Every dog has its day...which is more than can be said for some American humanoids

WTF is wrong with American humanity when we lose our shit over Kristi Noem executing a dog but remain silent over year upon endless year of mass shootings?

I love dogs, which gives me at least one thing in common with otherwise normal, well-adjusted, compassionate human beings. Erin and I have one of our own—Magnus, a 12-year-old Chiweenie—who we treat like the son we never had because he is precisely that. We dote on him like we have few bipeds in our lives. We love Magnus with a depth and breadth of affection neither of us could’ve imagined before he came into our lives.

Dogs are love in its purest form, affection without agenda or demand. Few things can melt a well-adjusted person’s heart like a dog soulfully staring at them. Dogs don’t want anything FROM their people; they want to be with and love their people.

(Afternoon Nap With Mom: Magnus in Still-Life, 2024, Jack Cluth)

It’s not difficult to understand the relative place of dogs vis-a-vis human beings in our lives. So, like

John Pavlovitz

, I’m stunned at the outpouring of outrage over South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem’s story of the time she executed a dog because the poor little guy was doing dog things that pissed off Gov. Noem.

Yes, the story illustrates Gov. Noem’s gross hypocrisy and astonishing inhumanity. What she thought she could gain by telling the story is difficult to imagine. It’s a political and human miscalculation of the highest order that may imperil her political future.

We can only hope there’s a special place in Hell for her, one that involves her desperately trying to find cover as dogs ruthlessly fire upon her.

Gov. Noem has/had been short-listed as one of the favorites to be Agolf Shitler’s running mate in the 2024 Presidential election. How her epic stupidity might impact that is difficult to know. One could lose a lot of money trying to get inside Trumple Thinskin’s head and then interpret the crossed wires within.

But, as Pastor Pavlovitz ponders, there’s a much larger question in play here, and that would be

“WTF IS WRONG WITH US??? WHEN DID WE START VALUING DOGS OVER SENTIENT HUMAN LIFE???”

There’s been a rare bipartisan outpouring of outrage in response to South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem’s revelations in a forthcoming book, of her shooting and killing a 14-month old hunting dog: an act that she not only deemed innocuous enough to include, but one she actually manages to use as an example of her willing to do “unpleasant jobs.” In the terrifying world inside her head, Noem (a speculated Trump VP candidate) sees this as a noble act, something to engender kudos and hat tips from her rank-and-file. This isn’t surprising coming from someone who is in lock step with the NRA, both loudly supportive of it and generous funded by it.

As I gratefully watched Conservatives stepping outside of the usual lines of political tribalism to condemn Noem’s defiant, almost proud brutality against a defenseless animal—I couldn’t help but wonder why so many of them seem unable to be as emotionally burdened by the gun-related killings of so many innocent sentient human beings.

(Again, this isn’t meant to spark a debate re: the relative merits of canines vis-a-vis humans. That would be to miss my point entirely.)

For those of you in the studio audience who don’t worship at the altar of The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment © (And if you do, why are you still here? I’m only going to piss you off. Seriously.), please repeat rise and repeat after me:

ARE. YOU. FUCKING. KIDDING. ME?

Conservatives will lose their ever-loving righteous shit over Kristi Noem executing a dog for no good reason (duh; is there EVER a good reason?). Yet you won’t so much as emit a wet fart when Johnny “I’m Defending My Precious 2nd Amendment Rights” Bumblefuck strolls into a mall in East Bumfuck, Oklahoma during the Christmas season, unshoulders an AR-15 with a 357-round magazine, and carries out a bloodbath unlike anything this country has ever witnessed.

(image created using DALL-E3)

When the firing mercifully stops, and all that’s left is the screaming, the victims awash in blood, brain matter, and viscera scattered hither and yon, and the smell of cordite hanging in the air, the scope of the horror will reveal itself. Initial counts will show 245 people dead and hundreds more grievously wounded.

All Hail The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment ©. 'MeriKKKa!!!!

