John Pavlovitz rightly compares the (selective) outrage many Republicans are now expressing at Kristi Noem's braggadocious story about shooting a dog and a goat with the meh, thoughts-and-prayers response of these same folks to yet another school shooting.
"The cognitive dissonance required to rightly rail against the assassination of a puppy, while simultaneously ignoring or explaining away the nearly daily mass shootings of mothers, spouses, brothers, children, and best friends here is a sick marvel to behold."
@wdlindsy Noem is letting the reader know through these animal tales that she can take swift, cruel action. She'll do the "hard stuff" like let women die on the pro-life(?) principle of no abortions, and school children die so that no law will ever infringe on the ability to keep one's own personal arsenal.
@npaulreads Yes, you're right. That's the rationale she is giving for having made the incredibly dumb (politically speaking) decision to publish this information. And to boast about it!
@wdlindsy That's an awesome observation by Pavlovitz. Noem's specific problem is how culturally isolated the Dakotas are from the rest of the world. A person could live their whole lives there without contact with anyone else different. (They keep the 'otherized' Lakota people pushed away). But to Pavlovitz's point about conservative cognitive problems, they are as isolated mentally as the Dakotas are physically from the rest of the culture. Look at the SCOTUS for example.
@timo21 I hadn't thought about the cultural isolation of the Dakotas as part of this story, but will do so now. I have only driven through South Dakota. My spouse grew up in northwest Minnesota not far from the North Dakota border and has many relatives in North Dakota, so that state I've visited. It strikes me as very nativist, white, reactionary, and not very interested in learning much about a bigger world.
@wdlindsy I knew they would get more upset about a puppy than kids and people… I mean it’s all horrid….but the right is horrid and only outraged if they think it benefits them. And also not outraged at a 13 yr old girl being raped and forced to carry a baby…UFB
@wdlindsy I don’t think enough white people understand the level of disdain supremacists (GOP) have against “lessers”. They think of them as less than animals. Yes, they have more compassion for dogs or farm animals than they do for children or people that they don’t like.
@DEDGirl I agree that a lot of us have not reflected on that dynamic. Having grown up in the South during the Civil Rights struggles, and still living there, I can say that to me, it has always been perfectly apparent that many white people – who overwhelmingly vote Republican – categorize lots of "others" as lesser human beings. And they vote on this basis.