March 27, 2014

That is good stuff. And very much needed.

Everyone saying they'd prefer wildlife to live safely in clean, expansive natural habitat is right. But we can't give them that right now.

What we can do is evolve our sensibilities and shift into a mode where we focus on protecting and rehabilitating species and educating people while treating captive animals as humanely as possible. We screwed things up for them -- the least we can do is try to reduce or even reverse the damage.

And I think conservation efforts are helped enormously when people are able to see and appreciate live animals. Not stuffed and mounted, not tortured in a circus or ill-treated in a cramped zoo, but managed by professionals whose first priorites are conservation, study, and proper treatment. Just seeing an animal being carefully looked after in a healthy environment reinforces the type of relationship we're all saying we're supposed to have with the rest of the natural world. People who have only seen animals on television or mounted in a museum may never feel the connection that leads them to value other species and want to fight to protect and preserve them.

There is a small nature conservancy near where I live. It's actually moved to a more spacious site that I have not yet seen, but in its original form, it was small and cramped. The animals were all rescued -- from highway accidents or from misguided owners of exotic "pets." The enclosures were simple cages, but they were clean, as large as the facility could manage, and lovingly equipped with all the comfort the under-funded staff could manage. The lemurs had hand-made hammocks and climbing wires. The Arctic Fox someone thought would be a good apartment pet had boxes to hide in and planks to climb. Every animal was healthy and energetic and happy to see the workers there. You could go and look for free, but they took donations. We went to help them with promotional photos for their website and custom credit cards that generated small donations with every purchase.

Had they been shut down, all of those animals would be dead, period. The brain-injured racoon who couldn't keep her balance in trees anymore, the one-eyed Horned Owl, the Sherman's Fox squirrel injured on the road, the bobcat, the panther. Lemurs, herons -- the West African Tortoise who would follow you around her giant pen hoping for a bit more lettuce. That fragrant Arctic Fox that looked a little like a cute puppy dog, but was a wild thing to the core. All abandoned or injured. All taken in and cared for relentlessly, no questions asked.

The people working there were straight-up animal lovers, nursing baby squirrels in their living rooms and scrambling for donations of food and material to keep things going. I've got to go out see their new place soon and see how they're doing.

March 26, 2014

I think "enslave" is a bit too anthropomorphic a term.

You keep using it, so I'm thinking it's central to your thoughts here. I don't think it's entirely applicable.

It's true we're still learning the extent of intelligence among other species, and there's no question there are great depths of emotion and familial ties and "culture" in a lot of species. And there's no question cruelty is wrong.

But the inhabitants of the ant farms and bat houses are not composing essays on their years of cruel imprisonment "against their will." Their psychologies, however dignified and meaningful, are not the same as ours. They do not necessarily perceive living in a human-created habitat as "enslavement" any more than they they think of killing a competing animal's offspring as "infanticide" or chasing a weaker creature away from a meal as "stealing."

I've heard people suggest that domestic animals like dogs and cats and cows are "enslaved" as well. Do you think that's true? Does the cat in the windowsill, or the dog running in the backyard, who would likely run away if given a choice, resent her confinement the way a person captured and shackled would?

I think we can empathize with our fellow creatures, and understand that cruel treatment is an evil unto itself, without taking the added step of imagining that every species we encounter is imbued with exactly the same concerns about self-determination and free will that we have.

Animal intelligence is alien to ours. We learn more all the time about the complex needs of various animals -- for space, for familial and friendly contact, for stimulation -- but we are not the *same.* All creatures do not share all of our sensibilities or moral or philosophical imaginings. They live closer to basic survival than we do. A goat in a pasture with good food and water is probably a pretty happy goat. A spider in a well-appointed terrarium or a fish in a spacious aquarium is probably living as good a life as it could want. And in many cases, the world we have left them outside the enclosure is likely far less benign. No one poaches a captive rhino for its horn.

An Orca in a 35-ft deep tank, cut off from familial ties and forced to breed and perform? No. Big cats confined to a few dozen square yards, or great apes in cages or small enclosures? We know better now.

But "enslavement" is probably not the issue. Enslavement is a concept for people, concerned with motivations and freedom of choice and a lot of other ideas specific to our culture and our psyche. We know things the animals do not. We impact the world in ways they do not. We are in a position to study and protect and conserve and educate, and have responsibilties that do not concern the other creatures around us.

Our job is to be more aware and more sensitive and to be better caretakers of the world than we have been. If that means elephants "confined" to hundreds of acres in Tennessee, or captive breeding of the last handfuls of great cats, or trying to understand just exactly HOW smart apes or cetaceans are through experimentation and study, we need to do that, and not confuse their reality or ours with ideas drawn from our specific way of experiencing the world.

We are animals ourselves, but we are unique in our impact on the rest. They may be better than us in a number of ways. But we don't do them any favors imagining they think and feel exactly as we do. We have to try to do right by our environment, and it's far too late to approach that job by not interfering at all.

March 8, 2014

I like Kornacki, Hayes, & Maddow. A lot.

They're speaking at a higher informational level than most of the talking heads, with varying levels of ideological discussion mixed in. I keep learning things -- real information -- watching them, which is incredibly refreshing compared to talking heads that just paddle around in the shallow water.