Meanwhile, Johnny “I’m Defending My Precious 2nd Amendment Rights” Bumblefuck will disappear in the chaos. Websites that worship serial killers will immediately lionize him and his “righteous accomplishment.” Copycats will begin to study and then spend years attempting to re-enact his “work.”

We don’t have to be so inundated with and desensitized by mass shootings that we lose the ability to be appropriately devastated by the wasteful loss of life here.

We can do something to course correct America’s disgraceful legacy of gun violence.

All we need to do is figure out how to make Conservative’s hearts break for human beings as much as dogs.

- Pastor John Pavlovitz

Police will eventually surround Bumblefuck in a rat-infested hovel in southern Arkansas next to the estate of Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders (R). He’ll die after an hours-long firefight live-streamed on every news network known to humanity.

In the interim, the death toll from the mall shooting will have risen to 734, and fans of mass shooters the world over will continue singing the praises of Johnny “I’m Defending My Precious 2nd Amendment Rights” Bumblefuck.

The National Rifle Association, having immediately gone silent in the aftermath of the massacre, will resurface 48 hours after the massacre to offer heartfelt “thoughts and prayers.” NRA spokesghouls will sternly caution that it’s too soon to rush to judgment and that any talk of common-sense gun control runs the risk of “politicizing” the issue.

So, yeah, Gov. Kristi Noem executed a dog…and the media and politicians on both sides of the aisle immediately lost their shit.

And so the band played on in the service of The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment ©.

Again, I ask

WTF IS WRONG WITH US???

The cognitive dissonance required to rightly rail against the assassination of a puppy, while simultaneously ignoring or explaining away the nearly daily mass shootings of mothers, spouses, brothers, children, and best friends here is a sick marvel to behold. In this case, far fewer Conservatives are rushing to blame the dog or to rationalize the reasons Noem was just defending herself or suffering from mental illness or somehow not culpable for her actions.

The sad irony, is that partisan Right media and Republican rhetoric have enabled their base to dehumanize another person to the point that their deaths resonate less than that of an animal’s.

This distorted reality field is where we are. Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes ©- walking, talking, mouth-breathing monuments to cognitive dissonance on an epic scale believe that The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment © is theirs and theirs alone.

Meanwhile, people with a heart and a functional moral center scream to the four winds about the injustice of executing a poor, innocent puppy when all Gov. Noem had to do was find another loving home for the poor dog.

Instead, Gov. Noem uses this story as an example of her willingness to “do the hard jobs,”…like kneeling before Donald Trump and doing his bidding.

Executing a puppy is reprehensible, the act of an inhuman, unthinking, and inconsiderate troll who lacks compassion and even the barest shred of human kindness…or, as you might know her, Kristi Noem, Goddess Queen of MAGA ©.

Sure, she can “do the hard jobs,” but can she show kindness to those in need? Can she (Door #1) embrace someone who lost a family member to senseless gun violence? Or (Door #2) is she going to, in not so many words, tell this person to “Suck it up, buttercup; it’s the cost of freedumb!” Something about the blood of patriots occasionally being required to water the Tree of Liberty.

Guess which door I’m going with??

I'm glad so many Republicans are rightly outraged by someone shooting a perfectly healthy dog. They should be. That gives me some small hope for our collective humanity in times when it is hard to come by.

Now, if they only could find the same visceral response to someone shooting
perfectly healthy school children, mall shoppers, worshippers, parade attendees, factory workers, and people just walking down the street.

Imagine the nation we could have.

Imagine how much safer we could be, how different our daily news might become, how many people’s lives would not be cut so tragically short.

It’s beautiful aspiration to become a place where killing with guns is universally grieved; to live in a nation where one of the greatest threats to young people is not our own collective apathy.

We could have such a place to call home.

We don’t have to live with this kind of sickeningly selective empathy.

We don’t have to live in a nation where an animal’s death is trending news but a dozen people’s murders barely get our attention.

