Yi yi yi... I came back to a thread I marked "unwatch." My position is unchanged.
I'm going to say only this much more, because it's all been said already, really. Ad nauseam. We will never agree, never, because we come from different initial, a prior assumptions. There is no common ground, save this:
Vegan or not, those who wish we'd stop harming/hurting animals have truly laudable motives. I strongly admire them for that, though not all vegans are motivated to get other people to also be vegan. Most of us get it. We love the nobility of your intentions. We take a knee to them in respect.
That's because neither of us wants to see animals suffer needlessly. Not when they're hunted. Not even as part of the meatpacking industry. All of us fight against that -- to a certain degree. You don't want them raised for meat at all. That's where we part ways. There is no further common ground and won't be.
And that's because we (us meat-eaters) love and embrace our role as predators and carnivores. And we do
not believe in a thing called "speciesism" nor give it any sort of validity. Take away that and... what else is there to obligate us against eating other creatures?
Speciesism has no weight with us as an argument. None at all. I might -- no slight intended -- even get a t-shirt proudly naming myself as a "speciest" by now. I will make it perfectly clear that I *do* consider human begins to be the superior animal on this planet. We just rule!
Again, no joke, not intending to be hurtful, but the arguments in here, at times, have actually made me drool for grilled animal flesh: pork and chicken and beef and bison and deer and rabbits and squirrels. Eating them is part of my heritage and my upbringing.
To me -- and those on "this side" of the argument -- eating animals is natural, healthy... primal. It fulfills a natural, healthy, and primal hunger in us. I love that I know how to field dress them cleanly, hide them, bone them, grind them. When I see cattle in the pasture, I see two things (some zoophiles see three). I see beautiful animals with gorgeous eyes. OMG! The beauty of freshly groomed cows waiting for judging at the county fair? Magnificent specimens! And in the field, peaceful creatures indulging themselves, grazing grasses of the prairie here.
Without a second thought, I can switch minds, can also see butter, cream, milk and cheese or smoked ribs, sizzling steaks and thick hamburgers on buns with onions and pickles and lettuce. A little salt and BAM! That flavor ... salivation, drooling, growling stomach.
I have no qualms whatsoever (and neither do my stock farmer friends or hunting buddies) about having a trained dog at my side in the hunting reserve next to its field, whom I dearly love and whose main joy in life is to hunt with me -- trying to find the pheasant or covey of quail or rabbit in hiding. Or simply watching him/her sitting next to me, hoping for leftovers as I grill farm-raised animals with a beer in one hand, long turner or fork in the other, enveloped in that marvelously fragrant, unctuous odor, hickory smoke or just... searing fat, hissing on the coals.
Period. That's it.
We (meat eaters) understand and nod to those who don't. And -- again, no offense intended -- it also sort of makes us smile and say, "Cool. More meat for
me."
Why? Why don't I share your conclusion, then, that I should give up killing animals for food?
I have a kind of need, I guess, never to lose that connection to my human ancestry. I know how to take an animal and turn it into meat. I love that connectedness to primal humans. The first time I felt the bright white fur of a whitetail in my hands with windchills at 40 below, how the blood rushed out and soaked my gloves, and tearing them off, how sinking my hands beneath her steaming entrails into her still liquid blood, warmed them. How I wanted to smear it on my cheeks and howl like a wolf at the rising moon!!! I remembered to thank her for *her* role on earth. She was prey, to be taken for food. I remember how she transformed from a gorgeous, living creature, who, to my surprise, still leaked milk from her teats -- into food.
I wanted to pass that onto my son. I was eager to do it, and I did. He hunts with me to this day.
Being on a farm as a kid, being a hunter yet today -- they keep that primal human part of me fresh. And I'm proud of it. I celebrate it.
My daughter, on the other hand -- you're going to like this -- is a vegan. And she renounces both hunting and eating animals purposely raised en masse for food. (Hard to believe she's *my* daughter?
) I had taken her hunting as a child. She LOVED the pre-season scouting. But lying next to me on a creek bank, iron sights of my muzzleloader dead set on a deer walking a trail straight for us, into an ambush -- an easy, certain kill -- she laid her little hand over my thumb and trigger finger, whispering, "No, daddy. Please don't shoot it." I uncocked the trigger, laid the gun aside, and whispered back, "Okay, honey." And we watched it walk right by us, never knowing we were lying there in the grass, and my daughter has spared its life.
Probably walked over to the other section where some guy shot it with his bow. Oh well. I still got one later that season.
Point is, I had no desire to make *her* do something she didn't want to do. I didn't stick it in her face.
And I don't *want* to do that to
you. While you're watching, no, I won't shoot it. But I also don't want you to think that when you're *not* there, I won't. I'm going to take a deer. And tonight, I'm going to eat meat. Again. And tomorrow, the same.
I love the tase of meat. And selfish as you've made that sound, I enjoy and embrace both my role as a conservationist *taking* life for my consumption as being a way to exercise good stewardship of life, AND of butchering meat raised for human consumption. *Humanely* and in good management of a protein resource.
You don't. That's where we part ways. That's... I have no objection to that. I was raised as a farm kid. Maybe you were, too? Maybe the things that bind me to my role as a predator are the very *same* things you've seen, but they put you off. You saw instead an obligation to avoid killing animals if you didn't *have to*.
I don't share that same objection to taking life. But I'm "past" being bewildered by it. I relish it. You don't. And I totally accept your desire not to cause any harm to animals, including harm involved in using them as food.
-- Until someone gets so motivated by their own set of assumptions leading them to be anti-meat that they seek to obligate us others to them, too, trying to take our carnivorous role on this planet away from the rest of us.
If that's too big a preemptive construct, then... well... it'll come down to a fight. You wouldn't want to go to the wall with it, would you. I mean, it's our side that has the guns and gas pits. If any vegan thinks of defending an animal's life by killing a human aggressor, um... we're going to win.
It may sound blunt or arrogant, but facts are facts. I don't really have an apology for it. If I did, I wouldn't really mean it. I am not ashamed of being a meat-eating creature. I'm PROUD of it. And I'm also letting you know I'm not trying to convince you to be a meat eater, let alone clap for me that I am. It's totally your choice not to do that.
And right now, my wife is coming home. So I must go put the chicken in the skillet. Just enough oil to get it crunchy on the outside without drying the meat too much.
We're having salad with it, if you want to share a meal with us. Lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes... You can skip the shredded cheddar and the blue cheese, and we understand you'll pass completely on the chicken. Instead of ice cream for dessert, we have fruit? You are welcome to it.
And even further -- if you can't stomach watching *us* eat chicken in front of you, then... come *after* supper. We'll have popcorn and wine with you as we watch Netflix movies.
There's room on the planet for both of our opinions, because, again, I have nothing against any vegan or certain vegans who are vegan because they want no personal connection to the death of animals. But the OP feared you guys were going to impose your values on us, and that that might cross the lines over to owning animals. While it doesn't seem too far a stretch for me, I really don't share his fears that you're going to take it *that* far, take our companion animals from us. But I do get antsy when I hear someone's going to try to obligate me to their vegan, "don't eat animals," values, which I don't share and never will because there is way too limited common ground for any argument. It's a matter of personal preference only. No argument possible here.
Peace out.