Mad World

'We drove through the hills with the moon in our eyes
We bought a house in the country where we could lose our minds' - Nick Cave

I moved out here, the middle of nowhere, for a quiet life. All I want to do is raise as much of my own food as I can and ride my bike. Play with my dogs, run, hike. A simple life. A very human life. We evolved eating meat and moving around in the natural world and I'm trying to mimic these things as best I can while navigating the Zoo that humans are currently inhabiting. These things don't seem that unreasonable, in fact they should be inalienable rights as humans if human health and living our best lives was the goal of humanity. But unfortunately it's not. Having the woods taken away is a terrible blow. I'm not sure how to fight going forward but I'm going to fight. And now I've become aware of a 2022 ballot initiative that would shut down animal agriculture in Colorado. I'm not exaggerating. I wish I was. Two animal rights activists, one from Boulder and another from Broomfield (a Boulder suburb) have created the initiative and it's couched in the language of preventing animal cruelty, which it will not do, but the intention is to shut down animal agriculture, which it absolutely will do. And because it's an amendment to the Colorado statutes and not the constitution they only need 124,000 or so signatures to get it onto the ballot. And those signatures can be from anywhere in the state, they don't have to have a certain amount from each county or judicial district, meaning they can stand outside a few coffee shops in Boulder and Denver and probably get all the signatures they need in a few afternoons. Because who isn't in favor of ending animal cruelty and exploitation? That's how they'll present it to people but that's not what it is. It's beyond incomprehensible that two vegan transplants who've lived here 10 minutes can bring the whole state to its knees so easily. I would like to brush it off, to say there's no possible way people here would allow this. And if we were talking about Colorado 10 years ago this would be true. The state's very ethos is (was?) Live and Let Live, there's no way folks would fall for this. But the state has been inundated with newcomers, one of the main reasons the Front Range has become so intolerable, and they narrowly approved a measure to release wolves back into the wild here, something I NEVER thought I would see in my lifetime.

How do you fight a ballot initiative? I'm not into politics, I really loathe politics, I just want to live my life, I'm not interested in influencing other people. If someone wants to be vegan, whatever, I truly don't care what someone else puts on their plate for dinner. But vegan activists aren't happy enough to live their lives, they're driven to force their beliefs and agenda onto anybody and everybody. Vegan activism is a cult and the people involved are deeply entrenched. Trying to reason with them is pointless and boy do they love the sound of their own voices.

Thirty years of vegetarianism was a FAIL, I'm not going back to an even worse diet. But I don't know what to do. Arguing with vegans is pointless and aggravating, I won't do it and it gets nowhere. The majority of the public are not vegans. How to make them understand what they're voting for? I don't know. As a side note, artificial insemination will also be illegal for dogs so dog breeders are effected too. In fact, artificial insemination of all animals, domestic pets and livestock, will be re-categorized as a sexual act with an animal, a felony. I can't even make this up. For some reason AI really really infuriates the vegans. This could be the end of spay/neuter in Colorado as well. There is no exception for it and anyone could interpret the law to include it. 

The effects of this are huge, rural life in Colorado will be lost, a multi-billion dollar industry shuttered overnight. The economic effects of this will be felt state wide. Widespread unemployment, hunger, food shortages, skyrocketing food prices, I can't fathom it. This will have a ripple effect in other states, especially on food prices and availability. As meat becomes a luxury for only the super rich, folks will turn to the soy kibble fake meat products and those prices will soar as well. I'm not exaggerating. I wish I was. If the pandemic has taught us nothing it's that we need MORE locally produced food, not less.

Never mind how they're going to enforce this. 

This is video that explains everything pretty succinctly. Spoiler alert, she bursts into tears at the end. The animals matter, absolutely, but the people matter more. I'm crying for Colorado right along with you Rachel. I hardly understand the world anymore.