Eat What You Kill

I am not a hunter. I have never been hunting. That is important for me to preface this post with that statement, because I don't want you to be under the impression that I have a dog in the fight. I believe in big game hunting, under the right conditions. 

The liberal media and it's activist zealots will have you believe that every animal is sacred. I disagree. Unless you are a vegan, you eat or have eaten beef. Do you know where your beef comes from? Do you worry about the lives of those animals, or only the majestic animals that society deems are inappropriate for us to kill?

The hamburger you ate for dinner started out on a ranch. If he was in Texas or Arizona, some of his herd probably died from the heat. If he was in the more northern states, some of them froze to death instead. If they survived the temperatures, they were afforded the luxury of getting branded with a fire iron, getting their testicles ripped away, and their horns were cut or burned off. 

Once their beautiful life on the ranch has come to an end, they get sent to a feedlot. Feedlots are these wonderlands of pure enjoyment, where the cows frolic in the feces-filled holding pens and get chronic digestive problems from the foods they're given to fatten up. The air is always fresh with ammonia and methane due to the amount of manure. We give them drugs though, to keep them breathing.

These are the animals society has deemed it okay for us to eat. Not only that, these animals have to be raised in these conditions and fed to us in this manner if we don't all intend to hunt and we wish to sustain ourselves on meat. There are simply too many people with too high demand of beef for us to raise the amount of cows we need in a hospitable environment. However, there isn't a public outcry for the thousands of these cows every year that live an existence of torture and abuse. We instead focus on big game hunters who kill one lion in Africa and take a picture with it. 

First and foremost, the African lion is not endangered. That is a common misconception. The Obama administration has recently proposed listing the animal as threatened. If it is listed as threatened, it will still be legal to kill those lions even in America with the proper permits, but I'm not here to argue semantics. If it were to be listed as endangered or threatened and outlawed, of course I'm all for preservation of the species, but we aren't there yet. 

I don't believe in hunting these animals purely as a trophy. However, I do believe that as long as you eat the meat and it isn't illegal to hunt, I don't care what animal you kill. Why do we treat these predators as a majestic animal who deserve a more dignified death than the deer, cows, or pigs we kill regularly? I think the public has a delusion that the majority of the animals in the wild live a full life to begin with. While a bullet in the head is not the most humane way to go, the savage lifestyle of living as a free-range animal predominantly lends itself to dying either by starvation, weather conditions, or being eaten alive. They don't usually grow old and die like we assume. Darwinism is the most evident in these species. 

Celebrity Privacy

Over the last couple of months, there were two episodes of photos hacked from the ICloud servers and uploaded to sites like 4Chan and Reddit. To assholes like us, this event was known as “The Fappening”. People who always wanted to know what the 8 square inches still covered by Kate Upton’s bikini looked like had prayers answered. Other celebrities had private, mostly nude photos go public as well. Jennifer Lawrence. Kim Kardashian. Mary E. Winstead, Kirsten Dunst and many others had the curtain pulled back, revealing their most personal moments to the world. The victim’s reactions were varied. Some tried to laugh it off, while others have taken quick legal action and have called the viewing of the pictures a sex crime.

The main issue in question has been, is “because I can!” an acceptable reason to literally strip famous people naked in front of you? Because you see them on the big screen, does that make it cool to see as much of them as you want? That’s only the surface problem though. In reality, this situation is just a litmus test for how the Western world views it’s celebrities. If you look back from the early days of Hollywood through the eighties, you find a very different relationship between “us” and “them”. While the fascination with famous people has always been there, the public at large kept a civil distance. Celebs were respected for the work they did, but what they did behind closed doors was usually not public information. As time passed, the public has demanded more. First tabloids, and now the mainstream media, happily report every scrap of personal detail for consumption by the masses. For a celebrity, privacy has become almost impossible.

A good example of how things have changed is Rock Hudson. In the silver age of movies, he was one of the world’s biggest stars. The main “leading man” in romantic movies. He was also gay. Hollywood insiders knew that, and to a degree the public would hear rumors about it as well. Rock kept that part of his life private. He didn’t want to reveal it to the world, and was allowed to keep his secret. People would gossip about him a bit, but you’d never see someone on TV or in newspaper publicly discussing it. Now imagine if Rock was trying to do the same today. Sure, perceptions about homosexuality have changed, but if he didn’t want to come out of the closet, we’d probably drag him out. On road trips, athletes have often abused drugs and alcohol, and cheated on spouses. The reporters who were there in every hotel and on every plane ride knew all about it, but maintained that trust. They knew that what they players did on the field was public, but the rest didn’t have to be. Not so much these days.

As a society we have to examine how we view our stars. Do we feel that to give them fortune and our devotion, they have to give us everything? Is that the deal now?

As an asshole, I can admit that I like naked women. Porn is awesome too. But the difference is intent. If you see a Playboy photo or a naughty video that was SUPPOSED to be there, that means everyone involved is OK with that. The women I talked about above are gorgeous and I get the temptation to see it all.  But they never wanted you to. Should celebs in modern times maybe not trust cloud storage and make better choices about where to keep private images? Probably. Does that mistake give us the reason to look? If those pictures were of your sister, girlfriend or daughter you’d probably say no right? If they were yours, and suddenly they were everyone’s, you’d probably have some feelings about that. Keep that in mind the next time this happens, because it will. Keep that in mind the next time some article about someone you’ve heard of doing something that isn’t your business pops up on your facebook or twitter. Let people be people. Even the famous ones deserve that.