Posts Tagged → children
Are Israelis being tricked into another Roman Occupation?
Disclaimer: We don’t go down any rabbit holes here. This blog is filled with well-argued opinions and occasionally those of people who I believe need to be heard. My opinions are always backed by facts and Founding Principles, and if I can’t find facts to back up my particular opinion, then I fall back on principle (e.g. America is supposed to be a small government run by Constitutionally obedient and publicly responsive public servants). If no Founding Principle is at stake, then I usually don’t take a stand. Today, if you read further, you are joining me on my first ever rabbit hole exploration. But I am doing it out of commitment to truth, and I am asking questions that are the only questions that make sense to me.
Historically, about 2100 years ago, Israel/Judea became increasingly occupied by the expanding Roman Empire, because some Jews invited the Romans in to provide some protection from the invading Parthian Empire and to give some political stability among a divided Jewish populace. The rest is history, as it is said, as over the following decades the Romans increasingly asserted their own form of political control to the point where they ended up in a civil war with the entire Jewish population. The Romans destroyed the Great Temple in Jerusalem, as well as much of Jerusalem itself, enslaved and deported about half of the Jewish population, etc.
In their destructive romp across Judea and historic Israel, the Romans also unwittingly created two new powerful religions that would go on to shape the entire Western world, Rabbinic Judaism and Christianity, but this is a subject for another time. The key here is that the Jews invited in the Romans for their promised political stability, and ended up getting destroyed by them.
Is the same process now repeating itself in modern day Israel? Is America the new Rome about to politically occupy Israel? I ask because the same historic dynamics are playing out.
Consider the following facts:
- Hamas launched a massive and massively barbaric suicide raid on southern Israel that was destined to fail itself and destined to bring huge destruction down on Hamas and Gaza in response. It is self-defeating. Makes no sense.
- Neither Hizbullah nor Syria have opened up additional fronts, though they logically should
- Israeli security along the Gaza border was essentially a Ring Doorbell camera every hundred yards? Really?
- Contrary to Military Operations 101 since organized militaries began operating about five thousand years ago, no sentries, no sentinels, no guards, no watchmen were posted along any of the Israeli outposts along the Gaza border. Not one. As a result, the few IDF soldiers posted there were literally caught asleep in their underwear and gunned down as they scrambled out of their beds.
- Apparently, reportedly, Hamas has spent the past two years practicing their invasion and giddy child murders on a large mockup Israeli village. No one in Israel noticed this? No one in Israel thought this was strange, or a precursor or a warning?
- The Biden Administration just released Six Billion Dollars to Iran, for no good or logical reason, and to America’s serious detriment, which freed up Iran to spend their existing money on things like nuclear weapons aimed at America and arming Hamas and Hizbullah terrorists killing women and children in Israel (and probably coming to America soon through Joe Biden’s wide open southern border).
- Israel’s supposed “security failure” looks and smells and walks like an inside job by the security and military elites, who oppose Prime Minister Netanyahu’s popularism (just as the American elites and their pet security agencies like the CIA, FBI, DHS etc oppose President Donald Trump’s power-to-the-people popularism). Every day this supposed “failure” at Gaza appears more and more like an inside set-up of PM Netanyahu to blame him and turn the voters against him.
- Israel’s “security failure” at Gaza makes no sense on its face nor in hindsight. Israel can and usually does walk and chew gum at the same time. The IDF has always covered all three bases and Home Base simultaneously. Way way too many important parts of the Gaza security system failed all at the same time to be a mere coincidence. There has been no explanation for this failure, and indeed other than a deliberate act of self-sabotage and self sacrifice by Israel’s military and security elites (because of their power struggle with PM Netanyahu), there is no logical explanation.
- None of the senior officials responsible for Israel’s national security or for Gaza’s border have taken responsibility and resigned, as they normally would when committing such a monstrous failure in any other time. Hmmmmm, right?
- The defeat of Netanyahu and the elevation of America in Israel’s domestic politics would essentially place Barack Hussein Obama in charge of Israel’s next government.
