My dog chews on the President-elect

I recall a news story that came out when I was in middle school or high school, during George Bush I's presidency. The news was that a group of protesters were burning George Bush in effigy. Why we say "burn in effigy" rather than "light cardboard cutouts on fire," I'm not sure. My father, no fan of Republicans, was horrified that anyone would burn the President of the United States in effigy. Though it's probably not something I would do/have done, I had no problem with people expressing themselves that way (but I'm not sure how effective it is).

Fast forward to the coinciding occurrences of the 2016 U.S. Presidential election and the addition to our family of Sparkle, the best dog ever.

I had noticed the Trump chew toy, for sale at Farfel's Farm in Boulder, long before we adopted Sparkle, and since then I'd wished I'd had a dog for whom I could buy it. It was one of her very first purchases.

If it's wrong to burn a President in effigy, surely it's wrong to use a President-elect's image as a doggie chew toy. If it's not wrong to burn a President in effigy, it may still be wrong to use said President-elect's image for a doggie chew toy. I use the word "wrong" very loosely; more "an affront of common mores" than "a serious moral transgression." If someone wants to publish these thoughts elsewhere, I'll edit it and come up with a more precise word. I also consider the President-elect to have equal status to a sitting President, ignoring the technicality that Mr. Trump does not officially become President-elect until the electors vote.

Is it wrong to burn a President in effigy?

I acknowledge that there's a certain amount of decorum that accompanies an office, both on the part of the person holding the office and on the parts of The People perceiving that person (with extra consideration of The People's perception if the person holding the office is in a representative position).

When George I was in office, my father's position was that, as a fairly elected government official, he was owed a certain amount of respect. Though he did not think that the President was above criticism, he perceived an indignity to immolation that crossed the line of acceptable criticism.

There is an implicit dehumanization in setting someone on fire. Its most famous uses involved punishment of people who were indeed considered nonhuman in one way or another, for example witches and heretics.

But burning in effigy is not immolation. It's burning a non-sentient artistic representation of an individual as a protest. Whether it's a protest of the person themselves or of a concept that the person represents is debatable, and the moral implications clearly would follow one's interpretation of same. I would consider it "wrong" if the burning was being conducted as advocacy for setting the represented individual on fire.

The worst thing about burning in effigy is that uncontained fire is almost never a good idea. Fire is dangerous, and if a person sets one in public, they ought to be subject to whatever general public safety laws are in effect.

Is it wrong to use a President's likeness as a doggie chew toy?

It is certainly reasonable for a person who finds burning a President in effigy beyond the pale to object equally to using a President's likeness as a doggie chew toy. Another defensible position is that burning in effigy is abhorrent but the chew toy is not because the indignity of the immolation is unique.

I am here to explore a third position: that the chew toy is actually worse than the burning in effigy.

An important question is whether there is a distinction between a regular Presidential stuffed toy (or bobblehead or action figure) and one that is designed specifically for the purpose of being chewed by a dog. One argument could be that dogs are low in the social hierarchy and therefore a dog's chew toy is even lower. I don't subscribe to this view; I value dogs as autonomous beings as much as humans.

Similarly, we often use dog in one way or another to mean yucky. If a movie is a "dog" it sucks; something from a restaurant is so bad that you wouldn't even feed it to your dog. I don't care for that vernacular, either, because dogs are awesome.

There is a distinction however between a toy that is designed to be loved and a toy that is designed to be destroyed. A doggie chew toy falls into the latter category, and I acknowledge there is a lack of respect reflected in specifically selecting an individual's image for joyous canine destruction.

So we're back to the question of whether President of the United States is an office that commands a certain amount of respect and decorum.

Fortunately, we don't have to answer that question in the abstract.

Is it wrong to use this President's likeness as a doggie chew toy?

"How would you feel if it were an Obama chew toy?" 

I suppose, if I disregard the false equivalency, I would ask how your dog plays with the chew toy. Sparkle and I play "get the bigot" with the Trump toy. I am completely comfortable calling President-elect Trump a bigot. I call him a "misogynist bigot" too. 

