Don't Call Them Animals

Anti-Obama types are responding to the President's indignation over the murder of a teenager by publicizing other recent murders of teenagers and children. The question arises whether all of us feel more indignation when the victims of violent crimes look like relatives of ours. In theory we think all violence is bad; in practice, when the victims resemble people we know, the violence feels a little closer to home. How bad is this?

And I hate that, when I want to make a point on this blog that I've often made in real life, the link that provokes it cites the words of a victim's mother. Does everybody remember A Cry in the Dark? Should journalists make it a point of professional ethics not to talk to the immediate families of victims during the week after a violent crime?

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/ct-met-weekend-mayhem-0320-20120320,0,3600888.story

However, my point in this post is: Those who aim guns, cars, or other weapons at children they don't even know are not animals. When have you seen animals act as vicious as that? Some animals can and do eat human children, but animals rarely kill anything they don't intend to eat. When they do, their viciousness is usually due to rabies or to extreme overcrowding.

Since humans rarely suffer from rabies, can we describe the gang murders that plague our inner cities as symptoms of extreme overcrowding? A better case can be made for that than could be made for carelessly, stupidly calling murderers animals.

The animal instinct is the one that makes it more disturbing when someone who looks like us, or who "could have been my son/daughter/etc.," happens to be the victim. We share that with our pets, who think it's normal, natural, and proper for everyone to kill mice, ducks, or rabbits, but are visibly upset when another dog or cat, or sometimes even a possum, dies before its time.