- If in fact Hamas was allowed to go into southern Israel by Israel’s professional watchdogs, who are almost all Leftists loyal to the leftist elites, for basic domestic political purposes, it would be in keeping with the American Left’s practice of burning America to the ground in order to get and keep control of America. Examples of such treason in America include the 2020 “Summer of Love” Democrat Party violence, looting, burning, destruction of American cities, the allowed release of covid into the American populace by American health officials (Dr. Mengele Fauci) supposedly guarding us against such viruses, the deliberate destruction of law and order in many Democrat-controlled cities which has resulted in political and societal chaos in these same places, the suspension of electoral laws in 2020 that resulted in massive and brazen vote fraud in the most important swing states like PA, MI, AZ, GA, the continuing fraudulent and even illegal lawfare against President Donald Trump by the administrative state and Democrat politicians. I could go on, but we are on a time budget here. Looks like Israel just experienced her own “Summer of Love“.
So into this situation of Hamas possibly being goaded and sacrificed by Iran into its suicidal homicide attack sails the American navy. Into the Mediterranean Sea now comes a flotilla of American ships meant to buoy Israeli spirits and signal to American Jews that not only can the Democrat Party be occasionally trusted to help Israel, but today to actually save it. Recall that just weeks ago Joe Biden’s illogical payment of Six Billion Dollars to Iran signaled that the Democrat Party hates Israel and Jews and America because it is empowering their worst enemy, a nuclear powered Iran. Lots of “how the hell can any American Jew be a registered Democrat” arguments were resounding across American synagogues.
But now? We are shown that the Democrats actually looove Israel, and the actual savior of a democratic and secure Israel, PM Netanyahu, is cast as the bad guy who failed in Gaza.
Tell me this is not the beginning of the Roman Occupation of Israel Part Two. Nothing else makes sense to me.
And tell me this isn’t just too convenient of a relationship between the Biden Administration, which has spent the past three years destroying America, and a nuclear powered Iran, which was designated by Barack Hussein Obama to be the ultimate destroyer of America.
Americans, are you paying attention?
UPDATE: Yes, I am suggesting that the Biden/Obama Administration is working closely with Iran to remove PM Netanyahu, so Biden/Obama can install a puppet leader who will follow through on the failed Oslo Accords, implement a two-state “solution” and thereby gut and ultimately erase Israel as a sovereign nation, and certainly as a Jewish nation. Iran appears to be temporarily sacrificing Hamas and Gaza to achieve this goal, but they will certainly expect to get revenge on Israel’s Jews at some point in the future.
Is the Democrat Party just a big pedophilia group?
Serious question here: Why is the Democrat Party full of so many people who publicly want so badly to sexualize children? And why do grown adults truly want to sexualize children? It can’t possibly be legitimate, so what the hell is this about? Why are we even asking these questions in 2022, and what the hell happened to one of America’s great political parties that it has sunk this disgustingly low?
(Truth in advertising: I used to be a registered Democrat, and in the 1990s, when I no longer recognized the Democrat Party, I left it. This does not mean that I am committed to any other political party, at all.)
When we say “sexualize,” we mean introducing children, like tiny eeny weeny children, to human sexuality, which used to be a private matter reserved for parents at home. And not just human sexuality, like “the birds and the bees” reproduction basics, but all kinds of abnormal or minority/ “kinky” and even violent sexual practices, that are or should be strictly a private matter among consenting adults.
To be fair to these advocates of grooming children for pedophilia, I mean the “professional educators,” they say they are helping kids develop their sexual identity in a healthy way. So that young people can know their truest sexual self at the earliest possible age. These pedophiles, excuse me, educators, say that they are preventing children from becoming unhappy with themselves later in life. Inside every child is a bi-tri-homo-trans-sexual just screaming to claw itself out, they say.
