotlight and has gained terror power versus them.

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Thank you for sharing your predictions, Wayne. I don't live in North America and my thoughts are with all of you in the US, human and non-human alike, ahead of this election. It's important to remember there are reasons to hope, despite uncertainty.

I think the one thing I'm tracking here that is likely to upend things in a myriad ways that I'm not quite seeing people take full stock of is how much AI is likely to change things in terms of political economy and freedoms - think 'perfect' surveillance making open rescue and protests very costly for even the bravest people (as well as pace changes in research on cultured meat and the like, hopefully for the better). Admittedly it's extremely difficult to have much confidence in how AI systems might disrupt things, or how deeply. I do think predicting things without accounting for the giant swarm of question marks that comes with entering this murky new era requires us to hold our expectations very loosely.

With gratitude and compassion.

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Great point. I'm going to take up more discussion of AI post election.

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Thank you for being open to this thought! If you want sources to look at that might help you calibrate around the trajectory of AI development, feel free to reach out to me, I'll share what I think might be useful/new to you. Take good care!

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Trump is temporary if he wins. Could you imagine if he were to end the bailouts for animal AG? Would that accelerate lab grown production to replace animalag while shifting towards plant based simultaneously? Could animal AG give up without a Farm Bill that props them up? Could Trump allow climate change to continue unchecked which would put even more pressure on this vulgar industry?The other side of the coin.

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All I can think to offer is the possibility of an 8-12,000 year perspective on our world, coming out of the Amazon in an article from seven years ago, forwarded to me by the Graham Hancock/Steve Detwiler news aggregator-- https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/03/the-amazon-forest-is-the-result-of-an-8000-year-experiment , by Annalee Newitz, comparing the Amazon with the Levant in the same time frame for urban architecture arising from floral expertise, with cities being more at risk for survival than knowledge of plant varieties and domestication of desired fruit and nut trees. The situation seems to be reversed now, and should real entropy set in, I wonder whether people won't realize how meagre the ideology is, and how desolate the world we inhabit, in time to attempt a return to things that vitally concern us?

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Taking the 10,000 time horizon is wise. Thanks for sharing.

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Your logic here is genuinely disturbing and, honestly, frightening. I can’t wrap my head around how you’d even attempt to argue for Trump and somehow tie it back to animal rights. It’s baffling that you, of all people, can’t see that his winning would throw us backward. Large corporations will keep gaining power, exploiting both people and animals. Just look at the recent recall on deli meat—why did that happen? Because the USDA isn’t monitoring effectively. Under his leadership, any oversight we have would collapse further, leaving control to a handful of powerful, dangerous people who don’t care about animals and barely care about people. If you think they have an ounce of empathy, think again. Discrimination would rise against anyone who isn’t white, and camps for marginalized groups are not far-fetched. That includes people like you and me. If you think any of this would help animal rights, you’re way off the mark. I have had your newsletter for approximately 4 weeks each month I pick 1 new newsletter to subscribe and support after a month of reading. I cannot support your views. It would be different if you brought up a sensible debate when it comes to trump it is in no way debatable. You are obviously too young to know what facisim is and what this country fought for. Again very disappointed .

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Hi Gina, thanks for these comments. Your points are very sound, and I appreciate you sharing. The point of my blog was not to argue for Trump; it was, rather, to point out that Trump's likely victory will be at the hands of failures in Democratic politics! In other words, I am predicting what WILL happen, and not what SHOULD. Does that make sense?

Thank you for caring and for sharing your thoughts. I thought this comment was particularly astute: "Under his leadership, any oversight we have would collapse further, leaving control to a handful of powerful, dangerous people who don’t care about animals and barely care about people. "

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Thank you for explaining that…once the old generation dies off democrat or Republican whatever you call these politicians ..hopefully the new fresh younger compassionate and intelligent minds take over and learn from all the dysfunction and narcissism from the past and create a kinder society.

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