And they're also doing real journalism. Rachel brought the Virginia governor's corruption problems to the fore. Kornacki broke important chunks of Christie's bridge & Sandy shenanigans. I don't see anything from either the right, or from pure journalism, doing what they're doing in terms of informing, debunking, and to varying levels, arguing progressive viewpoints. Moyers, probably, but he's not on enough.

I think Matthews and O'Donnell bring too pure a political vibe, which can be tiresome, although they're good for to get an insider's view of politics.

But those other three are something special in my opinion, and they're a good mix. Kornacki's a real reporter, Hayes is a magazine-style writer / thinker with a relentlessly rational point of view, and Maddow is a brilliant broadcaster and polemicist who's great at pinning down and annihilating rightwing nonsense in a really satisfying way.

I worry that MSNBC doesn't know what they've got or isn't satisfied with the way ratings are building, dumbing down Kornacki with that silly gameshow and having Hayes beg for Facebook likes.

They've got a real halo building around the network with these three. No one else is pulling off this level of work. I hope MSNBC doesn't screw it up chasing people afraid of big words and bored by complicated "facts."

February 23, 2014

What they mean is they HATE HIM more than any President

... in history. Like their gibbering invective constitutes fact.

I often do not agree with this administration's policies. But he will be seen as an effective President, and one that -- look out -- enacted some positive "change." The ACA, improvements in gay rights at the federal level, the end of Iraq.

They're outraged because they weren't able to stuff him like they thought. Twice-elected, handily. Significant forward motion on health care reform. A more credible voice in the world community. A rejection of stupidity and belligerence as America's main public attributes. That great wave of "buyer's remorse" never materialized except inside their own minds.

And part of his legacy may also be the implosion of the Republican Party. They were so horrendous in their monolithic opposition, so juvenile in their sly racial dog-whistling. So impotent and destructive in their extortionate rage. They are now flailing about in a small, smelly box of their own construction.

February 4, 2014

The drone conceit would seem exactly the "permanent war footing"

Obama said he opposed in the SOTU speech. The entire logic is that the U.S. in in a permanent state of worldwide, borderless war with shifting groups of "militants" or "terrorists," determined by unaccountable processes, carried out in secret, and subject to no apparent repercussions.

It's Bush-era conceit, relying on the concept of "war" to enhance the power of the executive. Cheney's baby, rationalized by Woo and others cooperative White House lawyers, to deliberately distort the balance of powers contemplated in the Constitution for the purpose of creating a "unitary executive" or whatever they're calling it now.

This will be the ugliest part of Obama's legacy, eventually condemned here as it is already everywhere else as a crime against humanity and an usupportable assumption of worldwide authority on the part of the U.S. that neither we nor anyone else accept from any other country.

Whether the number of innocents killed so far is in the hundreds or thousands is largely beside the point. We don't have the right to do this. We do not have the authority to rain death down on whomever we see fit, on whatever basis we claim, anytime, and anywhere.

Moreover, it's not going to solve terrorism or protect the country. It doesn't matter whether we've annhilated one civilian village or wedding party or a hundred. Every Hellfire is guaranteed to produce more anti-American sentiment than it can ever hope to snuff out.

Obama is wrong on this. History will blame him, and us, we will spend a long time crawling our way back toward any kind of worldwide credibility as an aribter of humanitarian standards or the rules of war or the wrongness of extra-territorial aggression.

February 1, 2014

They've got a world-class crew going. Wonder if MSNBC knows it?

Kornacki's not as polished a broadcaster as the other two, and they've got him dumbing down (telling his panel they'll be fined for using big words) and clowning (that ridiculous gameshow disaster they keep putting on at the end). He's the best straight-up journalist of the the three though -- he gets and tracks information expertly. His reporting on the Christy debacle(s) have led the country.

Chris' style has become my favorite -- maybe because he's a long-form, magazine writer by training. He's a big-picture guy who can articulate all sides of an argument, and he's got a powerful, nuanced "take" on issues he can present reasonably but forcefully. He can get excited, but he never comes across as unreasonable. He's great at prying at others to get at what they know and contribute. He sometimes talks over my head on some bit of theory or process -- and I LOVE THAT -- there are so few shows in this news / commentary genre capable of teaching anything. Yet we hear him forced to beg for Facebook followers on a regular basis.

Rachel's the real broadcast star. She's an electric personality, and she's deliciously infuriating to the right wing. She's an advocate and a sly polemicist who coats her razor knives in a wink and chuckle that make them unassailable. Sometimes her intense delivery can be a little tiring, but she's brilliant and relentless. She never let up on "Governor ultrasound," who's now indicted. Her ratings must be the best, because no one seems to be making her screw around with the show chasing bored or ignorant viewers.

These three are building a halo around MSNBC that could elevate the entire enterprise. I keep hearing right-wingers desperately trying to draw a false equivalency to Fox, to dismiss them, but there's just no wild-eyed crazy talk, no race-baiting, no casual disregard for facts, science, or history. They are winning.

I just worry that MSNBC will dump them or mangle their shows for fear Americans can't handle intelligent discourse or the slightest bit of complex detail. Apparently someone at the network thinks Facebook "likes" and jazzy comedic bits are more valuable.

They've got a shot at changing the game here. Hope the network doesn't blow it.