The Taliban is falling behind
This story from the L.A. Times about a 9-year-old and her goat got mine:
Every day for three months, Jessica Long’s young daughter walked and fed her goat, bonding with the brown and white floppy-eared animal named Cedar. But when it was time for Cedar to be sold and slaughtered at the Shasta District Fair last year, the 9-year-old just couldn’t go through with it.
“My daughter sobbed in her pen with her goat,” Long wrote to the Shasta County fair’s manager on June 27, 2022. “The barn was mostly empty and at the last minute I decided to break the rules and take the goat that night and deal with the consequences later.”
Long purchased the goat for her daughter to enter into the 4-H program with the Shasta District Fair. Children are taught how to care for farm animals. The animals are then entered in an auction to be sold and then slaughtered for meat in hopes of teaching children about the work and care needed to raise livestock and provide food, as farmers and ranchers do.
In her letter, Long pleaded for the fair to make an exception and let her and her daughter take Cedar back. Aware that Cedar had already been sold in auction, she also offered to “pay you back for the goat and any other expenses I caused,” according to the letter obtained by The Times.
Not just no, but hell, no, said Shasta County officials. (Yes, that Shasta County.)
“Making an exception for you will only teach [our] youth that they do not have to abide by the rules,” Shasta District Fair Chief Executive Melanie Silva responded to Long in an email before dispatching sheriff’s deputies across 500 miles of Northern California to locate the goat.
Deputies obtained a search warrant permitting them to “utilize breaching equipment to force open doorway(s), entry doors, exit doors, and locked containers” as they might during a drug bust. And to search “storage rooms, and outbuildings of any kind large enough to accommodate a small goat.”
Deputies eventually located and confiscated Cedar who was slaughtered for a barbecue.
Long filed a federal lawsuit alleging violation of her and her daughter’s 4th and 14th Amendment rights.
“It was never about money,” said Vanessa Shakib, an attorney for Advancing Law for Animals who represents Long. “County officials were clear that they wanted to teach this little girl a lesson.”
Given the spreading atmosphere of misogyny across the land (and the MAGAness of Shasta County), perhaps the response was not surprising.
“It’s shocking,” said Ryan Gordon, an attorney with Advancing Law for Animals. “It’s a little girl’s goat, not Pablo Escobar.”
Meanwhile, in Iran (The Guardian):
Two women have been arrested in Iran for not covering their hair in public after having a tub of yoghurt thrown over them.
Video footage that went viral on social media showed two female customers being approached by a man who engages them in conversation.
He then takes what appears to be yoghurt from a shelf and throws it over their heads.
Iran’s judiciary said the two women had subsequently been detained for allegedly violating the country’s hijab rules.
That will teach those two. Their attacker was arrested for disturbing the peace and no doubt will get a slap on the wrist.
“Unveiling is tantamount to enmity with [our] values,” said an Iranian judiciary official. “[A]nomalous acts will be punished” and “prosecuted without mercy,” he said without elaborating.
Cedar the goat might testify to that but was unavailable for comment.
The parallels I’m drawing are not extreme. That attitudes of fanatics in authority are. And they reflect an opinion among minority conservatives, particularly religious ones. They will be damned if they won’t see women and minorities put back in their “proper” places.
Traditionally disfavored women and minorities of all kinds have had enough of that shit. They demand treatment as equal citizens in this country, as is their right, and as women still protesting in Iran believe it should be.
But the backlash against modernity thst began in the U.S. after the 1960s has grown stronger in the U.S. since 2008 and stronger still since 2020. It will surge again with the arrest and indictments of hardliners’ bigoted avatar. They want to turn back the clock 70 years, if not 100.
Behold:
Are reactionaries entitled to their opinions? Hell, yes. And entitled to be damned for them.