3 at once because "they were old".... not sick, just kinda old. Calling them "family members" just makes it weirder.
[April 30, 2024] AP: Politicians and dog experts vilify South Dakota governor after she writes about killing her dog
- Thread starter MDCrabCakeFan86
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3 at once because "they were old".... not sick, just kinda old. Calling them "family members" just makes it weirder.
The specific concept of "Man's Best Friend" goes back to at least the 1700s, and the special relationship between humans and dogs more broadly into antiquity.
People didn't start loving their dogs because of a very specific moment in American racism, even in this place that's a level of Amerocentrism I find honestly baffling.
While the exact relationship has changed over the millennia, people have loved their dogs since before the USA existed. Not everything is about your Civil Rights Act or American racial politics.
From the OP:
"But South Dakota Democratic Senate Minority Leader Reynold Nesiba considered the disclosure more calculated than stupid. He said the story has circulated for years among lawmakers that Noem killed a dog in a "fit of anger" and that there were witnesses. He speculated that it was coming out now because Noem is being vetted as a candidate for vice president.
"She knew that this was a political vulnerability, and she needed to put it out there, before it came up in some other venue," he said. "Why else would she write about it?""
So preventive damage control
And again, you're conflating adoration with the distinct humanization that I'm referring to.
And as we're in a topic about a US politician and how they treat animals, the US public response to that based on how they treat animals, and my US black ass response to that based on how US black people are less humanized than said animals, the context in my post and the context that caused me to post in the first place is about my Civil Rights Act and American racial politics.
Cats were literally considered gods in ancient Egypt and they depicted them as humanized beings. Pet humanization goes back a long, long way.
That's not to minimize that people in many cases care more about animals than minority groups but it seems like you're conflating that with a frankly ridiculous claim that you heard on Tik Tok.
If this extraordinary claim was accompanied by extraordinary evidence, my apologies but it doesn't sound like it was.
There are a lot of countries that didn't have a Civil Rights Act moment and still have these humanised relationships with family pets.I don't know Christina Brown, but I'm not sure that the TikTok is a good framing here.
No argument with the general point though. I'm a Brit and we like our dogs WAY more than other people and openly admit to it.
Edit: I guess this is a thread about American racism and pet attitudes though, so I'm sure that you are correct in the context of American civil rights and attitudes to companion animals. Don't want in any way to minimise or reduce the point you are making in a US context.
I would argue that having burial rites and writing funerial epitaphs (which are shown in both articles) for dogs and cats is a strong indicator of humanization as neither of those things carry any import to these animals. Thus treating animals like a human and not like an animal.
And importantly, none of what I am saying is refuting your bolded.
But to say that humanization of pets like dogs and cats is something that is a recent trend is simply incorrect.
TIL that the civil rights movement in the US shaped how literally every other single country on Earth interacts with their dogs. Incredible reach to be fair.
Someone go find me some research on some old and ancient society revolving around people putting their dogs in human clothes, cradling their dog as if it was infant all over the place, and sitting them down for the family oil painting, and I'll reconsider.
Like, why is the civilization that deified cats come into play with humanization? Especially in a modern context?
Like, why is the civilization that deified cats come into play with humanization? Especially in a modern context?
Cats and Dogs Dressed as People, 100 Years Ago
www.theatlantic.com
I'm confused why you're asking for research on ancient societies but then say you only want a modern context. But here's pictures from the library of congress of people humanizing pets pre civil rights in the early 1900s so already whatever you cited on TikTok seems kinda off base
Why are you citing some rando tiktok you don't even remember the actual source of and then expecting other people to find evidence to disprove it? Somehow I doubt the tiktok in question provided any compelling evidence.
Egypt would put decorative collars that would depict moments of the dogs life.
I'd sleep with a gun under my pillow if I was a part of that family.
Fucking WHAT
I don't believe the "fact" for a moment, but I'd definitely believe that certain people would absolutely believe it, and use it as an excuse as to why it's okay to shoot dogs.
It's definitely changed in my lifetime significantly. I mean people loved their dogs growing up but it was different. I don't remember the massive amounts of accessories and other stuff sold for them. I had to spend 6 months in St Pete Florida in 2022 and I was blown away. People bringing their dogs in to drug stores and everywhere else. Every restaurant having an option for your dog. People talking online about they would save their dog before a human.
It's weird to me. I was in St Pete for a family medical emergency but I would not have been shocked to be in a movie theater and see people with little dogs on their lap or something.
I'm not trying to be anti pet or dog but it's personally strange to me.
Edit: just to be clear I wasn't talking about service dogs.
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I don't know. Unless thye had explicit proof, it seems safer to just let it come out, day you had to put a dog down but it wasn't in anger. Then, acting offended, turn around and accuse them of blowing it out of proportion and calling.you am animal hater.
Coming.out and saying ' I shot my own dog cause I'm an asshole' so there's literally no doubt what you did seems more damaging.
Famous war monger and mass murderer Alexander the Great founded an entire city named after his horse after it died.
If that doesn't count as humanizing an animal, I don't know what does.
