Too Strong | Leeza Coleman

“You come on too strong” I have been told.

When I ask if I would be coming on “too strong” if the horrors in question were committed against the human animal, the reply is, “That is what I mean! You need to be polite.”

I’m the one who calls carnists — and other exploiters and commodifiers of my sibling Earthlings — rapists-, torturers-, slavers-, murderers-by-proxy; as culpable as the hands-on model and their powerful profiteer commanders.

I’m the one who calls human animals who find joy in the suffering at “rodeos,” in zoological “gardens,” circuses, forced fights, killing competitions, and murder-as-recreation socio-psychopaths.

I am not the gentle, patient, tolerant vegan.

I admire and even envy that vegan. There must be a modicum of peace there…although, maybe not. Perhaps they simply have greater strength of character than I.

I am the vegan who watches the videos with the images of torture and who listens to the screams, believing that if they have to endure it, then I have, at least, to see it. If it were my agony, I would want everyone on Earth to behold it, therefore making it my responsibility to do for others what I would want others to do for me. And I insist that the enablers have it put in their faces.

I admire and even envy the ones who can bear witness without manifesting intolerance of the human-animal monsters.

I am not that vegan.

I have been told that I am too extreme when I tell the truth that it is only the extinction of a single species that will free the surviving Earthlings from the hell in which they are imprisoned, and allow this planet to thrive and flourish.

It is suggested that Homo “sapiens” needs to, and can, evolve. I suggest that the species which will be the shortest-lived in the history of Earth has evolved, and that some 300,000 years of bottom-line unchanged behavior of a species does not augur well for change, except to kill more, faster.

I honor and even envy the ones who hope for change in the human animal. I go by the attributes of character the human animal has demonstrated for 300,000 years.

The root cause of the horror on Earth is clear. Understanding of the root cause of the catastrophe, tragedy, abominations of evil and cruelty caused, enabled, perpetrated, supported by the human animal — as well as catastrophes unleashed by nature at the behest of the actions of the human animal — has been extant probably for much longer than documentation reflects. It is no newsflash. The most brilliant have said it more eloquently than I. I take the liberty of quoting only three:

Pythagoras (570-490 BC) – “For as long as man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seeds of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859-1930) – “At the moment our human world is based on the suffering and destruction of millions of non-humans…Nothing can ever be seen in quite the same way again because once you have admitted the terror and pain of other species you will, unless you resist conversion, be always aware of the endless permutations of suffering that support our society.”

Dr. Will Tuttle (1953- ) – “Veganism is the essential healing force that our culture desperately needs, because the mentality of domination that starts on our plates reverberates through our various cultural institutions as authoritarianism, oppression, and violence.”

What we visit on other-than-human animals we visit on ourselves. When the human animal decided that it was acceptable to commit any and all abominations of cruelty in SOME cases, it was inevitable that the human animal would before long decide that it was acceptable to commit any and all abominations of cruelty in ANY cases.

The arrogant, the ignorant, the stupid, the selfish, the greedy use what I say as their excuse to continue to support atrocity: They are “offended” to the point that they reject compassion!

I am offended by slavery; concentration-camp confinement rape; separation of families; random acts of sadism; serial routine torture; torture murder; boiling/scalding alive; dismembering alive; skinning alive; grinding alive newborns or smashing in their brains; cutting out fetuses from their conscious mothers; confining pregnant moms in small crates wherein they cannot move nor turn to see and nurture their babies when they are born.

I am offended by tubes for force-feeding forced down the esophaguses of birds and pigs; hooks buried in the eyes of the living; the living hung by their necks; broomsticks inserted in body cavities just for the pleasure of causing pure pain.

I am offended by lives of pain and fear and despair and misery and agony from birth to death with never a moment’s respite, with never a second’s kindness shown, never a moment of pleasure or joy allowed. I am offended by the rankest bigotry of all: speciesism.

Leo Tolstoy (1828 – 1910) got it: “As long as there are slaughterhouses there will always be battlefields.”

And if the human animal cannot learn this, then extinction — of the only species that richly deserves it — will be a fine alternative.

I have been told that I will not “win converts” with my “attitude.” Well, darn. Seeing the torture, the agony, the misery, the abominations, the sheer horror will not shatter them? Hearing the screams of agony and viewing the misery will strengthen their resolve to perpetuate the misery and agonies and unending torments? And it is MY attitude that is the problem?

And they are the recipients of the misery they visit on my other-than-human siblings. Homo “sapiens”: the only animal species that is dumb enough to screw itself daily,

I remain the vegan who comes on too strong.