Very powerful report and write-up. Brilliant report. Powerfully said by writer from the heart. Dogs & cats in many a Facebook article are written on daily, theft by Chinese criminals to animal slaughterhouses. Innocent animals who have done absolutely no wrong to anyone. These places should be shown and contempt for these murder houses and brutalists brought out into the open.
I don’t want to distract from the main point of this piece, but am not sure the initial analogies would persuade anyone who isn’t already committed to a uniform progressive set of views. For what it’s worth, I’m a traditional Glasser and Strosse era ACLU liberal myself. I don’t know anyone who thinks imprisoning an innocent person helps victims of crime (of course it punishes the wrong person while the person who is responsible is free to continue hurting more people - which is why it’s a bad idea to keep releasing people who continually commit violent crimes - there are real victims). One could argue that ignoring a person’s record of committing several violent crimes and the likelihood they will hurt more people, in order to feel good about not incarcerating someone in a deeply flawed system and just hoping for the best once there’re released is what counts as saving face to a large and growing swath of left of center public. I did organizing work nine years ago to help elect a reform DA in Brooklyn and one of the reasons I was so motivated to do so was a pattern of wrongful convictions. Since then, it’s become more and more popular to argue every member of certain classes is essentially innocent and shouldn’t be incarcerated even if they committed horrible crimes.
Re: environmental and energy policy, I worked on the NYC Climate March campaign in Fall 2014. A slightly abashed grad student from Germany told me his government was essentially saving face by closing its nuclear plants - but then investing in plants right over the border in their comparatively poorer neighbor, Poland. When the US decides to make it harder to drill or frack for oil or gas we might cheer that decision as a means to help protect nature and public health and as a prod to invest in greener energy. But doing so at the same time we begged the Russians and Saudis (last year) to release more oil so we can buy it cheaper, are we not saving face and pretending to be virtuously greener than our full set of policies would justify. I met a perfectly nice woman about to leave for Fulbright study in Germany who, nonetheless, was able to blithely justify the virtuous stance of immediately ceasing all coal mining and fracking - because, within the US, she was only familiar with affluent parts of California and New York. She’d never been near all of the people she’d gladly have put out of work with the wave of her hand. That’s the luxury of taking a maximally publicly virtuous stance, while remaining blissfully detached from any of the consequences.
I write this as a vegan, DxE member and contributor, sanctuary volunteer, and volunteer activist working to ban new fur sales and organizing to build a local network to rescue and foster more rats than I can take in myself. I just want to be able to make the case you’re making, the case Tolstoy made: to stop evading and living in dissonance as a way of trying to walk oneself off from suffering we have some role in causing, and that we might be able to ameliorate.
I’m also not sure I agree entirely about conflating commission with omission. I’m with you in that it’s obviously not enough to, for example, say “hey, I’m not the one beating terrified animals in factory farm”. If you’re in a position where you don’t have to do that horrific work, but you can try to superficially wash your hands of it by paying a less fortunate person to do it for you, while allowing you to save face, it’s arguably just as bad, and maybe even worse in some respects, because you’re contributing to the corporate lie, the ability of companies to employ vulnerable people to do that work - and to keep it under wraps and lie about it. But my inability for example to rescue every rat I see described in a heartbreaking ad is not the same as me breeding those rats to be live fed in agony and terror. I’m trying to do more and find others who can help. But I’m not sure impoverishing myself this year to spend the maximum amount trying to rescue rats and support any other campaigns - and giving up any ability to help a larger number for years is the right balance. I’m not sure filling my apartment with a hundred rats I can’t care for now - and being unable to help any others later is the right balance. Now, if I buy a six pack of beer a couple times a week instead of donating that money or if I endlessly binge-watch TV series instead of spending that time volunteering, I’m with you.
I’m with you on not looking away. One of the overwhelmingly feelings I experienced when I decided to stop messing around and go vegan was relief. Another was gratitude for good food I could enjoy without so much guilt. Another was a sense of deep connectedness with others species - one I couldn’t fake while eating them. I also experienced another kind of humbling gratitude that I could be part of the problem for so many years - and not only see it and admit and stop doing it - but could be forgiven. That forgiveness, including of myself, is a key to meeting others where they are and convincing them they can truly love all animals the way they say they want to. Because I am no better than they are. I just stopped doing things that were indefensible and began doing more and more positive things, things I used to make excuses to avoid doing because they reminded me I was being a hypocrite by continuing to eat other animals and support their abuse. We have to keep ourselves going as effective activists for the longterm, too. I can push myself to do more, to be more creative, and find more people to whose positive efforts I might contribute. But I likewise can’t crash and burn in one or three or five years of being a committed activist because I am unable to do anything but marinate myself in near-ubiquitous cruelty.
But if anyone happens to see this and is interested in rat rescue and working to protect rodents from abuse, please let me know.