For what it's worth all those things happen in Brazil just the same. It's especially common (in my city at least) to see dogs in shoes because the floor is hot.
LMAO at AP describing criticism as "vilification". She's the one who wrote that she got mad at her dog then shot him and along with an old goat because that goat was just at the wrong place at the wrong time. "Welp. I'm shooting my dog. Might as well shoot my goat as well." Article is more nuanced but the title is clickbait.
My dude saw someone come up with a crackpot theory on the fly *WITH XFILES MUSIC PLAYING IN THE BACKGROUND* and decided this is science lol
yea I don't understand this part of it tbh
she vilified herself by bragging about this in a book
To the little meta debate here, which is way more interesting to me than this ghoul from South Dakota, modern society certainly humanizes and deifies animals way, way, way less than ancient or pre-columbian societies do/did. On our own continent in the US, people were named after animals frequently, not the other way around. Many cultures around the world, not even ancient ones, existing cultures today literally worship certain animals, in our own backyard ... the buffalo, on the other side of the planet, the cow. Like... extreme revere for animals over people, even domesticated animals, is not some modern thing. If anything, post-columbian European or American society, and especially industrialized American or European society, reveres animals far less than our predecessors. Tying it back to South Dakota, the biggest city in SOuth Dakota is Sioux City, named after the Big Sioux river, named after the french translation of the Ojibwe word for "little snake," which was applied to the Sioux people (who referred to themselves as Lakota/Dakota, friend).
In terms of humanizing animals, we're not even talking ancient Egypt, we're talking American people, a major part of culture and tradition in the ... very state we're talking about South Dakota is named after the Lakota/Dakota people, who have a foundational believe in anthropomorphizing animals in religious faith, I'm not even any sort of expert or even anything beyond casual observance of native american culture, it's just like so obvious that not being aware of it is a major blindspot.
That said, I'm not really into putting dogs above people. Dogs are dogs to me, pets are pets. I'm sad when my dog died, but yknow, he was my dog, not my child. My dog died, I was sad, I miss him, he was my buddy. My child dies ... I'm not long for this world. I do kinda think modern American society has become so pet obsessed partially because we've become less and less able to have empathy and find common ground or coexistence with other people, we're driven apart by our perceived, genuine, or embellished differences, and so we form tighter bonds with our domesticated pet animals to fill that void... The animal is a canvas that we can paint our own emotions and beliefs onto, in ways that we can't do to other people. We tend to judge each other by our outcomes and them impress bad intentions on that outcome, and we tend not to do that to animals because we rightly kinda understand that they don't really have a concept of "intention" most of the time. If my wife drank the last of our coffee and didn't tell me to buy more and I found out in the morning when I'm headed to work, I'd be pissed, and I'd wrongly kinda think she's so thoughtless for selfishly drinking the last of the coffee without telling me to get more; if my dog ate the last of our ... bread ... that I left out, I'd mostly blame myself for leaving it in a place that he can get it, rather than blame him for having thoughtless intentions. At the same time, though, when my dog succumbed to epilepsy and went into basically epileptic stroke last fall, there was only one decision for me to make, take him to the vet to be put to sleep; if another person who I cared for went into an epileptic episode I'd move heaven and earth for them.
In terms of humanizing animals, we're not even talking ancient Egypt, we're talking American people, a major part of culture and tradition in the ... very state we're talking about South Dakota is named after the Lakota/Dakota people, who have a foundational believe in anthropomorphizing animals in religious faith, I'm not even any sort of expert or even anything beyond casual observance of native american culture, it's just like so obvious that not being aware of it is a major blindspot.
That said, I'm not really into putting dogs above people. Dogs are dogs to me, pets are pets. I'm sad when my dog died, but yknow, he was my dog, not my child. My dog died, I was sad, I miss him, he was my buddy. My child dies ... I'm not long for this world. I do kinda think modern American society has become so pet obsessed partially because we've become less and less able to have empathy and find common ground or coexistence with other people, we're driven apart by our perceived, genuine, or embellished differences, and so we form tighter bonds with our domesticated pet animals to fill that void... The animal is a canvas that we can paint our own emotions and beliefs onto, in ways that we can't do to other people. We tend to judge each other by our outcomes and them impress bad intentions on that outcome, and we tend not to do that to animals because we rightly kinda understand that they don't really have a concept of "intention" most of the time. If my wife drank the last of our coffee and didn't tell me to buy more and I found out in the morning when I'm headed to work, I'd be pissed, and I'd wrongly kinda think she's so thoughtless for selfishly drinking the last of the coffee without telling me to get more; if my dog ate the last of our ... bread ... that I left out, I'd mostly blame myself for leaving it in a place that he can get it, rather than blame him for having thoughtless intentions. At the same time, though, when my dog succumbed to epilepsy and went into basically epileptic stroke last fall, there was only one decision for me to make, take him to the vet to be put to sleep; if another person who I cared for went into an epileptic episode I'd move heaven and earth for them.
