So I've been trolling the Internet for Anti-PETA sites. I was a little surprised at just how easy they were to find. Some of them were created by PETA detractors who are also splinters of the same lunatic front. All in all, I had a lot of suspicions of mine confirmed. I read through all of the quotes from PETA leaders, enduring all of their rants on how people suck, domestic species should be extinct, and animals are so pure and wonderful. I scanned through the statistics from eminently reputable sources that blow gaping holes in PETA's feeble attempts to use reason to bolster its delusional arguments. I even read through PETA's report to the Better Business Bureau.

That's where the REAL problem came to light. I have finally found the nexus of all of my intense distaste for PETA. I always suspected it was there, but I could never prove it.

According to PETA's own report, they took in $15 million last year. In the animal shelters they run, the took in an incredibly paltry 2,000 animals in 1999, and they euthanized 1,200 of them. Put this in context of the 11 million animals euthanized every year in the U.S., and the fact that many shelters in the same community managed to find homes for ALL of their animals that year puts PETA in a new light. In 1996, they had a $12 million budget, and they spent $6,000 on the country's grossly underfunded animal shelters.

What the FUCK kind of "We love animals" group IS this? One that's apparently too fuckin' busy creating idiotic marketing campaigns to bother helping any fucking animals, that's what! I looked and I looked, but I couldn't find a single case where PETA has shown any real interest in relieving the suffering of animals beyond fabricating wild-eyed stories and occasionally alerting the authorities to some kind of sleazy puppy mill operation. They bitch about eating chickens on Survivor, but they can't be bothered to find homes for stray animals or buy habitats or ANYTHING concrete.

Then I realized, "HEY! This is just like every other fanatic group out there!" Most of the big-news agitators don't give a Communist's frozen heart about the causes they are supposedly fighting so hard for. Many environmentalist groups won't try to save anything if it doesn't mean big press for them. Pro-Lifers don't give a damn about the babies they're "saving" once they're out of the womb. Those anti-globalization protesters couldn't be bothered to consider the poverty they're forcing many people to stay in. The Nazis certainly weren't really out for Germany's well-being, that's for sure. They just wanted to kill a bunch of Jews and Russians.

A super example: those morons who insist that companies that set up factories in 3rd world countries are exploiting those poor laborers who work for peanuts. The flaws in that logic? Well, first, the workers WANT these jobs. It's not like they're being forced at gunpoint to take a low-paying, crappy job. If they have the choice of getting paid peanuts or NOTHING, they'll take the peanuts and be happy. A shitty job may be all that stands between them and starvation. That also includes child laborers, by the way. This job may be their family's lifeline. Then the company, say, Nike, sells the sneakers to us for $1,000 a pair. Then they take that money and build more factories in the poor country, making more jobs for people. Who's getting exploited again?

"Sure," says the reasonably intelligent-looking chick near the popcorn vendor, "that's just because supporters refuse to think more than one step ahead and consider about the consequences of their actions. That doesn't mean they don't care."

Darn. That was a good point. I'll save the half-full whiskey bottle to hurl at a more deserving moron.

If you've never seen the movie Amistad, I suggest you do. It's very good. At one point in the film, Morgan Freeman is speaking to a white abolitionist who has just suggested letting some slaves die to further their abolitionist cause. There are men who hate slavery more than anything, Freeman says, except for the slave himself.

True. So true.

Once abolitionists had succeeded in having slavery wiped out in the U.S., they figured their work was done and left the former slaves at the mercy of the pissed off Southern white boys. Things got a hell of a lot WORSE for blacks after slavery ended, but the people who were so desperate to end slavery a few decades before didn't care.

There are so many groups like that. They live for a cause, but not for the consequences. The smart ones (like PETA) know how to create a cause that's so wildly outside of anything that can achieved that they're probably going to have jobs the rest of their lives. The real tragedy of all of this is that they're funneling money away from people who could actually do good with it.

Hmph. They might want to consider the far loftier goal of getting me laid. That'll guarantee lifetime security for them.