The dictatorship of the bleeding hearts!

I HATE THE ANIMAL ACTIVISTS BUT NOT ANIMALS (Massimo Fini) - English by Salvatore Ivan Italiano; © (2018). 

ANIMAL ACTIVISTS VADE RETRO. After the NIET for the Guggenheim Exhibition. Cats & Dogs – The dictatorship of the bleeding hearts!

I hate the animal activists but not the animals which would be good beasts if it were not for their owners. Following what Silvia D’Onghia wrote in the Italian newspaper Il Fatto Quotidiano (30th/9), the Guggenheim Museum of New York was forced to recall three of the works by Chinese conceptual artists considered by the animal activists as disrespectful and expressing cruelty towards animals.

The first to take to the streets was the president of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals – Ingrid Newkirk. Next followed imposing demonstrations by animal activists before the Guggenheim, the collection of signatures of protest to which more than 700,000 people subscribed, together with the routine social with, more or less, veiled threats. At the end, the Guggenheim Museum was obliged to concede to avoid further trouble (“We are concerned for the safety of our staff, for the visitors and for the artists themselves.”)

If this animal activist bleeding heart reasoning was to be followed, it would in the event be accepted that men and animals have equal dignity and rights – and the Isenheim altarpiece of Matthias Grünewald on display at the Unterlinden Museum at Colmar – should be chiseled away along with – and why not – the monastery for daring to harbour it. The Christ of Grünewald stands out against the darkest sky resembling a wall of black bricks.

The head slumps over the chest, the mouth is wide open and his cry has been frozen by death. His lips are flaccid and his complexion green and brown like the color and rigidity of a stone-dead lizard. A trickle of clotted blood is on his rib. This is the very image of human suffering caused by other men. It follows therefore that the “Dead Christ” of Mantegna lying on a mortuary slab together with the pierced St. Sebastian should be eradicated.

In the USA there are 163,000,000 cats and dogs which deplete (1) a quantity of meat sufficient to feed all the sub-Saharan countries. The expression ‘meat’ is intended to include the high-nutritive varieties such as the one in the advert (“Friskies” and company). Once upon a time, and not so long ago, cats and dogs were given the remains of dinners and lunches.

During the last fifty years, the world production of basic grains like rice, wheat, and maize have increased respectively by up to 30%, 40% and 50% including in the sub-Saharan countries. Nevertheless, the Africans together with other people in the Third World are starving to death. This reality is confirmed by the massive migrations that intimidate us. The issue is that in this global, integrated monetary and free-market economy food is not going where it is needed, rather to where there is money to buy it.

It goes to the pigs of the rich Americans and, generally, to the livestock of the industrialized countries if we accept as true that 66% of the world production of grain is destined for feeding the animals of the rich countries (data from the FAO).

The poor people of the Third World are forced to sell to the west-countries Beasts the very food that could feed them. In the Occident “shampoo and beauty products for dogs” are produced and sold and these animals are dressed, besides a few overcoats, with t-shirts, little hats, trench coats, suspenders, sheepskin ankle boots, and sunglasses.

In addition, their nails are varnished and their bodies sprayed with vanilla eau de toilette only to remove their canine smell. Not to be forgotten is the “Colour Highlight” for the hair streaked with pink, orange, blue, fuchsia and gold. They receive a massage in specialist centers and of course with essential oils together with clay compression and anti-stress vaporization. Furthermore, they are taken to the shrink for about $300 per session. Finally, there is a life-insurance policy in their favor for about 200 million Dollars or Euros.

Predigesting Ernest Hemingway in “Death in the Afternoon”: “I am persuaded, by experience and observation, that those who identify themselves with animals, that is those almost professionally enamored of dogs and other beasts, are capable of greater cruelty towards human beings than those who struggle to identify themselves with animals.”

(1) (Dr. Salvatore Ivan Italiano) edd.: We human beings tend to read into animal behavior our own familiar human motivations. A cat’s cuddling to obtain tactile pleasure we interpret as affection. A dog’s association of its source of food with its master we interpret as loyalty. An animal’s striving to receive attention from its master, plus the competition for that attention if it is not shared, we ascribe to jealousy. In this case, the verb “to deplete” has been intentionally applied to the consumption of food by animals as the English language is not as well equipped as the German language with a proper verb such as ‘fressen’ to differentiate the animals’ depletion of human resources from proper human nutrition.

Salvatore Ivan Italiano. Interkulturelle Kommunikation (DE/EN/FR/IT). Vorstandsassistent / Geschäfts-Führungsassistent. Verdolmetschung-Dienst-Begleitung. Juristische und belletristische Übersetzung. Internationale Kommunikation im Marketing & Vertrieb.