Obama's "Compassionate" Remarks and the Few Truly Saved

You'll get just one more post from me on Thanksgiving later, plus a brief commentary at the end of this post, but in the meantime, there have been a few Thanksgiving-related posts published since last evening that I'd like to direct you to this morning.

Kelly at easyVegan.info commented on Obama's sham pardoning of a turkey yesterday, his attitude during the for-show ceremony, and some of the language he used, including his remark on our "endless compassion" as a people. Cue Kelly:

Endless compassion? Bah. Try that line on tomorrow’s corpse. Tell it to Courage, for whom there’s no escape. (We inflicted our cruelty - excuse me, our “compassion” - onto him at a genetic level, so that his body will be crippled under its own weight in just a few short months. President Obama, your quip about “performance enhancing drugs”? Not funny.)

Doris at About.com wasn't terribly impressed with the president's handling of the situation either. She also referred to his remarks in a mass e-mail about "our commitment to building a more peaceful and prosperous future":

I look forward to that tomorrow. That day when children will ask why the turkey is the symbol of Thanksgiving, and are told that long ago, people used to eat turkeys on Thanksgiving. Before the world was a more peaceful place.

And finally, until the arrival of that day Doris and I and other animal advocates are awaiting, we will be thankful for the precious few turkeys who find sanctuary. See Marji's post at Animal Place Sanctuary for short profiles of some of the turkeys who dwell there. And meet Melvin, Naddy, Thomas Edison, and other remarkable rescued individuals in this post and supply of links from last year: "The Ones You Won't Get to Eat."

Remember the turkeys today, friends. This may be a day when many gather with friends and family and give thanks for some things, but it is also a very sad day, a day that reminds us how entrenched the commodification and killing of animals is in this society -- a day that we call a day of thanks but center entirely around the dead bodies of animals we completely discount as individuals, whose suffering we tune out, whom we supposedly "honor" with silly cardboard and plastic decorations, pretending they're happy to, the vast majority of times, go through hell and then, always, be killed, just for people's palates. It's a day when we're reminded that there's still a long way to go even with our fellow "progressives," most of whom, if they bother themselves with animals at all, scoff at and push aside truly animal-friendly messages today and encourage people to merely exchange the killing of one animal for the killing of another, rather than simply not kill.

I am thankful for the precious few who've been saved this year; I am mournful for the hundreds of millions just this year who haven't been and won't be.

---
Photo of Melvin courtesy of Peaceful Prairie Sanctuary