Political scientists call them “Bubbles,” the increasingly closed circles in which Americans gather around new media technologies to only read, see, hear and discuss political positions and issues they already agree with. The idea is not to learn or change but to be reinforced. My idea of politics, courtesy of Thomas Jefferson, was that democracy requires a mixing of people with different ideas, a culture that promotes listening as well as arguing, empathy as well as attack. Solutions to problems are achieved through compromise and civil argument, not raging around angry blogs and cable news channels.
Bubbles move us all in a different direction than Jefferson had in mind, I don’t know anyone who watches cable news or functions in a blog bubble who is not angry. Quite often, the hallmarks of these bubbles are the demonizing of people who disagree, the promotion of fear, anger and conspiracy. Fox News is such a bubble, so, I gather, is MSNBC, although I have never watched it. Inside of these bubbles, we lose the sense of people who disagree with us as being human, they simply are symbols ideas and conspiracies that enrage us, so we can hate and ignore them. We lose the will or reason to negotiate or listen, or learn or ever change our minds. We can never come together. Bubbles are the antithesis for me both of journalism and of democracy, anyone who patronizes them is an enemy of free thought and democratic culture. They are poisoning civic systems everywhere and making Jefferson’s idea of civil dialogue and resolution impossible.
This week I spent some time on the website of NYClass, founded by animal rights advocate and real estate developer Steve Nislick, a close friend and supporter of the city’s new mayor Bill deBlasio and the leader of the movement to remove the carriage horses from New York. It was interesting, somewhat different that I expected, but clearly a “bubble” of its own. The site’s motto is “Get Political For Animals” and they certainly have. Nislick was a major campaign contributor to the city’s new mayor, he has been influential in getting the mayor to promise that the removal of the carriage horses was his “number one priority.” Nislick is jubiliant these days – “Bill deBlasio is one of our own” – he writes, “for the first time ever, the mayor is one of us!” and so, he says are the new City Council President and council members. I can’t help but think of the carriage owners and horses, engulfed by this righteous and powerful armada.
The NYClass site has lobbied for various animal rights issues for some time, but has risen to influence on the backs of the carriage horses. The focal point of their movement now is the “retirement” of the carriage horses from New York City, they have more than 50,000 “likes” on Facebook. Nislick clearly sees the battle over the horses are over, he is fairly drooling over it on his blog, making plans for the horses and ebullient about the “vintage” electric carts that will replace them.
Warning: there is plenty of politics on this site, do not look for romance or nuance. If you love the politics of animals, you will like it, if you love animals, perhaps not.
But you would do well to check out the site for yourself and reach your own conclusions, I will share mine, and it is always interesting to see others. I did not get the sense that Nislick’s motives were greed or real estate – I don’t know him or his motives – but he seems to be a life-long supporter of causes he believes further the lives and safety of animals. His group has lobbied intensely and successfully for new laws regulating puppy mills. I am sorry he hasn’t sent his attack protestors to scream at puppy mills rather than the carriage horses in Central Park. Nislick has seized upon the horses as major cultural and political issue in New York, he has ridden it to considerable political power and influence. I had the sense he wasn’t so much interested in money as he was in political influence.
There is no concrete evidence that Nislick plans to seize the stables for his own profit, although development is certainly an issue in the background of this sad drama. Nislick does appear somewhat – sincerely – obsessed with the carriage horses and what he calls their “intolerable suffering.” He is a passionate advocate for one view of animals in our world.
NYClass has a very political view of animals. The site features a photo of an injured carriage horse lying down on the ground, it is a wrenching and piteous photo, it is hardly typical of the lives of the horses. The site focuses heavily on the idea that the horses ought not be in New York City with all of it’s traffic and congestion, and to a lesser degree, on the idea that they are chronically mistreated, housed in horrible living quarters in tiny and suffocating cells. They provide little or no evidence for this latter accusation. I saw something else that was important to me. If the people driving the carriages and owning them were completely de-humanizing, so were the horses. There was no sense at all of what horses are like, of them as animals with personalities, needs and traits, there was no sense of them at all beyond being generalized objects of abuse and personification. It was the coldest and narrowest way to look at animals.
Such treatment would be clearly illegal, there has been one accusation of neglect in the past decade.
To support the idea that New York is too dangerous for carriage horses, Nislick lists six incidents of accidents and injuries involving cars, trucks, busses and horses over the past ten yeaers. One was fatal to the horses, the others were not, several were minor. I was surprised, given the number of horses, trips and interactions in New York City, that the number was so small, it was not convincing. Horses in the wild die much more frequently, and often, more horribly. So do many dogs in New York City. It is ironic that horses in New York City are safer than they ever have been, a century ago they lived short lives, under brutal conditions and died awful deaths.
There were also no specific allegations of cruelty or abuse involving any of the current owners or riders in New York City. Somewhat typically of the evolving political view of animals, there was this very idealized notion of how animals really ought to live. They ought to be removed from urban environments and taken to “rescue” farms, where they could live without work and “graze freely.” This idea – a common fantasy of pet owners – seems to be at the heart of the drive to “retire” the animals. It has never had much to do with the real lives of real animals. The site quotes Jon Stewart of Comedy Central as referring to the “sad-eyed horse district” around his studios, perhaps this explains why he did not challenge Mayor deBlasio’s rather stunning comparison on television the other night of the treatment of the horses to the “waterboarding” (torture) of suspected terrorists and prisoners of war.
