Sadly, a lot of politics involve issues that are more symbolic than the real. This is bad, because elections are decided on issues that have little to do with the everyday of life of the people and thus democracy is thwarted. Let's consider an election decided by the death penalty in the United States. The death penalty has negligible impact on this country. It would make no difference to the lives of our non-vicious criminal citizens if the death penalty were eliminated tomorrow or if its use quintupled. Admittedly, one could argue that the death penalty is proxy for toughness on crime, but I doubt that is what is going on. At least, most death penalty opponents get annoyed for me for suggesting that.
The election tomorrow is said by so many people to a referendum on Iraq. The reason for the opposition to the war in Iraq is largely symbolic. There are about 1.5 million people(*) arrested each year for drunk driving, and several times that many more drunk and high drivers who evade arrest. This leads to more than 17,000 death per year. If one were worried about unnecessary death, I'd suggest drunk driving would be a good place to start your political action. Instead, people quote the number of deaths in Iraq like it were so terrible a calamity. They feel empowered by condemning those deaths as a senile old woman is empowered saying her rosary.
Let us pause and reflect on the problems of the world before saying killing is bad in the Iraq War or abortion or the death penalty or whatever. We face a murderous Islam and deep environmental problems. Let's tackle these issues first, before deciding tiny moral problems. Is it worth to fundamentalist Christians to ban gay marriage, if the cost is that Islam wins and Christians become second class citizens? Is it worth to leftist, if the victory of their anti-Iraq stance empowers countries unconcerned about greenhouse gases and the result is climate change which destroys our environment? These are not empty questions.
Let me go further and reclaim both killing and even cruel joy in killing. I had mice living under my stairs and I killed two of them yesterday using glue traps. Actually, I drowned them on the glue strips. I'm glad I took an active stance kill and reduced their suffering. Mice are nice creatures, and I don't really blame them as I kill them. But if the traps had had rats instead of mice, I wouldn't have mercifully killed them by drowning. I would have delighted instead in the suffering of the rats. Rats are evil, mean things and when they suffer when they die, they get what they deserve. I would enjoy a restrained cruelty towards them.
(*)I tried to make out sense of the FBI statistics, but couldn't so I just choose the highest figure I could find in the manner of the typical journalist. Obviously, a fair minded would do just the opposite and provide a number like 800,000.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
I would to correct two misapprehensions about what I was trying to say. First, I was just saying that I wouldn't have been so vigilant about drowning a rat on a glue trap as I was about drowning a mouse on a glue trap. I would not commit active cruelty towards rats--nor would I condone it.
Second, my bias against rats is more the immense environmental damage that they have done. It's true that they haven't been as bad for the enviroment as homo sapien, but still their paws are not clean. There are many environments in which they simply should not be. Further, there are animal rights wing-nuts who want to capture and release rats into the disappearing country side, where if they survive, it is by wreaking havoc on the local ecosystem. I do think it is healthy to react against such a stance.
Finally, enjoy your pet!
Post a Comment