And to all of that I say horeshit. It is absolute nonsense. Nowhere in the history of our species has so much emphasis been placed on sexual behavior as now, and for fifty or a hundred thousand years before all this grooming began, humans did just fine, but in order to make 1% of the population feel most comfortable with itself, we are supposed to sacrifice the other 99%.
The other humans who sacrificed their children were the pagans of the Middle East and Eastern Europe, and these practices are horrific and should never be tolerated. But I don’t think the sacrifice part of this thing is where it is at.
Historically, the age of innocence was a sacrosanct time in a child’s life when “Big Person” ideas and issues were not allowed in, so that children could just be children. Certain ideas like sex, violence, lies, manipulation, and other adult flaws were not allowed to children, for good reason. For a long time, adults in Western Civilization shielded children so they could grow into themselves without being bombarded by adult issues and challenges that will already arrive soon enough. Kids could have imaginary friends, carry teddy bears, talk to themselves, have tea parties with mud pies, and have many years of safe space to just be a kid before the cold realities of life began to trickle in to their awareness.
Civilizations that allowed children to be sexually exploited by adults were always considered barbaric. And yet, somehow, a significant part of America’s voter base is now fully on board with what is obviously pedophilia, in the guise of “education.” What other purpose could this aggressive sexualization of children be for than adults to eventually have sex with those children? It is like open sexual grooming, preparing children to be the subjects of pedophilia, as a plank in a political party’s platform.
Recent examples include Disney’s push to have a more aggressive LBQTABCDEFG agenda forced on children who enter into Disney’s grasp in movie theaters and theme parks, despite recent news reports of quite a few Disney employees being arrested for child molestation. No shame at Disney, apparently, because their CEO just attacked Florida governor Ron DeSantis over an anti-child-sexual exploitation law, the much mis-named “don’t say gay” BS. The Florida law is aimed precisely at preventing pedophiles from grooming children to become sex objects and zero to do with anyone being gay.
Child sex molester monster Jeffery Epstein and his mostly Democrat Party elite child molesting friends had an entire island dedicated to this illegal and revolting practice.
Public school teachers pushing child sex exploitation across America are openly defying taxpaying parents, school boards, and school administrations who are telling them to stop (when the administrators tell them to stop; usually they tell the teachers to keep going). This is not the behavior of an educator; it is the behavior of sex-crazed pedophile maniacs. And the teachers unions are predictably supporting these errant teachers (they are not educators).
And finally, the Democrat Party’s centerpiece, Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Jackson, whose long-term shocking leniency with convicted child sex predators can mean only one thing: She is personally quite OK with child molestation, child pornography, and the child predators who sexually exploit children.
Why aren’t rank and file registered Democrats speaking out about this problem? You know, something like a letter to the editor of East Succotash Newspaper: “Dear Editor, my name is John Doe, and I am a registered Democrat. While I do not support most conservative or Republican policies, I am concerned about the high level of support so many Democrat Party leaders and teachers unions have for sexualizing children. Sexualization of children is wrong, it is illegal in most civilized places, and something is wrong with a political party that makes this subject a focal point. I am unhappy about my Democrat Party going in this direction and I want it to stop.”
But guess what, you won’t see letters like this anywhere. I can’t tell if the registered Democrat Party voters are asleep at the wheel, or sheep-like lemmings that go wherever the party leaders wave them on, or do they actually agree with this crazy stuff?
If Democrats really want to challenge tiny children and get them to grow, eliminate their age of innocence, for the kids’ own interests, of course, then why not introduce them to economics and statistics at age five, so they can grow up into financially and fiscally literate and responsible adults?
If Democrats want to end the mis-use of firearms, and have safer schools, then why not have gun safety training in schools?
These are two legitimate policy subjects that could easily be incorporated into schools everywhere, and that would have tangible results right away. But nope, nothing doing. We just have teachers and school administrators obsessed with turning children into sex objects and props.
It is almost like the entire Democrat Party is just one big pedophilia and child pornography group, sad to say. Prove that this isn’t so. Anybody?
Anybody?
Anybody?
Right, I thought so, and I said so.