It's a simple comment- thank you for pointing out the many things we turn a blind eye to. So many of our terrible crimes against animals are well hidden and it takes phenomenal energy to expose it. Shame that the energy the industries use to cover it up cant be re-used/invested in humane alternatives
Very powerful report and write-up. Brilliant report. Powerfully said by writer from the heart. Dogs & cats in many a Facebook article are written on daily, theft by Chinese criminals to animal slaughterhouses. Innocent animals who have done absolutely no wrong to anyone. These places should be shown and contempt for these murder houses and brutalists brought out into the open.
I don’t want to distract from the main point of this piece, but am not sure the initial analogies would persuade anyone who isn’t already committed to a uniform progressive set of views. For what it’s worth, I’m a traditional Glasser and Strosse era ACLU liberal myself. I don’t know anyone who thinks imprisoning an innocent person helps victims of crime (of course it punishes the wrong person while the person who is responsible is free to continue hurting more people - which is why it’s a bad idea to keep releasing people who continually commit violent crimes - there are real victims). One could argue that ignoring a person’s record of committing several violent crimes and the likelihood they will hurt more people, in order to feel good about not incarcerating someone in a deeply flawed system and just hoping for the best once there’re released is what counts as saving face to a large and growing swath of left of center public. I did organizing work nine years ago to help elect a reform DA in Brooklyn and one of the reasons I was so motivated to do so was a pattern of wrongful convictions. Since then, it’s become more and more popular to argue every member of certain classes is essentially innocent and shouldn’t be incarcerated even if they committed horrible crimes.
Re: environmental and energy policy, I worked on the NYC Climate March campaign in Fall 2014. A slightly abashed grad student from Germany told me his government was essentially saving face by closing its nuclear plants - but then investing in plants right over the border in their comparatively poorer neighbor, Poland. When the US decides to make it harder to drill or frack for oil or gas we might cheer that decision as a means to help protect nature and public health and as a prod to invest in greener energy. But doing so at the same time we begged the Russians and Saudis (last year) to release more oil so we can buy it cheaper, are we not saving face and pretending to be virtuously greener than our full set of policies would justify. I met a perfectly nice woman about to leave for Fulbright study in Germany who, nonetheless, was able to blithely justify the virtuous stance of immediately ceasing all coal mining and fracking - because, within the US, she was only familiar with affluent parts of California and New York. She’d never been near all of the people she’d gladly have put out of work with the wave of her hand. That’s the luxury of taking a maximally publicly virtuous stance, while remaining blissfully detached from any of the consequences.
I write this as a vegan, DxE member and contributor, sanctuary volunteer, and volunteer activist working to ban new fur sales and organizing to build a local network to rescue and foster more rats than I can take in myself. I just want to be able to make the case you’re making, the case Tolstoy made: to stop evading and living in dissonance as a way of trying to walk oneself off from suffering we have some role in causing, and that we might be able to ameliorate.
I’m also not sure I agree entirely about conflating commission with omission. I’m with you in that it’s obviously not enough to, for example, say “hey, I’m not the one beating terrified animals in factory farm”. If you’re in a position where you don’t have to do that horrific work, but you can try to superficially wash your hands of it by paying a less fortunate person to do it for you, while allowing you to save face, it’s arguably just as bad, and maybe even worse in some respects, because you’re contributing to the corporate lie, the ability of companies to employ vulnerable people to do that work - and to keep it under wraps and lie about it. But my inability for example to rescue every rat I see described in a heartbreaking ad is not the same as me breeding those rats to be live fed in agony and terror. I’m trying to do more and find others who can help. But I’m not sure impoverishing myself this year to spend the maximum amount trying to rescue rats and support any other campaigns - and giving up any ability to help a larger number for years is the right balance. I’m not sure filling my apartment with a hundred rats I can’t care for now - and being unable to help any others later is the right balance. Now, if I buy a six pack of beer a couple times a week instead of donating that money or if I endlessly binge-watch TV series instead of spending that time volunteering, I’m with you.
I’m with you on not looking away. One of the overwhelmingly feelings I experienced when I decided to stop messing around and go vegan was relief. Another was gratitude for good food I could enjoy without so much guilt. Another was a sense of deep connectedness with others species - one I couldn’t fake while eating them. I also experienced another kind of humbling gratitude that I could be part of the problem for so many years - and not only see it and admit and stop doing it - but could be forgiven. That forgiveness, including of myself, is a key to meeting others where they are and convincing them they can truly love all animals the way they say they want to. Because I am no better than they are. I just stopped doing things that were indefensible and began doing more and more positive things, things I used to make excuses to avoid doing because they reminded me I was being a hypocrite by continuing to eat other animals and support their abuse. We have to keep ourselves going as effective activists for the longterm, too. I can push myself to do more, to be more creative, and find more people to whose positive efforts I might contribute. But I likewise can’t crash and burn in one or three or five years of being a committed activist because I am unable to do anything but marinate myself in near-ubiquitous cruelty.
But if anyone happens to see this and is interested in rat rescue and working to protect rodents from abuse, please let me know.
It's a simple comment- thank you for pointing out the many things we turn a blind eye to. So many of our terrible crimes against animals are well hidden and it takes phenomenal energy to expose it. Shame that the energy the industries use to cover it up cant be re-used/invested in humane alternatives