I am usually late to these things. I never promised to be first. I promised to give things some thought and come with a more comprehensive outlook. By now, you know that Kristi Noem (governor of South Dakota) is a noted dog killer. She volunteered this information herself in her book. You could even say she was bragging about it.

If you’ve been out of pocket for the last two weeks, she told this anecdote in her book about killing a 14 month old puppy because it was “untrainable.” She also killed a goat because it didn’t smell good and she didn’t like it. Apparently, she was a “farm girl” and that’s just how things are done on the farm.

A part of this is by design. Most progressives live in urban areas. So, if progressives object to this kind of behavior then it just highlights the difference between urban and rural America. Them city folk just don’t know how everything is done on the farm. They aren’t real Americans. They are snowflakes that want to virtue signal and cancel things they will just never understand.

It’s all a crock of bullshit. Anyone that has owned an animal or cared for an animal knows you don’t shoot that animal because “it cannot be trained.” Even if that is true there are hundreds of other options. There are people you could rehome the animal with. There are agencies like Second Chance Pets that will take the animal and rehome it for you. There are places that will allow the animal to roam free. It may not be the best life, but it is a life.

Admittedly, we are animal people. I have had as many as four cats at the same time. We had to put one of them to sleep several months ago. It was a sweet cat that had a horrible disease that was incurable and destined to cause him tons of pain. We also have a dog. He is fairly well trained now, but the first few months were rough. We have had a few hairy moments every now and then. He doesn’t like thunderstorms. He reacts around other dogs. He’s as smart as a whip, but he’s a dog. It’s what dogs do.

I suppose being an animal lover makes me weird. I inherited this trait from my mother. All of our cats have been rescues or second chance pets. Our dog was adopted as well. This is a trait that has been passed down to our daughter. I have always firmly believed that you can tell a lot about a person based on their disposition to animals. I’ve learned a lot about Kristi Noem the last couple of weeks. None of it has been good.

To be perfectly fair, I never was a big fan. However, she has demonstrated a cruelty and callousness that is breathtaking to see. It takes a cold and loveless heart to willingly kill an animal when its only crime was “smelling bad” or “being untrainable.” To brag about it is borderline sociopathic or psychopathic. Hell, the animal community debates euthanizing a chronically sick pet. There are those that believe that pets should be allowed to live a full life regardless of their medical condition. There are others that want to prevent needless suffering.

Then there are those that believe animals should be put down when they are inconvenient. I can’t fathom that. If they think animals are expendable then what do they think about people? Are some of us expendable? Maybe that is why we can play games with immigrants by threatening their lives and busing them half way across the country without their consent. It is only one small step from shooting a dog to discarding a human being. At least it used to be something we didn’t brag about. I guess those days are over.

Some people are more fascinated with evil than others. The biggest rage in the office is the series “Dahmer” on Netflix. Everyone has been trying to get me to watch, but I’d be watching solo at home. I don’t necessarily want to see evil or watch it described, but the idea of sociopaths and psychopaths interests me as someone that has a masters in counseling and has dabbled in some abnormal psychology.

I picked up a book at Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago and was finally able to crack it open. Mind you, I haven’t finished it but I found Science of Evil by Simon Baron-Cohen to be a fascinating read so far. The biggest breakthrough was in the terminology itself. He doesn’t use terms like good and evil. Instead he talked about empathy. Some people have a lot of it and some people have a little or zero real empathy.

As someone interested in mental health, this revelation brings a number of questions that I hope he has answers for. For instance, is empathy something innate that some people simply lack or is it something learned from our environment? For instance, he was able to show different parts of the brain and explain what was happening on a physiological level when someone’s empathy was impaired. Can we successfully teach empathy? Can we develop an empathy pill for those that have biological reasons for a lack of empathy?

What strikes me most of all is that terms like “good” and “evil” come with significant value judgments attached. Empathy can be measured. We may not have a perfect measurement, but we can certainly do better than “evil”. One can say that they are doing something for the good of mankind and yet conduct themselves without a shred of human empathy.

Cohen described it like a spotlight. Those that have empathy have two or more spotlights. One is on them and their thoughts and needs. The other spotlight(s) are on others and their thoughts and needs. Those with zero to no empathy have only one spotlight. There are times in all of our lives when we are down to one spotlight. It happens. Something horrible happens or we feel more vulnerable for one reason or another. However, that condition is just temporary. When our lives stabilize or the crisis abates then our empathy returns to normal.

Yet, what we are seeing is an increasing amount of people that are stuck on one spotlight. Again, I wish I knew whether this was learned behavior or somehow organic. What I do know is that this is a more substantial description of potentially dangerous people than simply calling them evil. After all, a person with a single spotlight can seem good as long as their ends seem in line with everyone else’s. When their interests and the interests of others collide then watch out. Until we can get a pill at the local pharmacy we need to make sure we don’t give those folks too much power.