Update April 1, 2022: On afterthought, a political party or political movement that stands formally and officially for the killing of children after they are born, for the governmental crushing of individual liberty and dissent by coercively mandating unproven drug injections, for the government to steal children away from their families to be indoctrinated in government schools, for the allowance of pedophilia and child pornography, I could go on, but any political party or movement that stands for these things is really morally bankrupt. This is just pure evil. And for those of you who read this and roll your eyes, wake the hell up. This isn’t the Democrat Party of our youth or of JFK or of FDR. This is an authoritarian, anti-human, anti-freedom Democrat Party unworthy of having the word “democrat” in it. And if you are like me and you are revolted by this political party, you don’t have to join any other party. You can become an independent or a non-affiliated.
What the un-secret biolabs in Ukraine mean
Ukraine as a stand-alone independent nation is a fairly new thing, especially in its current (1990 to 2013, 2014 to 2022) form. Historically, some part of Ukraine was always part of Russia-proper, including Kiev and the Crimean Peninsula.
When Ukraine took leave of its forced partnership with Russia upon the dissolution of the old Soviet Union, it did so as a highly vulnerable, militarily and economically weak new state. Its long, squiggly, almost haphazardly drawn eastern border with Russia is for all intents and purposes indefensible, and was more of a statement about Russia’s temporary weakness than about what Ukraine actually was.
If not politically, in most other ways, Ukraine was fully or partially enmeshed and integrated with Russia from the 1500s until now. Linguistically, historically, culturally, not a whole lot separated the two nations, except maybe in the eastern Ukraine, which has had its own longstanding peasant cultural identity. Kiev in particular was always regarded as a Russian city, and aside from obvious military and symbolic purposes, it is for this reason that Russia is so aggressively trying to capture the capital.
And while Russia has been invading and fighting and capturing Ukraine over the past month, what did they encounter and take over but sophisticated laboratories. Special laboratories, doing things that ought not to be done according to international treaties. Like research into bio-weapons, germ warfare, etc. Very dangerous stuff. Very no-no stuff. Not stuff you want getting into the public view, and of course that is precisely where the Russians trotted it all out, in the United Nations and in front of international cameras.
At first the Biden Administration denied having anything to do with these labs. But that didn’t last long, because everything going on in the labs is by Americans using American equipment and stuff. United States fingerprints and hand prints and package labels are all over these labs, their workings, and their contents. Hence all the secrecy but no real deniability.
Eventually, last week, longtime Democrat Party insider Victoria Nuland confirmed the existence of the labs.
These labs are evidence that Ukraine has been a weak state from the beginning, and as such has drawn the attention of exploiters. It is not to say that Ukraine was a whore to the USA, but that weak Ukraine needed the USA’s protection to be able to resist Russia. And so Ukraine allowed certain no-no things to go on, like hidden, illegal bioweapon labs. These are the “quid-pro-quo” kind of things that Joe Biden spoke so plainly about several years ago when he openly bragged about getting the Ukrainian prosecutor fired for investigating Burisma, where Biden’s son Hunter received a huge corrupt salary.
In addition to secret labs, the exploiters also got their kids like Hunter Biden, Paul Pelosi, Jr. (Nancy Pelosi’s son), John Kerry’s kid, and Mitt Romney’s kid into corrupt businesses in Ukraine, all doing high paying, shady, usually illegal work that none of them were qualified to get or do. It was just the cost that Ukraine had to pay to get American protection from Russia.
And so is it any wonder that George Soros and other Democrats are all aflutter about stopping Russia’s invasion? What other embarrassing no-no things will be discovered in Ukraine by Russian forces, and then shown to the world for all to see?
Much has been made about the Nazi-like-lite AZOV Brigade fighting the Russians down in the Crimea and Mariupol, as though all Ukrainians hold racist, antisemitic views like the AZOV Brigade does or did (they probably do not). And much has been made about how Ukraine is a hidden cesspit of leftist and Democrat corruption, and on this count I think the accusation is not only demonstrated true by the evidence, we can see how it all happened.
