Confessions of a Speciesist

Honesty is a virtue that has a varying signifigance in our culture. I am never completely honest in anything I ever say. If I was, I hardly think I would have many friends or socialize well with others. I believe all interactions with other people involve some sort of deceit. And I find nothing wrong with that. I just hope that anyone reading this understand I am being completely honest, even at the risk of offending anyone.
Yesterday, our class took to a trip to a PETA information display on campus. Before we even arrived to the PETA stand, I already knew how I would respond to the display. At first, a mix of shock, sadness, pity, but, in the end, a total lack of empathy.
I have seen enough horrible images in my life that seeing a pig undergoing anesthetized castration hardly moved me (I feel like I sound like a battle-hardened Vietnam Vet saying something like that). It's not to say I'm not disgusted by these images, I would rather not look at them. But they do not affect any opinion I have on animal rights or cruelty. The bottom line is, that I think bacon, sausage, brisket, burgers, jerky, chicken, shrimp, and fish is too delicious for me to really care about how the food is processed. Heartless? Perhaps. Ignorant? Maybe. But I stress my lack of interest in what goes on the food processing industry. As long as it does not negatively affect my health, I could honestly care less where my delicious food comes from.
And I would like it to stay that way. Ignorance is bliss, and it has never applied more in my carnivore lifestyle. This is not to say that I do not care about animals, but I only care for the animals that are relevant in my life. I would never hurt my beloved Dimitri, mostly because I love him and I do not think he would taste very good. The beautiful birds that I cared for at the zoo were magnificent and I would always feel pain when a gorgeous bird was discovered dead (even though it only happened once, and he was very old). But I had absolutely no qualms with killing baby mice by hand and chopping them into pieces to feed a bustard chick.
So while I appreciate PETA persistence and passion for their mission, I was not at all affected by their display. If anything, I was slightly offended by their comparisons of animal slaughters to tragedies in human history. Relating the Cambodian holocaust to the yearly slaughter of pigs is, in my opinion, incredibly insulting to the millions of innocent Cambodians affected by that tragedy. But I understand where PETA is coming from. To them, the slaughter of pigs is as important and tragic as the Cambodian holocaust. But I do believe that this appeals to too much of an emotional aspect of the human condition, and prevents proper discussion about animal cruelty, something the Human Society does a much better job of. So I walked away from Peta completely unchanged or moved as meatitarian.