Yes, we could have a place where Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © don’t define gun violence as the background noise of freedom and where “the greatest threat to young people is not our own collective apathy.”

We don’t have to live in a place where our collective “give-a-fuck” is broken, and no one cares about the threat of gun violence until their flesh and blood are being lowered into the ground and dirt shoveled onto their coffin.

(Yes, Gun Nuts are an actual thing.)

This sick reality reminds me of something I wrote nearly two years ago. Yes, it would appear we’ve learned- and are learning precisely- nothing.

Quelle surprise.

Gun ownership is not a “divine right,” and the 2nd Amendment is neither “sacrosanct” nor “inviolable.” Yet again, Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes have chosen to imbue the 2nd Amendment with meaning it neither contains nor was intended to have by the Founding Fathers. Sometimes, I have to wonder if Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes have even bothered to read the 2nd Amendment.

The idea that gun ownership is a “divine right” is absurd, a right Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes have conferred upon themselves. Such a right has no theological, moral, historical, OR legal basis

- Yours truly

I’ve long contended, with good reason, that the 2nd Amendment is the most poorly written and willfully misinterpreted 27 words in the English language.

That’s it…the whole thing—all 27 words of it. The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment © is deceptively simple…and so are those willing to manipulate and misinterpret it to their advantage.

It’s What Jesus Would Do ©, don’tchaknow?

Worst of all, it’s one run-on, unitary sentence. There’s no way to divorce any part of it from any other part unless you’re also trying to debate how many angels can fit on the head of a pin (or was it on a pinhead, which it’s easy to believe too many who misinterpret the Second Amendment are?).

The “right of the people to keep and bear arms” is not independent of the “well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state.”

The The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment © doesn’t say, nor does it imply anywhere in those 27 words that:

1. A citizen may possess any degree of lethal firepower their heart desires

2. Despite what Antonin Scalia once said, it doesn’t confer the right upon a citizen to possess a nuclear weapon if that gives them a woody.

3. Nor can they drop mortars into their neighbor’s backyard because their dog is pissing on their hydrangeas.

Despite all this, I never cease to be amazed at those otherwise “strict constructionists who magically cease to identify as such when the subject is The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment ©. Then the meaning of it becomes whatever connotation and convenience they may attribute to it, strict construction be damned.

I realize I’ve wandered off the reservation a bit, but I promise I’ll bring this all back around in a bit.

From my newsletter from two years ago:

In effect, Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes have placed themselves beyond any conversation by conferring upon themselves the “sacred” right to own guns. They’ve said that because owning guns is a right conferred upon them by God, it’s beyond the control and regulation of Man. Therefore, they can do what they wish, and in whatever form and format they choose. That this “right” is something Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes have invented for their own benefit is something they fail to acknowledge.

Anything that might intrude upon that in even the slightest fashion impinges upon the divine right of Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes- even though nothing in the 2nd Amendment’s 27 words confers that right upon anyone.

The late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia once opined that the 2nd Amendment was sufficiently broad to allow Americans to own a thermonuclear weapon if they were so inclined. Unfortunately, as learned as the late Justice may have been, absolutely nothing in the most willfully interpreted 27 words in the English language supports such an interpretation.

Yes, Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © have walled themselves off from the reality-based world to the point where they’re utterly apathetic about the victims of mass shootings…but willing to completely lose their shit over the execution of a dog.

Yes, I’m down with piling on Gov. Noem over her monstrous adventures with dog murder. Still, our collective outrage needs to be married with a concomitant outrage over the untold thousands of victims of mass shootings in America. It should start with resisting those Proudly Closed-minded Gun Control Foes © who piss on our heads about The Almighty, God-ordained, Holy, and Inviolate, May it ALWAYS Remain Thus 2nd Amendment ©…and then try to convince us that it’s raining.

No other country would allow this to become the norm. Yet we approach this horrific subject with a collective yawn…unless there’s a house pet involved.

WTF IS WRONG WITH US???

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