A weak Ukraine allowed American military scientists like Dr. Mengele Anthony Fauci to use their soil to conduct illegal and immoral biological tests that would never stand public scrutiny (like how Fauci illegally funded the Chinese military lab in Wuhan with American taxpayer money). And then it was not far to go from there to certain wealthy American political families (Democrat and Republican) placing their useless and spoiled children into shady Ukrainian businesses as another form of payola AKA payoff AKA a protection racket.
This is the true meaning of America’s hidden labs in Ukraine. They were a beginning political entry point for a great deal of successive but unofficial political and financial penetration by American political elites. All of it illegal and immoral.
Ukraine is indeed a cesspit, and as much as the Ukrainian people never knew it and don’t deserve what is happening to them now, their situation just makes me wonder how much of America is being used this same way by our political elites – enriching our enemies at our expense, weakening American borders at our expense – and we have no idea that it is happening right here under our homes and driveways.
Heartbreak: Florida school is a “gun free zone”
My heart is broken about the school shooting in Florida.
As my heart goes in one direction, my mind goes in another. Here we go again, another shocking crime, another result of liberalism’s assault on American culture, a result of another stupid liberal policy rooted in feelings and not in careful adult-level planning.
Despite having been reported to police and FBI agents for months, this angry young man directed his violent thoughts against fellow students in Florida, using a gun to vent his feelings.
The school he targeted is yet another “gun free zone,” where not even the teachers are armed, but the bad guy is. Criminals break the law by definition, and criminals taking advantage of “gun free zones” know they have a free hand to do what they want.
Political correctness teaches that guns are “bad,” and that feelings should dominate everything, even trumping fact and logic. Here we have another classic example of how liberalism is just plain evil and bad for America.
Liberals, this shooting is on your heads, the childrens’ blood is on your hands, because liberal activist groups and teachers unions keep blocking good policies that will prevent these kinds of events from happening.
If you want to avoid this kind of school violence in the future, allow law enforcement agencies to do what they need to do with violent youths (liberal policies treat law enforcement as the bad guy and shield bad kids from being held accountable), so they can head off these problems at the pass. And let teachers and other professionals carry firearms in their places of work, so would-be bad guys know up front that there is a strong disincentive to attempt violence at schools, where they will be met head-on with fatal violence.
Anything else is a continuation of the same old failed liberal policies.
Then again, liberals have known how bad their policies are for a long time. Perhaps these children are being sacrificed in order to advance the tired old liberal gun control agenda?
A question and a wish
First the question. Is there a reasonable explanation for Brooklyn lawyer Dan Goldstein’s aggressive harassment of Donald Trump’s daughter yesterday?
After all, the young mother was sitting in a plane with her three kids, minding her own business. Bystanders credited her with being cool under fire, while Goldstein and his partner were escorted off the plane for their disruptive behavior
Goldstein’s partner, Matt Lasner, joked about it on Twitter, then deleted his Twitter account altogether.
What is it about two gay Jewish guys from New York that they have missed out on the meaning of life, the meaning of the holidays, and the joy that comes with treating people nicely?
These two guys are a minority of a minority of a minority. You’d think they would be the most sensitive to not bullying other people. They’re highly educated (which actually probably explains some of this event, given the low quality of most PC academia). They’re financially secure. Where did they leave their manners?
I have a theory: So many urban elites are so completely cut off from the rest of the populace that they really cannot relate, and their disdain simply pours out when they do make contact. After decades of indoctrination by academia and liberal activist media, these folks are so filled with acid hatred for others that they cannot control themselves. In short, they are bigots.
If you want evidence that liberalism is failing, this is a good example. If your beliefs cause you to behave in inhumane ways toward innocent people, then you have bad beliefs.
Dan Goldstein and Matt Lasner are most likely atheists, so it’s tough to say what their core beliefs are or could be. But they make their aggressive liberalism clear to everyone, and that includes being vile and disrespectful to moms with kids minding their own business.
