Pasadena City Councilman Steve Madison needs to own his true desires, learn how to “listen” to differing perspectives, and learn how to deal with a defeat. He should not allow his quite blatant and naked desire to scapegoat all Pit Bulls for crimes not yet committed merge into completely separate issues that no one was calling for prior to his agenda being brought forward to his colleagues.
1) Dealing with “dangerous” individual dogs is a task best left to the breed-neutral “dangerous dog” laws that already exist from municipality to municipality.
2) Dealing with “dangerous” individual dogs is a concept NOT dealt with when sweepingly indicting all dogs deemed to be mixed at some level with “Pit Bull,” a subjective term of slang.
3) Dealing with “dangerous” individual dogs is a concept NOT dealt with when you mandate the sterilization of all dogs deemed to be mixed at some level with “Pit Bull,” a subjective term of slang, after you’ve sweepingly indicted them all for being “inherently dangerous” without evidence or incident.
4) Dealing with “dangerous” individual dogs is a concept NOT dealt with when you mandate the sterilization of all dogs across the board.
Numbers 2 and 3 are matters of profiling, precrime, prejudice, intolerance, discrimination, vilifying and ignorance/hate. Number 4 is a matter of education, “overpopulation,” euthanized animals, shelter practices, transparency, enforcement of existing laws, community outreach and available/accessible programs. If you want to have a conversation based around the proposed idea on the back end of concept number 4 then let’s have that conversation on its own merits, not on the back of further stigmatizing Pit Bulls. Leave the sensationalist rhetoric at home, in your own space, to be spewed to your own tailored audience. Society does not accept these ideologies and philosophies of broad and vague indictment. Madison promoting such rubbish only serves to want to further take the world in the opposite direction.
Can Steve Madison dissociate himself from his own belief for even a moment? Is he able to recognize the reality that millions upon millions of these dogs that he vaguely takes issue with actually exist in the United States? This is an undeniable fact, at any level you’d want to slice it, yet he doesn’t care to acknowledge it or treat its obviousness as actual counter-evidence to his reached conclusions. Madison will point to “evidence” of a reported attack, with a reported breed (which is usually based solely on a media mention), and hold it up as the relevant evidence that surely outweighs the silent and obvious but non-reported evidence that I just spoke of. Keep in mind that, whatever the details, this is a singular incident! Regardless, he will also speak of whatever reported attack while ignoring the many circumstances often cited during or leading up to said attack, circumstances that are genuinely and directly relevant to actual public safety. And yet the breed or type of the alleged offending dog will be his only interested takeaway. If it’s reported as a Pit Bull he will use it, if it’s not then he will discard it.
Mr. Madison can be introduced to, questioned on, or confronted with any and all versions of information that would actually serve to conflict with his existing beliefs, and instead of hearing such information or thinking on such information he would revert to his corner of cognitive dissonance. Critical thinkers would try to deal with the inconsistency of their belief when challenged with countering information. On this issue Steve Madison is not a critical thinker. He will resort to refuting, rejecting, distorting and/or ignoring any dog/Pit Bull-related information that he doesn’t agree with. This is what his current track record actually shows, a belief disconfirmation paradigm stooped in confirmation bias. More directly, he seeks out people like Colleen Lynn from the hate group DogsBite.org in order to “confirm” what he already believes, while at the same time ignoring the wealth of detailed and researched information coming from the AVMA, the CDC, the American Bar Association, and quite literally every single professional animal/safety-related organization that exists in this country today.
To the contrary, if (for example) a Pit Bull owner (I’ll use myself) is to be confronted with the evidence of a singular incident, they wouldn’t out of hand claim that such an incident isn’t ever possible, but rather simply ask that their dog be judged on its own merits and not on the actions of another dog, no matter what the determined breed of that dog ends up being. This is actually recognizing what has happened in that singular incident, but at the same time refuting the concept of collectively blaming every member of whatever relevant “group” that is being conceptualized. Now will there be anomalies to this point? Of course. There will always be certain “bad apples” or ignorant/vile behavior coming from whatever viewed group that materializes in one’s mind, and no matter the subject matter or issue. But my point is that the non-acknowledgement or avoidance of such select information is not normal, standard or a representation of the next person. Most Pit Bull owners do not have rigid ideologies based on vilifying massive groups. Singular incidents remain singular incidents, and nothing is ever absolutely perfect.
In closing, Madison’s view of Pit Bulls is a false dilemma in which certain solutions go completely ignored for the purpose of fabricating reality for political gain.