Ooh, this was really informational, thanks for typing all that out! I have never read anything from the pro-racing side, honestly, I just assumed the "bad" tracks outweighed the good ones.
YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ASSUME HUR-HUR.
The anti-Obama crazies (the actually crazy ones) start to really get to you after a while; they won't listen to reason, they'll just say you "drank the kool-aid." I find it very relieving to go somewhere like Ravelry's forum (a knitting comm), where they have "funny" "interesting" "disagree" buttons that I can click without actually having to engage with the nuttier folks.
The anti-racing propaganda is very effective, and the racing industry is so isolated and insular that it's almost impossible to get factual information unless you get actively involved in racing or greyhound adoption. Which is a crying shame. I can't blame people for voting on this because they genuinely didn't know better, but it makes me sad that the AR people are influencing people so well. I don't want to make racing seem like this perfect thing because it really, really isn't, but it's also not as simple as 'racing bad' or 'racing good'.
Yeah, I love being told by people twisting scripture that *I'm* the one drinking the kool aid. xD
I wish I'd known those things about the greyhound ban before I voted. I should have made myself better-informed, I suppose, but the ads that the pro-racing groups were making here were really badly constructed for anyone who cared about animal rights -- all they kept repeating was that 1,000 people would lose their jobs. I had heard and bought the rhetoric about the evils of greyhound racing without doing the research, which ashames me now, but the anti-racing crowd very much framed their argument as "for humane treatment of animals" and the pro-racing crowd framed it as "we need our jobs." And 1,000 jobs didn't seem a significant enough number for me to condone what I thought of as animal abuse, so I voted for it
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Well, here's the thing: it's difficult for me to expect the average US citizen to understand greyhound racing, and to educate themselves fairly on this issue. Not so very long ago, there were a number of people in the racing world who refused to deal with the public or adoption groups. For some of them, it was just distrust of people outside the system. For others, it was because they had been burned too many times. There were tracks that opened their doors to people claiming to be interested in opening an adoption group, who actually took what they saw, twisted it, and posted anti-racing articles. Such events happened enough to cause a lot of bad blood, and it's taken a lot of people a great deal of time and effort to establish good relationships with tracks
( ... )
On item 1: I am extremely disappointed in the way people are responding to Obama. If he is a Muslim, SO WHAT? He's black, SO WHAT? I'm so sick of seeing things proclaiming he's the anti-christ, and I think it's pathetic that people are so afraid and/or have such narrow little minds that the thought of him being our next president terrifies them.
On item 2: Wow, I had no idea there was so much responsibility on behalf of the greyhound racing community/tracks. That they go to such effort to make sure the dogs have a good life after they're done racing is pretty impressive. I'm sorry more people didn't know all of that before voting. :(
On time 3: Ditto on the disappointment. Way to go, CA.
I second that the pro-racing ad campaign wasn't on target- it only focused on the number of jobs lost, and a lot of people just don't care who gets hurt in their quest for a "warm fuzzy feeling" from having "done a good thing".
And I've been avoiding political discussion like the plague for a while now, because elections just bring out the most stupid and vicious sides of people all over the political spectrum. I haven't heard much racism toward Obama; actually, I live in a pretty pro-Obama area, so most of what I got was anti-McCain and Palin (and with all the legitimate things to gripe on about them, people literally picked the most frivolous.) Add to the fact that I'm sick of listening to people who themselves refuse to lift a finger to help make the world a better place tout Obama's message of "change", and I don't think I've ever been more cynical when it comes to politics.
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YOU KNOW WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU ASSUME HUR-HUR.
The anti-Obama crazies (the actually crazy ones) start to really get to you after a while; they won't listen to reason, they'll just say you "drank the kool-aid." I find it very relieving to go somewhere like Ravelry's forum (a knitting comm), where they have "funny" "interesting" "disagree" buttons that I can click without actually having to engage with the nuttier folks.
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Yeah, I love being told by people twisting scripture that *I'm* the one drinking the kool aid. xD
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On item 2: Wow, I had no idea there was so much responsibility on behalf of the greyhound racing community/tracks. That they go to such effort to make sure the dogs have a good life after they're done racing is pretty impressive. I'm sorry more people didn't know all of that before voting. :(
On time 3: Ditto on the disappointment. Way to go, CA.
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And I've been avoiding political discussion like the plague for a while now, because elections just bring out the most stupid and vicious sides of people all over the political spectrum. I haven't heard much racism toward Obama; actually, I live in a pretty pro-Obama area, so most of what I got was anti-McCain and Palin (and with all the legitimate things to gripe on about them, people literally picked the most frivolous.) Add to the fact that I'm sick of listening to people who themselves refuse to lift a finger to help make the world a better place tout Obama's message of "change", and I don't think I've ever been more cynical when it comes to politics.
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