Gentlemen, Daniel and Matthew, if I may be bold enough to call you gentlemen, maybe you can take a hint here for how to treat everyone you meet over the next week, if not your lifetime: Merry Christmas, happy Hanukkah, and have a wonderful New Year!
Comeuppance 101
If you run for US president on a platform of blaming the incumbent for everything, you just might find yourself in the same position some years later, with far less to show than that “failure” before you had.
Obama’s failure to create even a small international coalition to surgically remove Bashar Assad’s weapons of mass destruction is a result of his mistreatment of America’s key allies (Britain, France, Israel, Poland), his confused messages (pacifism vs. ‘red lines’ etc.), willingness to toss old friends overboard for whatever end…(Mubarak in Egypt), and his arrogant personality.
None of America’s former allies know if they can really trust Obama, and all of America’s avowed enemies believe he is a paper tiger.
Ye reap what ye sow….and more children in Syria will be gassed by Assad as a result. If this is Hope and Change, so be it. Most people call it disaster. It’s an expensive form of Comeuppance 101.
Happy Singing Russian-Chinese-Nazi American Children
Anyone who has seen the Goodby-Silverstein children’s chorus innocently singing away about how electing Romney will result in a destroyed planet, and how those same children already blame their parents, can only be reminded of the past use of children to attack parents in totalitarian societies.
Mao’s China, North Korea, the Soviet Union, and most infamously the Nazis, all used children’s choruses to both brainwash whole generations and also inculcate a loyalty to the big government that superseded family ties. That loyalty to government was used to break familial bonds and reinforce horrendous injustices by those governments.
Commentators have said for years that the Democratic Party had become the heir to both socialism and the totalitarian methods necessary for socialism to succeed. Over the years, I have come to that same conclusion, with some exceptions.
Watching these little children singing about hating their parents for voting for Romney sends chills up my spine. Here it is, right here on our American shores, kids raised in middle and upper income families, sending a message that the people who created and nourished them are Public Enemy Number One. If this is representative of the Democratic Party, then we are in for a true battle for the soul of America.
And piggy backing on that message is today’s Doonesbury (Gary Trudeau) political cartoon, saying that Romney will win by voter suppression, and voter fraud, and that riots will follow. Why this partisan activist continues to get published next to family cartoons is a testament to the mainstream media’s overwhelming political bias. Is there a right-wing equivalent to Doonesbury? No? Do you think that one would ever be published?
But if riots do happen, God forbid, will Liberals suddenly embrace the Second Amendment? Conservatives are generally a well-armed bunch, having spent the past fifty years voting for the Second Amendment both in the voting booth and with their wallets at gun stores. In a physical confrontation, I’d put my money on the gun, not the knife, or Gary Trudeau’s “Doonesbury” pen.
Love Sick, or Sick Love?
Love sick, or sick love?
© Josh First
July 21, 2010
Love is powerful, beautiful, a token of the highest commitment. And it can be dangerous when it makes us act dangerously or like we oughtta be committed to a looney bin. Love can be a powerful drug, is the 1970s aphorism, and as many of us learned in the 1970s, drugs are bad, because while they may feel euphoric for an hour, they also cause a loss of self control and resulting damage that lasts for years. Among kids, the casualties of lovesickness are typically minor, while lovesick adults can inflict real damage.
When I was a high school teen, I fell madly in love with a girl named Mardy. Love sick, I followed her around like a puppy, gave her some silver jewelry despite not getting back the same intense vibe, and forgave her every indiscretion, including when she broke up with me. Heartbroken but sick with love, I cluelessly figured she’d come around and we’d be blissfully married forever (thirty years later we now share photos of our families and joke about our own teenagers). I was blinded by love, and that blindness caused me to act against my own interests.
Love that so badly warps your judgment that your native, most elementary powers of reason and empathy become suspended is not beautiful. It unnecessarily puts you and others around you in harm’s way. For the seemingly insignificant trade-off of a few drops of happy-rainbows-sunshine-smiley faces dopamine in our brain, the love sick adults among us enter into or create situations that can or will result in our bodies pumping massive amounts of adrenaline as fear and anger course our veins. That’s not love sick, but a twisted, sick love. And mental sickness is to be avoided.
