by Noah
A thought for today: Washington is a sanctuary city for serial killers.
I wasn't going to do more than one post about Kristi Noem's psychotic animal cruelty but, she's doubled down on what she's done to that poor dog (not to mention a goat) so I feel I should double down on her. No doubt there are more instances of her cruelty but, with republicans, cruelty really is the point and they continuously devise new ways to express and reveal it. "Ted" Cruz paraded through the airport on his way to Cancun after leaving the family dog in a freezing house. Greg Abbott boasts of putting miles of razor wire in the Rio Grande and, in Washington, so many Senators and Congresscretins run to the cameras and microphones in a race to be the first to express how cruel and inhumane a particular piece of legislation they sponsor will be. Whether or not they do it for the bribes, they do it with pride. Whether it's their outright encouragement of our corporations to dump the worst carcinogenic
material they have into our rivers. lakes and wells, striving to make women die of sepsis again, or putting bigger and more powerful weaponry into the hands of fellow sociopaths, to them, it is some sort of Olympic sadism competition and they all crave the gold medal. None of these have a shred of decency and you always wonder who will be the next face of that. Well, pride of South Dakota, governor Kristi Noem, who aspires to live in Washington as VP or President one day, is the latest one and I guess she really would make a great Cruella De Vil. She even claims to be proud of her actions. The only question now is who will introduce her as she strides to the podium to wind up the crowd at this year's Republican Convention. She'll be wearing a bloody paw print dress.
What you see below has been making the rounds on the internet. It comes from a dog rescue Facebook site called Eskies Online. I thought it worthy of quoting here.
Requiem for Cricket
Twenty-six years of Dog Rescue work has sharpened the lens through which I view Humanity. As I get older, I have less to say to folks who are apathetic toward dogs, and much to say about dogs to those who share my Canine bewitchment.
Within the “Dog World” there is a wide spectrum of Human Behavior. At one end of this spectrum is the rescuer, who will mortgage her house and max out every credit card to pay for a perinea hernia repair in a German Shepherd, (Let’s call him Sergio). At the spectrum's opposite end, is the "Dog Lover" who drags her “hated” and “untrainable” hunting dog (let’s call her Cricket) to a gravel pit and shoots her in the face, then describes the horror as a badge of honor in a self-serving memoir.
How do such wildly divergent Human values develop? Certainly a case can be made that our environment shapes our perspectives, but don’t underestimate the influence of a random encounter with Walt Disney.
I was six years old when my Mother, Berenice, unwittingly facilitated the trauma. In 1961, she took me to see Disney’s 101 Dalmatians at the Drive-In. Oh sure, the big screen animated feature had its fair share of giggles. Who couldn't love Pongo, Old Towser, The Colonel and the epic Sgt. Tibbs, who facilitated the “Twilight Bark?”
Reality skewered my heart when Cruella de Vil’s henchmen set out to shoot 101 Dalmatian puppies in their heads. That is alot for a six year old to process. As much as I love Disney, I cannot bring myself to watch the original or live action version of that classic film again.
A random moment in film history cemented my perspective, and I was determined to become one of the good guys in Dog World. As I look around our house and property, I see nearly 100 displaced souls. I know their stories and hold their trauma in my heart. Often I feel like that six year old kid crying into her popcorn.
Luck plays a pivotal role in a Dog’s life. The luckiest dogs are nurtured by good breeders and find their way into families in which they are treasured for the duration of their lives. Bum Luck dogs wind up in shelters or rescue groups with a 50/50 shot at a second chance for rebuilt lives.
No luck dogs end their short lives as victims of neglect and abuse, or worse, in a gravel pit gunned down by the Governor of South Dakota.
May her Engagement with Karma be swift.
RIP Cricket.
By the way, most serial killers have a history of animal cruelty in their past before they graduate to human cruelty. Kristi Noem should never be allowed anywhere near the White House, Congress, or the Supreme Court. Their quotas are usually pretty full anyway.
To which I will add that there appears to be far more cruelty than 20 years ago.