On Torture Not Fit for Animal or Plant

First let me say that everyone is fine. No one was better prepared than I for seizing dogs and vomiting cats. The thunderous display meant to mimic the experience of being on a battlefield was over by 11pm and we went to the baseball field to run like the wind at 6:30 this morning. Two hounds and a kitty are napping on their respective beds in my office and all is right with the world.

All is at least much better for Ingrid Betancourt, as you probably know. We may never know exactly how she was rescued or whether money was paid or any part of the rescue was staged, but one thing we do know is that during her six-year captivity she was in "inhumane conditions" and subject to "casual sadism," according to "Betancourt Describes Sadistic Treatment at Hands of Captors."

She was treated "abominably" and said: "I wouldn’t have given the treatment I had to an animal, perhaps not even to a plant."

That’s good news . . . I think.

I find the plant part to be strange, as there is a rather significant difference between plants and animals, and it’s the difference that matters most if you’re going to compare how they’d react to being tortured: sentience. Meanwhile, the fact that she even said she wouldn’t do such things (whatever they were, and we know they weren’t good) to an animal makes me say: Why would you even say that? What would you do to an animal, then?

When people use the I-wouldn’t-even-do-that-to-an-animal line, it scares me. It tells me that they draw some kind of line in the sand between torture that’s okay and torture that’s so terrible that even animals don’t deserve it. But what is it about sentient nonhumans that makes them somehow inherently deserving of at least some level of mistreatment?

Nothing.

But it’s difficult to come down hard on Betancourt or anyone else who has been programmed since birth (I’m assuming she has) to view animals as resources and commodities and lunch and shoes. Yes, some of us one day came to the realization that what we do to sentient nonhumans is unwarranted and unjust. But most people are simply being who they were brought up to be, and taking their cues from the media and the rest of their culture. They’re simply following the path of least resistance.

And it’s up to us to introduce them to a different path.