And this is where I realized I was drawing the proverbial line in the sand. I have decided that even if there is an amount of respect presumptively owed to our nation's elected leader, Mr. Trump's own behavior has destroyed his entitlement to the presumption. His lack of basic character, which I really don't need to rehash here, speaks for itself. And not only has he made no effort to redeem himself, he's only dug himself in deeper.

I do not believe that President Obama has done anything to earn the level of scorn that I have for Mr. Trump. It may be that we value different things. It may be that those things are or are not important enough to affect our opinions of each other.

The sequence of events was undoubtedly unprecedented, regardless of whether you think the outcome was positive or negative. The standards for acceptability, then, are a bit looser. If the man himself is not following traditional social mores, why on Earth should he expect to benefit from them?

Epilogue

We bought Sparkle's chew toy in liberal Boulder. Recently, in Colorado Springs, we saw a Bernie Sanders chew toy at a local pet boutique. Touché.

Admit it anti-choicers: If abortion is murder, then Trump was right

Yesterday, the celebrity who is the frontrunner in the GOP race to the presidential candidacy commented that women who have abortions should be punished somehow, and the Internet exploded. The pro-choice contingent obviously found that position abhorrent. The anti-choice right-wingers quickly distanced themselves as well, declaring that their position has never been to punish women seeking abortions, even if they achieve their goal of most (if not all) abortion being illegal. As a result, The Orange One himself backed off, “clarifying” that he “misspoke.”

If you are opposed to legal abortion and you don’t think women who have them should face legal consequences, then you are either a liar or you are a hypocrite.

It was my understanding that the majority of opposition to abortion comes from an idea in the vein of life begins at conception, a fetus is a person, therefore abortion is murder. I can’t speak for the right wing, but I am generally of the belief that if a person is complicit in a murder, then that person should face consequences for said murder. Typically in the law, an accomplice faces the same legal consequences as a principal in a crime.

So if you are opposed to legal abortion, and you are also opposed to legally punishing women seeking them, then you either don’t really believe abortion is murder, or you believe that society shouldn’t punish criminals.

This gymnastics that the anti-choice crew espouses to try to get away from the icky mental image of putting abortion-seeking women in jail is solely political, and it exposes a major problem with the concept of making abortion illegal: how to punish the women you’ve just made criminals. Making abortion illegal does not make abortion go away, and if you believe that abortion is murder, then you must believe that women who specifically ask for and pay for abortions (murder for hire?) are murderers.

But that’s the easy part. The harder part is what you do with women who, rather than seeking abortion and risking running afoul of the law, self-induce abortions in one way or another. I used to say that if abortion ever became illegal and I found myself accidentally pregnant, it’s nothing playing a few rugby matches couldn’t fix. Alcohol, drugs, an accidental fall down the stairs...

Or a miscarriage.

Make no mistake. If abortion is illegal, people getting and performing abortions become criminals, and every miscarriage must be investigated to determine whether it was a clandestine abortion. If such steps are not part of the plan, then illegalization of abortion has no teeth. Women wishing abortions can just induce miscarriages and claim they didn’t know they were pregnant or that it was spontaneous or that the fall was an accident.

Murder is a big deal. If you really think abortion is murder, you cannot believe that miscarriages (possible abortions and therefore murders) should not be investigated. If you agree with me that the investigation of miscarriages is not a good use of police resources, then you don’t think that abortion is murder.

Start being honest with yourselves.

If you're a Democrat strategically voting Republican in an open primary, don't do it!

I’ve only been registered to vote in states with a closed primary, so I’ve only ever voted for the Democratic candidate I hoped would win the nomination and subsequently the Presidency. I was always a bit perplexed by the concept of an open primary; it always seemed to me like a tremendous opportunity for a faction to coalesce to play spoiler.

In this year’s nutty primary, it seems that playing spoiler is a popular move. Through personal friends and radio coverage, I’ve discovered that more liberals than I would have anticipated are using their open primaries to try to defeat the GOP’s nomination of he who shall not be named. While I appreciate the creative thinking of such individuals and admit to enjoying the “smarter than thou” feeling generated by using the system in a way it’s not intended to be used, I have to say: folks, you’re not helping.