3 ms·

Ridiculous. Are you implying I have the same legislative power as the agriculture lobbies?

rayiner 13y ago
I'm saying you don't need a lobby when you have millions of farmers who identify politically and culturally with big agriculture and part time state legislators who are often farmers themselves. My wife grew up in Iowa farm country. You don't need a lobby to convince these people that animal rights activists are terrorists.
- wnight 13y ago
  Oh I see. When someone threatens your wallet it's now socially acceptable to cry "terrorist". You're a perfect example of what the OP was talking about. Justifying every abomination.
  - rayiner 13y ago
    I'm not justifying anything. I'm explaining. People in farm country: 1) constantly feel threatened due to the fickle nature of farming and thus are culturally very tight (even to the point of embracing agribusiness as "one of them"; 2) are insular and fairly culturally homogenous (my wife went to a high school with a graduating class of 60 people); 3) have a very different relationship with animals than people on the coasts. Animal rights activism is so outside the mainstream of their experience, that it doesn't take a huge lobby to convince them that these video tapers are one step away from blowing up farms. More broadly, they perceive the movement, like movements to control farm pollution, in terms of their own experience. Not as a cool cost-benefit calculation, but an existential threat to their way of life. That is not to say that they support animal cruelty per se. They react badly to what they perceive to be external threats. They rally around their own. They are really no different than any other group of people in this regard (see, e.g., how Hacker Newsers rally around their own any time people propose regulating tech companies; note the complete lack of moral outrage at Intel, AMD, Hewlett-Packard, etc, in the recent article about how these companies poisoned Palo Alto).

I'm saying you don't need a lobby when you have millions of farmers who identify politically and culturally with big agriculture and part time state legislators who are often farmers themselves. My wife grew up in Iowa farm country. You don't need a lobby to convince these people that animal rights activists are terrorists.

wnight 13y ago
Oh I see. When someone threatens your wallet it's now socially acceptable to cry "terrorist". You're a perfect example of what the OP was talking about. Justifying every abomination.
- rayiner 13y ago
  I'm not justifying anything. I'm explaining. People in farm country: 1) constantly feel threatened due to the fickle nature of farming and thus are culturally very tight (even to the point of embracing agribusiness as "one of them"; 2) are insular and fairly culturally homogenous (my wife went to a high school with a graduating class of 60 people); 3) have a very different relationship with animals than people on the coasts. Animal rights activism is so outside the mainstream of their experience, that it doesn't take a huge lobby to convince them that these video tapers are one step away from blowing up farms. More broadly, they perceive the movement, like movements to control farm pollution, in terms of their own experience. Not as a cool cost-benefit calculation, but an existential threat to their way of life. That is not to say that they support animal cruelty per se. They react badly to what they perceive to be external threats. They rally around their own. They are really no different than any other group of people in this regard (see, e.g., how Hacker Newsers rally around their own any time people propose regulating tech companies; note the complete lack of moral outrage at Intel, AMD, Hewlett-Packard, etc, in the recent article about how these companies poisoned Palo Alto).