What I’m really talking about here are a lot of adult owners of large dogs.
What’s up with those folks with large dogs off their leash, roaming free, or walking or running up to people and barking, growling, gingerly sniffing us as if to bite, etc.?
Do the owners of these dogs really not realize that their sick love for their pet causes them to suspend their good judgment, unnecessarily put people at risk, and treat people in ways they themselves don’t like being treated? Following are two personal examples of how the sick love of pets has caused hard feelings, hard words, and close calls with enormous, potentially life-altering consequences. If these aren’t sufficient, there are plenty of press reports from around Harrisburg and the nation demonstrating this bad trend.
Last week, I walked to pick up my son from summer day camp. His drop-off\pick-up location is a couple of blocks from my home, and unless rain is pouring or time is short, walking there is a pleasant afternoon jaunt, usually with my wife. Next to the drop-off\pick-up location are some homes with a long metal fence running between them, along their common boundaries. As we were leaving with our sweaty, red-faced boy, with other little camper kids milling about all around us, a big German shepherd dog in an adjacent yard came roaring up to the fence, barking ferociously, hackles flaring, white spit flying, fangs bared. Three little boys on our side weren’t scared, but rather intrigued, and two of them went to put their hands through the fence to touch the dog. Ahhh, innocence in the face of danger. Leaping back towards the kids, I shooed them away while their counselor came and corralled them to another area.
When those little hands approached the big-enough holes in the chain link, the German shepherd turned its head and put its muzzle right up to the fence, still barking convulsively, ready to bite whatever came through. It was a moment that could have turned out badly. Can’t we just imagine the severe life-long damage to those inquisitive little hands from the impressively toothsome bite of an animal tough enough to serve as a four-legged cop?
No sooner had I shooed away the kids, than the dog’s owner appeared in the place of the dog, a woman in shorts and an orangy tank top, mid-fifties, arms crossed, staring, and old enough to know better to not do what came next.
“You talking about my dog?,” she asked. “Don’t you talk about my dog,” she demanded, before I could respond.
To which I responded, “You mean your big, ferocious dog that scared us?”
To which she responded, “There’s no way he’s going to climb that tall fence and bite you…and you have a problem…and you don’t talk about my dog that way…and I never…and…and…and… etc.” On and on she went, firing up her sense of indignation. She had a lot to say. She said a lot in volume, in an angry tone.
She was upset that we were frightened by her vicious dog, and she had launched into her own ironic harangue, a form of loud, aggressive human barking, yelling not-nice words, trying to engage me or any other adult nearby in a shouting match. Meanwhile, I was 100 feet away already. The lady had lost, suspended, or traded away her common sense. Her sick love for a dangerous, unpredictable animal had made her behave in a sick way, and place other people, little tiny kids, at risk.
Another related story from recent times, reported in the Patriot News, described a dad walking with his two small kids in their Uptown Harrisburg neighborhood on a Saturday morning when they were suddenly attacked by two unleashed, unprovoked pitbulls owned by an adult. In seconds the dogs were on the kids, and the dad tried to knock them back with his hands and feet. With his four-year-old son’s neck the repeated target of the larger dog’s gaping maw, and a second or two to stop the attack or watch his boy die, the dad pulled a gun and fired on instinct (he had a concealed carry permit). Several rapid shots later, fired within a foot of the struggling boy, the wounded dog limped off and its frightened companion joined it in retreat. Without the gun, the kids would have been dead or disfigured. Few enough legal, normal, people carry guns, and under typical conditions this story would usually have ended much differently, with great sorrow and loss. Thank God I was carrying my pistol that morning.
