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Gorilla lives matter
// Personal Liberty Digest™
"I think; therefore I am." — René Descartes
Tragedy struck the Cincinnati Zoo on May 28, when 4-year-old Isaiah slipped past his mother and fell into the Gorilla enclosure. Unless you were in a coma you know the story because it has been covered ad nauseam by the media.
It has also ignited anger from two corners: African-Americans and the animal rights activists. As it stands, 500,000 people signed a petition to have the child taken from his family.
Black people inundated social media with complaints that the "murder" of the gorilla, Harambe, was just another indication of "white privilege" exercising its muscle.
Examiner.com reported on some of the messages placed on the Internet.
"Isa Ibn @IsaIbnOfficial — That gorilla was taken from its homeland, put in captivity, and then killed to preserve white life. That sounds familiar."Kar L. Stine @karyewest — That gorilla was black, unarmed and 17."Hood Intellect @NelsonEmpowered — Killing an endangered gorilla at a zoo for a white boy's safety is white privilege. If the boy was black they would've found a tranquilizer."
The messages are clearly a rush to judgement and go to show that some African-Americans still harbor a strong contempt for white people. As it turns out, Isaiah is black, so that playing that card isn't going to work.
Two other anonymous messages said: "Tell me again why they shot the gorilla and not those retarded parents and their retarded kid?" and "I really hope next time that child decides to do something stupid, he falls into a lion's pit, that way he gets eaten fast."
Such display of hatred against the family and a child makes me believe that America is losing its soul.
While the news loop showed what I thought to be rough treatment and threatening gestures by the gorilla, the media forgot to report this on the rest of the news.
The same Memorial Day long weekend 69 people in Chicago were shot. On his Fox broadcast, Bill O'Reilly said that there was 50 times more media coverage on the shooting of the gorilla than the bloodletting in Chicago.
America has become so used to murder and mayhem that it no longer pays attention or thinks of ways to reduce violence. While a petition to take Isaiah away from his family has 500,000 signatures, little is being done regarding the gang violence that has infiltrated Chicago and other major U.S. cities.
Before African-Americans condemn this one family they should look at their own neighborhoods where black-on-black violence is commonplace.
Animal rights activists are the flip side to climate change activists
Last week in Book-banning Greens bent on programming school-age children, I commented on the zealotry of the "save the planet" movement. Much of the same characteristics are found in the animal rights movement. Their representatives have universally pronounced that the boy was in no danger from the 450 pound silverback gorilla and claim he was either protecting the child or ready to hand him back to his mother. That's almost a reprise of the original film version of King Kong where in the throes of death the Kong saves Fay Wray.
Grande dame primatologist Jane Goodall thought the killing of the gorilla was a senseless act. "I tried to see exactly what was happening — it looked as though the gorilla was putting an arm round the child."
Goodall and millions of others are guilty of anthropomorphism. They attribute human traits, emotions and intentions to animals. Yet most of us are willfully blind to man's central interaction with animals as they are primarily a product grown and then harvested for human consumption.
Few want to consider the butchery of tens of thousands of steers at packing plants where an assembly line turns live cows into packages of meat that are stacked in the grocery store aisles.
The Calgary Stampede revealed an interesting disconnect between rodeo events and the real world. In 2013 during the steer wrestling competition, a steer broke its neck as it was wrestled to the ground. The grandstand crowd of 20,000 witnessed the event. A group of professional cowboys grabbed a large tarp to cover the body so spectators would not be traumatized. I could not help but laugh. Many of those in the shocked audience were wolfing down hotdogs and hamburgers ignorant of the fact that all the steers in the rodeo were a few days away from the meat grinder.
Jackasses, real and human
The United States is home to the Nonhuman Rights Project. They claim to be unique because they are the only group working through the common law to achieve legal rights for members of species other than our own. Their mission statement outlines their goal which is: "to change the legal status of appropriate nonhuman animals from mere things which lack the capacity to possess any legal right, to man, who possess such fundamental rights as bodily integrity and bodily liberty." Oh yes and please send money.
There tends to be a neurosis within animal rights groups that is at odds with human nature. Archaeologists have discovered that our human ancestors were hunting at least 2 million years ago. If this law was taken to the extreme and animals could not be slaughtered for human consumption, the result would be mass starvation.
I quoted Descartes at the beginning for good reason. Throughout his writings, the 17th Century French philosopher questioned what it was to be human and found his own existence assured because he was able to ask that question. It proved to him that he was a sentient being and thus able to feel and experience life subjectively. All animals lack this and therein lay the extensive divide between man and animal. It is a separation so vast it cannot be bridged by any law regardless of what animal rights fanatics want.
Yours in good times and bad,
— John Myers
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