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I completely agree that puppy mills are an abomination.
If you really feel this way... why are you defending them? What is this whole post about? |
It's about your "enemy" not being demonized to the point that you have lost all perspective, become a zealot and lose the ability to coerce people to your side. Saying "puppy mills shouldn't exist" is like saying "factory farms shouldn't exist." We are a long way off from having enough people with the worldview that these things are wrong to do any significant damage to them. Most people (I'd even venture a lot of people here) have had a Big Mac knowing how terrible factory farm conditions are, or maybe bought a puppy from a "disreputable" source because it was an impulse buy or maybe better on their budget. But just because they have been enlightened that their past actions were bad does not give them the right to force others into that same experience. Awareness that other sentient beings than humans have fears and desires and emotional lives is something that does not come easily to people, because it inherently means that they must admit to ignorance or cruelty or both. The harder you try to force someone into a perspective shift like that, the harder they're going to resist.
That's why maintaining the fine line between education and emotional blackmail is very important. If you emotionally blackmail someone with your perspective, they won't trust you. And as an extension of that, they will not trust or believe in your opinion.
Puppy millers aren't Nazis, they're just people who have a very different perspective on animal rights/ethics than others do. There are lots and lots of people like this out there who don't treat animals as family or friends or even fellow sentient beings - rural families who don't fence their yards because if their dog gets run over, it's "just a dog" and they go to the flea market to get a new one; people who go around wearing fur who have no problem with how that fur was produced, people who leave their dogs behind when they get evicted, even if that dog has been in their family for several years. The Chinese view animals much differently than Westerners do. Dogs are pets, and food, and fur, all in the same package.
Would you eat your dog? How about if you were starving? At what point does the Western view of the dog shift back into objection? What is the mindshift between "companion" and "commodity"?
As far as puppy millers go, you can't make blanket judgements about a group of individuals, because there is no way that every person in that group fits your exaggerated version of who they are. When you do you immediately devalue your opinion in the eyes of people you are trying to get to agree with you, because you obviously have a bias.
THAT is the point.