How did this attack happen? It happened because another man’s twisted idea of “love” for his dogs precluded him from “unfairly shackling” them with leashes and limiting their movements. Gosh, he just loves his dogs and wants them to run freely, go free happy dog; wheee. His reasoning must have been that he likes to move freely, and that, therefore, his dogs must, too, and it’s unfair to have them feel unhappy if he doesn’t like to be unhappy. Act on impulse, folks, do what you want, it’s the new American way. Even if other people are put at great risk. The dogs’ owner cared more for his dogs than he did for innocent humans; he cared less about the basic safety needs of humans than he cared about his dogs’ sense of mobility. His judgment had become warped by his shallow, sickly sweet, sappy feelings for his dogs.
And let’s not pretend that shallow sentimentalism is uncommon. Thanks to Liberalism, shallow sentimentalism appears to be a huge force in America, as well as the driving cause behind animal welfare activism and many regular dog owners’ defense of their animals’ indefensible behavior. Their anthropomorphism is the dominant feature of owning a potentially dangerous, animated, unpredictable animal, but hey, they enjoy spoiling Fido. Sure, pets in general and dogs in particular serve positive roles, etc. I know it well, because I grew up with large utilitarian dogs, as my parents sought for many years to protect a rare strain of Alaskan Malamute, and all our neighboring farms employed dogs as sentinels, too. I like dogs. But the benefits of pets and dogs are not the issue at hand, and the fact that many dog owners will still try to defend their own pet from these concerns is sure proof of just how sick this sick pet love has become. The dog owners don’t listen, they ignore leash laws and signs, they pretend that every person walking on the same sidewalk won’t mind being sniffed, licked, or touched by their mutt.
Every beach, park, or forest trail I walk on, I am almost guaranteed an encounter with a large, free-ranging dog or two, running out just ahead of their owners. “Awwww, my liddle sweet poochy poo would neeeever hurt anyone,” goes the typical canned line from these sickly sweet sentimentalists as their dogs bark at you, nose around your crotch, or cautiously sniff your leg during your otherwise serene walk. Sappy sentimentalism is not prevalent in these encounters, but rather, it is overpoweringly common among owners of large dogs. Nevertheless, dog bites in public venues remain common.
What psychologists would say, or do say about this childish escapism masquerading as love among otherwise functioning adults, normal people don’t know and they don’t care. Despite plenty of reported dog attacks in the press, and plenty of laws on the books to prevent dog attacks, lots of owners of large dogs continue to ignore or flout them and place everyone else around them at risk. It’s as selfish a behavior as can be found, and it has become a hallmark of modern America. Folks, you are not a dog, and your dog is not a person. Please help make the public venue safer by leashing, controlling, and muzzling your large dog.
Because begging and cajoling dog owners to be responsible citizens hasn’t worked (and we haven’t even raised the issue of many owners failing to clean up dog poop), here’s a list of recommended improvements to established laws that will shape the kind of public environment we deserve:
1) Criminalize any and all unsolicited touching of a human by a dog in public. No, dude, you would not want me to walk up and sniff, lick, or touch your wife while she’s walking down the sidewalk, and surprise, guess what, my wife is really unhappy that your dog did that to her. No harm, you say? Well, actually, your subjective opinion aside, it’s battery and emotional distress, and you would react differently if it were my pet tarantula that I decided to let walk on your neck just ‘cause I wanted to. It’s simple: Dogs and their owners have no right to intrude into people’s lives in public. Humans have the right-of-way.
2) Increase the size and legibility of dog licenses so they can be easily identified.
3) Increase fines for unlicensed dogs sufficient to make it impossible for dog owners to ignore licenses.
4) Zero tolerance for violent dogs. Any dog that, unprovoked, attacks a human in the public venue, and possibly in private, shall be immediately seized and euthanized, with the public bill paid by the dog’s owner.
There’s lots of other ways to get a better handle on this problem, but I’m an advocate for limited, common-sense laws. Let’s get these suggestions implemented first, and hopefully they’ll be so effective that the news will change from dog bites man to man bites dog, a rare and newsworthy occurrence, indeed.
Originally published by and licensed to www.rockthecapital.com, Copyright Josh First.