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She also killed 3 horses at once. She hates animals but for some reason keeps getting more of them
She keeps getting them because she likes killing them. Power over another living thing, that she can kill, and it's not illegal. Insane behavior.
I don't think the argument here is that human society never revered animals or depicted them in a deific fashion until now. It's that the way we treat our actual pets is more anthropomorphized than it was before, and furthermore that this humanization takes on interesting contexts when compared to just how little regard we can hold for other humans, even if we ostensibly say that we're totally for human rights across the board. Granted, we live in different and interesting times; I imagine if we had the flow of wealth we do today, who knows, maybe even Indigenous people thousands of years ago would also be dressing up their dogs in coats and calling them their literal children too.
I think a big reason the humanization or even infantilization of dogs has ramped up so much in recent decades is simply due to the declining birth rates. People are having less kids, and at older ages. I think a lot of people's parental instincts just need an outlet absent kids of their own. Also I don't think white people need to humanize dogs to treat minorities worse. They seem perfectly capable of treating dogs like animals, and still liking them more than minorities.
I can understand that to some degree but tying it to Civil Rights and, from what I was seeing, saying that pets became replacement brown people is a pretty insane extra step.
I think it goes to show what wildness you can come up with if you put on blinders and focus on only a single point of historical context. Because what else happened in that era? Disney became huge with a bunch of increasingly anthropomorphized animals.
I couldn't find the study they were talking about itself but according to this article in the 60s names became more *gendered* not necessarily human although that was happening as well:
Dog Naming Trends Through the Ages
Looking for a name for a new pup? From Nosewise to Bella, here's what people have called their dogs through history.
www.mentalfloss.com
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People humanizing their pets is in no way or form a recent occurrence. Not even remotely. There are records of people memorializing their dogs just as they would family members as far back as ancient Greece and Rome. Examples include people referring to their pets as foster children, which is only slightly less twee than saying fur babies.
www.thedodo.com
9 Touching Epitaphs Ancient Greeks And Romans Wrote For Their Deceased Dogs
The Dodo serves up emotionally and visually compelling, highly sharable animal-related stories and videos to help make caring about animals a viral cause.
People have always been people. People have always humanized animals, lol. Tiktok isnt a news source. You can go into any medieval book and see drawings of animals as people doing people things. I'm sure they gave their horses personalities while riding them and loved them as much as we love out pets today.
She's a political version of those psychopaths at a "management"/authority level that we've all come across at one point or another.. the ones who like to pretend that doing the easiest, most short-sighted, least empathetic thing possible, is "making the hard decisions" and is somehow a skill entirely unique to themselves. No, your "unique skill" is shamelessly pretending that you find it difficult, because you have no qualms about lying and no cares about other living beings.
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How fucking upside down does your logic have to be to think I shot Old Yeller without rabies was a way to demonstrate your leadership style? What a sick twist.
Sociopathy and psychopathy are planks of the Republican party and people need to start waking up to this idea and focusing on that because it is very, very dangerous. It's truly bizarre to me how it is just right there in front of everyone's face and no one is talking about it.
Better wake up America.
Sociopathy and psychopathy are planks of the Republican party and people need to start waking up to this idea and focusing on that because it is very, very dangerous. It's truly bizarre to me how it is just right there in front of everyone's face and no one is talking about it.
Better wake up America.
People in general care more about dog's than people. It's because they are largely good in nature and are innocent. People aren't. Being adorable doesn't hurt and as I believe you said in a recent post, we don't deserve them.
I'd be more inclined to believe that someone on TikTok is selling the divide more than anything else. It's one of the things the algo craves above all else and keeps them relevant.
I would be unwilling to say that as a general practice considering the amount of abused and abandoned dogs we have, and dogs that are euthanized every year because no one wants them. (I'm also not willing to let the people who would sacrifice humans for a dog off the hook by normalizing the belief lol)
I also disagree on a moral level. As with any animal, I don't consider dogs as "good" from a moral sense. They lack the intelligence and the context to operate from an ethical lens. They just are. So while humans do have the capacity for bad, they also have the capacity for good as well, far beyond any dog. So I put humans over dogs by default and thus don't get the readiness of allies to sacrifice those they deem unworthy for an animal.
There's very few human beings that I'd prioritize over my dog.
Many of us care and love our pets like if they were family, this should be obvious.
Many of us care and love our pets like if they were family, this should be obvious.
Who among us doesn't kill their family members when they get old?
It's a shame this didn't come out after Trump had chosen her as his VP. It'll be easy for them to act like she was never an option.
"They raised my girls...just glad that the gravel pit retirement home was there when we needed it"
It's funny seeing how out of touch this Hagraven is that she didn't think twice about adding the puppy slaying anecdote in her bound together collection of toilet paper she calls a biography.
Glad to see everyone hate her.
Glad to see everyone hate her.
View: https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1785850478011564321
Noem: Well, you know, how the fake news works. They leave out some or most of the facts.. I hope people buy the book and they find out the truth of the story because the truth is that this was a working dog and it was not a puppy,
View: https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1785851590143881650
Noem: This was a tough situation but that's what happens in rural America
