How not to hold the moral high ground

[trinityvixen]

Perhaps you've heard of James Dobson? He's a moral crusader. You know the type--the pseudo-friendly evangelist type that just wants to protect people from their worst impulses, like women working, that sort of thing. He's the sort of curmudgeonly old dude you can't believe is able to survive the daily affront to his delicate sensibilities that is a non-theocratic America.

I happen to reading about a blog post about a horrid abuse of power, wherein a mother asked the police to taser her 10 year old and they did, all because the girl didn't want to shower (!?). The post's author linked this sort of abuse to the kind that is generally encouraged by people like James Dobson. Whether or not you agree with the writer's premise that people who listen to Dobson and enthusiastically spank (if not outright whip) their kids are abusing them, regardless of whether you think spanking is a slippery slope towards having your kids tasered, I think we can all agree that James Dobson is a monster.

Why? Because he wrote this book, with this excerpt in it about how he BEAT HIS TINY DACHSHUND:
“When I told Sigmund to leave his warm seat and go to bed, he flattened his ears and slowly turned his head toward me. He deliberately braced himself by placing one paw on the edge of the furry lid, then hunched his shoulders, raised his lips to reveal the molars on both sides, and uttered his most threatening growl. That was Siggie’s way of saying. “Get lost!”

“I had seen this defiant mood before, and knew there was only one way to deal with it. The ONLY way to make Siggie obey is to threaten him with destruction. Nothing else works. I turned and went to my closet and got a small belt to help me “reason” with Mr. Freud.”

What developed next is impossible to describe. That tiny dog and I had the most vicious fight ever staged between man and beast. I fought him up one wall and down the other, with both of us scratching and clawing and growling and swinging the belt. I am embarrassed by the memory of the entire scene. Inch by inch I moved him toward the family room and his bed. As a final desperate maneuver, Siggie backed into the corner for one last snarling stand. I eventually got him to bed, only because I outweighed him 200 to 12!”

This is a grown man who took a belt to a dog the size of a loaf of bread because he felt that was the best way to discipline his dog. I wonder: if he'd had a pit bull or some equally tempered dog, would have been so "brave" as to try and take a strap to it?

Long story short: if you want to pretend that you're qualified for telling other people what behaviors are right or wrong, it is generally not a good idea to write--proudly, no less--about beating up your dog. You. Fucker.

Comments

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Animal abuse is one of the three indicators of possible future serial killer behavior. True facts.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I just...a Dachshund. The entire country got pissed off at some damned football player for having a dog fighting ring going with grown pit bulls. This guy hits a tiny dog with a belt and he's still allowed to traipse around in the guise of a good person. There is no justice.

I like your linking his behavior to sociopathy, though. I'm pretty sure anyone who doesn't think about people, only dogma (ouch, that pun) isn't really operating at a fully compassionate level.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm pretty sure it's an indicator of lack of empathy, not dogma. But one could be a cover for the other.

As my physics teacher used to say, there are three types of dogs: step on 'em dogs, kick 'em dogs, and leave 'em the hell alone dogs.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

There is one kind of dog, and that's the kind that I don't like but wouldn't necessarily want anything bad to happen to and which I will go from not caring about to tearing throats out over if something happens to it.

Okay, I lied, there are two types of dogs: one is the one I listed above, and two are those curly-haired white dogs that serve no purpose, look stupid, yap, smell, and are generally the worst kind of dog that ever existed bar none and should be sterilized so that it doesn't exist any more. But not, you'll note, abused in any way.

[ivy03.livejournal.com]

What, bichon frises? Those only exist because they're hypoallergenic. I am not a fan. My cousin had one, which is when I learned that if you drop a dog like you would drop a cat, they do not always land on their feet. (I'd never held a dog before, only cats--I didn't even think about the fact that the dog had to be lowered to the ground.)

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Hypoallergenic--bah! We should be sterilizing the allergic humans, too!

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

What about those repulsive looking ones that are aggressve and dangerous, I think they're pit bulls?

[arcane-the-sage.livejournal.com]

Don't forget dobermans! In all my years I've only seen 2 nice dobermans as compared with a dozen or so nice pit bulls.

[svilleficrecs.livejournal.com]

Jesus. Beating any dog is fucked up but beating a little weiner dog? How can you beat up a weiner dog?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I want to cry thinking about it because tiny little dog! If he's not moving, you move him, end of story. It's not like he was pissing on the rug or biting someone. It was just lazy. Lazy tiny dogs are not to be beaten. They're to be picked up, packed into dog versions of Baby Bjorns (http://www.babybjorn.com/en/American/products/Mobility/BABYBJORN-Baby-Carrier-Original/), and taken away.

If we stop feeling bad for beating dogs for James Dobson, can we stop feeling bad for beating old people, given that he's like 70-something?

[kent-allard-jr.livejournal.com]

One of the things that always infuriates me about these folks is that they sneer at Consequentialism and claim that "the ends never justify the means" and so forth. Fer crying out loud, what ELSE justifies beating your kid or you dog? Saying "Jesus wants me to beat my kids" seems, to me, just a matter of buck-passing.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

I can't believe people would take any advice from a person who thinks this is a funny story worth relating to the general public. Much less the advice on the subject from whence this excerpt came: raising your kids.

I can't believe this guy.

[saikogrrl.livejournal.com]

Also don't you have an RSPCA there and why haven't they taken his dog away?

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

We have an ASPCA. Something tells me no one sounded the alarm on this guy, a, and, b, he's probably recounting this awful anecdote safely out of range of having the dog removed because it had probably already died. The fucker.

[six-demon-bag.livejournal.com]

He's obviously mental and, thus, I'm willing to bet he would indeed have whipped his dog if it had been a pit bull. It's sad and scary that there are people like that out there.

[trinityvixen.livejournal.com]

Part me has to wonder about people who pick on the weak. 99.999% of the time, they're weak people who wouldn't dare pick on anyone they perceive as being capable of fighting back in any way. That's what makes them cowards in addition to monsters. So I'm not sure Dobson would be quite so quick to throw his weight around with a dog that might actually be able to get him back.

[six-demon-bag.livejournal.com]

OK, to clarify, I can see him abusing a pet pit bull UNTIL it fights back. I could see a guy like that thinking he's got to show it who's boss and then giving up when it attacks back. Even still, who knows what he'd do then. Say he stupidly (and cruelly) whips his hypothetical pet pit bull, Pitty (I've given him a name, and yes, it's a him) cowers and cries and whimpers at first, but finally decides to fight back and attack Dobson. If Dobson escapes without too much injury, I could see him taking it further and doing something like shooting the dog, thinking it's the only way and that Pitty brought it on himself...and that he had to do it to establish dominance. Not saying it would happen, just that I don't know how strong this guys convictions are.