I’ve never been able to square these attitudes with the way America functions. Do people just never think about how many of the people getting evicted, thrown into poverty, discriminated against and everything else also own dogs? Do they not think about how gearing the entire infrastructure towards highways also killed a ton of dogs? Or even that all these bombing campaigns kill a ton of pets along with the humans,. It’s fucked up to not value the people in the first place, but even the selective empathy is so hollow it throws me for a loop.
I was thinking about this with Glenn Greenwald’s post gloating about courts shooting down an effort to compensate black farmers that were discriminated against and then a moment later he’s complaining that nobody is taking care of all the shelter dogs. It’s like, what the fuck do you expect the end result of your politics to be? If the people are not taken care of why do you expect the animals to be?
Their selfishness means that they don’t care about actual Americans beyond their cliques, only “America” since they identify with it. By placing the value of American life over others, it reinforces their sense of superiority, while changing the in-group and out-group when back in America.
It’s similar to how white supremacists don’t give a shit about actual white people, just “whiteness” since it reflects them. Their love for the country is just rebranded narcissistic love.
