You Cannot Vote For Demented Ghouls Who Vote To Torture Millions of Animals
And you should tell your representatives that
(The stuff I discuss here is urgent and time sensitive, so I’d really appreciate you sharing and restacking it).
A catastrophe has reached the shores of America. But it is not a war, a bomb, or a terrorist attack. This catastrophe is distinctly moral. The current farm bill, if it passes, would be the worst legislation for animals ever passed in American history. It might very well pass. And if it does, many millions of animals will be senselessly tortured.
Various states have animal welfare laws that regulate which animal products can be sold in their state. For example, in California, you can’t sell pork or veal from animals that were kept in a cage, even if they were raised in a different state. The SOB act would eliminate these state level provisions (as applied to all but egg laying hens). It’s been snuck into the farm bill.
Most state-level animal welfare laws, therefore, would be eliminated if the farm bill passes. States would no longer be able to prevent animals kept in small crates from being sold. This would be a horrific encroachment on federalism, but that would not be its main effect.
Its main effect would be eliminating overwhelmingly popular state level laws that prevent many millions of pigs and cows from being confined in a cage. Tens of millions of animals could be affected. Not only would it destroy current state laws, it would prevent future state laws from protecting animals. It is important to be blunt here: this is an effort by pork lobbyists to make a quick buck off torturing millions of animals.
And yes, it is torture. If you kept a dog in a tiny cage where she couldn’t turn around for many months, that would uncontroversially be called torture. That is the fate that millions of pigs, who are smarter than dogs, will endure if the bill passes. Sometimes, sadists torture poor, innocent animals because they enjoy it. The congresspeople who voted for this bill, and especially who took specific efforts to keep this damned provision in the farm bill, have astronomically more animal blood on their hands than sick psychopaths who torture animals.
All across the political spectrum, bipartisan voices have sprang up opposing this craven bill. These include Tomi Lahren, Glenn Greenwald, Richard Hanania (link), Adam Schiff, Alex Padilla, and many others. The people who supported this provision by and large did it because they are in the pockets of giant factory farms. Thinking about those spineless, gelatinous invertebrate ghouls who sold out their principles to facilitate the mass torture of the innocent, I am reminded of a line from Scott Alexander: “this goes beyond normal political lying into the sort of thing that makes you the scum of the earth, the sort of person for whom even an all-merciful God could not restrain Himself from creating Hell.”
You cannot in good conscience vote for people who support this bill. To the extent that your conscience tells you anything, it must tell you to stand up for the meek and the innocent and the vulnerable. There is no group on earth more vulnerable than farmed animals. What is at stake is their torture on an industrial scale. If conscience does not tell you not to support those who support the torture of the innocent, what could it possible tell you?
And if you cannot, in good conscience, vote for a representative who would support the farm bill in its current form, then you ought to call your representatives and tell them that. To let them know, call the House Switchboard 202-224-3121 during business hours. Tell them your zip code and they’ll connect you to your representative’s office. See this document for what to say plus for a bunch of other options for impactful things to do, including calling the congresspeople whose votes are most consequential and in flux, on behalf of the humane league. The Luna amendment, which could have removed this wicked provision from the farm bill, failed. The only remaining option is voting no on the farm bill itself.
To millions of crated pigs, this is the most important piece of legislation ever passed without any close contenders. For the animals, this is the hinge of history, and what we do in the passing days matters like little else. A generational catastrophe is at stake: please, help prevent it from becoming reality.
One practical point for people calling or emailing reps: tailor the framing to the office you’re contacting.
If your representative is already sympathetic to animal welfare, lead with animal welfare. But if your representative is Republican, skeptical of animal-rights politics, or likely to dismiss this as a single-issue activist concern, lead with the human and institutional problems.
Things like federal preemption, states’ rights, food safety, livestock disease prevention, animal importation rules, public health, and the danger of using the Farm Bill to override state agricultural standards.
Mention the animal-welfare consequences, but limit them to one paragraph, and increase the chance of getting the real animal-welfare win by presenting it as a “bonus” nested inside concerns Republican politicians are more likely to care about, e.g. Washington overriding state authority, weakening livestock disease-prevention rules, or handing one industry a special federal carveout.
Lead with those concerns. Most voters can see instantly that extreme confinement is cruel and unnecessary, but Republican staff may keep reading if the first frame is state authority, public health, and special-interest federal preemption.
Increase expected value by leading with the frame they are most likely to take seriously.
The appropriately named SOB act