"The true measure of any society can be found in how it treats its most vulnerable members." -Gandhi.
How will the US be judged by future historians? Under capitalism, workers only have value insofar as they produce for the bourgeoisie. Those who cannot produce are consigned to meager handouts, disparagement, oblivion. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander: in turn, when the dollar empire passes, there will be little for the future to find of value in the present-day US.
Humans without money are vulnerable and treated shabbily by the bourgeoisie as a problem to be managed, like complaints about homeless smell in San Francisco.
The most vulnerable though are nonhuman persons tortured and slaughtered in industrial factory farms, whose horrors are well-documented. That’s only the iceberg tip. Next time #NationalDogDay or #InternationalCatDay trends on Twitter, take a moment to think of corporations’ and academics’ exploitation of dogs, cats and rabbits for excruciating experiments that are completely trivial, even useless, and are just as abusive as the practices in Asia that have produced so much moral indignation in Western media. These dogs are frequently bred into life for the sole purpose of being laboratory objects, and spend their entire, often short, existence locked in a small cage, subjected to procedures that impose extreme pain and suffering. “According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s aptly named the Animal Usage report, 60,979 dogs were used in the U.S. for experimentation in 2016 alone. The reported number of all animals used for experimentation, whose reporting was required, was 820,812. Often, the experimentation has nothing to do with medical research, but rather trivial commercial interests, and in almost all cases, dogs provide little to no unique scientific value.” (Intercept)
Bourgeois drama often focuses on the unique individual horror killer or serial murderer, but ignores the mass torture and slaughter occurring every day among the least vulnerable.
Dogs are reputed to be ‘man’s best friend.’ With best friend like these, who needs enemies?
Notes
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/san-francisco-fed-up-with-dirty-smelly-streets/
https://theintercept.com/2018/05/17/inside-the-barbaric-u-s-industry-of-dog-experimentation/