Nisnick suggests that all of the carriage drivers will be found new work – presumably driving the new vintage “electric carts” he and the mayor propose ought to replace the horses. No one seems to care that the drivers want to drive horses, not automobiles. Risnick loves the carts, he rhapsodizes about how eco-friendly and pleasing they would be to ride. He also guarantees that every one of the carriage horses will be sent to rescue facilities in the area, he says arrangements have already been made for that, although he offers no specifics. I don’t believe him, neither does any horse person I know.
I see some of the classic elements of the “bubble” on this blog, the demonizing of the carriage drivers (he suggests they steal money from tourists and from the city and treated the animals with wanton cruelty) a sense of anger and righteousness, a refusal to acknowledge any point of view other than one. I found it curious that none of the so-called animal rights activists are interesting in offering any proposals for the horses other than their rescue and removal from New York. Why, I wondered wouldn’t NY Class lobby for some streets around the horses to be cleared of traffic, as the city does for joggers and bicyclists? Why not lobby for new and modern stables in which to house the horses, perhaps as part of land sale or development deal?
Why is it all right for the New York Police Department to stable horses in every borough of the city, often in stables just like the carriage horses? Is the mayor going to do away with the mounted police unit of the NYPD?
Why would an animal rights group be so determined to remove animals from the city, rather than to find meaningful ways to keep them there? Why wouldn’t a mayor want to urgently meet with the carriage horse owners to try to make the horses lives better, if he feels so strongly about their welfare. I found the NY Class site quite cold, it had the feel and the tone of a Washington political blog or a cable news shout-a-thon. it did not reflect any kind of understanding of animals, nothing of their magic or history, of the need or glorious tradition of working animals to work. It was crammed with human emotional projections and guesses about their happiness and treatment. I would like to ask Mr. Nisnick if it really benefits animals to ban them from the modern world of humans, where they should so easily be forgotten and left behind in our rush to develop the world.
Nisnick says on his site that the horses can’t lie down in their stalls, that is false, the stalls are small, they are in century old buildings, but I saw a number of them lying down, none of them appeared uneasy or uncomfortable, they get plenty of exercise. The NY Class site thought it an outrage that the horses sometimes worked 9 hours a day, I hope he doesn’t come up here to the farm and meet my border collie, that is a lot less than horses on farms or in the “wild” get to work and forage.
He ways they don’t get to graze outside, and this so, but could easily be remedied by moving to a new facility, there is a lot of parkland around the current stables. When NY Class talks about getting political, they aren’t kidding. They consider the recent city-wide election a resounding victory – “we won,” triumphs the site with a photo of Mayor deBlasio, who said he was “honored to be a part of this movement” – but this kind of (to me) extremist and unyielding ideology reminded me more of the Tea Party than it did of a group committed to working with everyone for the betterment of animals. It seems both the “left” and the “right” favor extremism and ideological purity, both remind of Communist dogma more than Jeffersonian democracy.
I find the issue of the horses as sad as it is compelling, It seems to me the horses are now at the mercy of political fanatics, the politics of righteousness, not of animal people or animal lovers. I don’t see much love or compassion there, for animals or humans. If the mayor loves animals so much, why doesn’t he own a single one? How can he represent their interests? I don’t find the fact that the City Council President owns a rescue cat to be convincing or credible when it comes to her understanding of the carriage horses. The core idea here is that the animals in our world are being abused by people, thus anger at people is totally justified. It’s hard to imagine a better formula for self-righteousness and closed minds. It is far too narrow a prism through which to look at animals, it is not the new wisdom and humanity that they desperately need.
I have this sense – I was a political reporter for a while – that this bodes poorly both for the mayor and the mantle of “progressivism” that he has adopted. I like to think of myself as progressive, but I don’t associate progressivism with such unyielding rigidity and cruelty – the attacks on the drivers and owners and tourists riding in the carriages – are simply unconscionable and incompatible with any real idea of humanity or progressive thinking.
I was left cold by the site, it showed nothing of the true nature of animals, offered no new ideas for truly saving them, as opposed to rescuing them, it seemed arrogant and chest-thumping, contemptuous and thoughtless. They might think they are on the verge of a great victory for their group, but it will be a landmark defeat for animals in my mind, it will mark the end of animals living and working with people in New York City. Vintage cars are not in need of advocates in New York City – mechanical vehicles do well there – but the horses are.
I am glad I went onto the NYClass site, I would recommend it to anyone seriously exploring this seminal question of the future of animals in our world. I haven’t the slightest doubt about what Thomas Jefferson would do if asked to resolve the question of the carriage horses of New York, because he wrote about the process so often and did it again and again. He would meet with the activists, the drivers, the carriage owners. He would go see the horses, he would invite all of the principals into a big room and make them stay there until they reached an agreement that acknowledged the different ideas and values of everyone.
He would design and build a beautiful new stable on the edge of a city park in Manhattan, it would have all kinds of room for the horses and make it easier for their owners and riders to stall hay and transport them.
Jefferson, an architect, would build lanes exclusively for the horses during the hours in which they come and go, removing any possibility of accidents or injuries to them. He would proclaim the principle that animals have the right to live among us, when it is possible, working animals are our partners, not our dependent victims. He might say – he did – that a democracy requires that we listen to all points of view and respect them. People have the right to own and ride horses, horses have the right to live among us, as they have for thousands of years. We have the right to ride in their carriages and see them if we wish. Good and honest people have the right to do their work and keep their jobs. It all sounds fairly progressive to me.
Reading through some of Jefferson’s quotes on governing, I immediately thought of the carriage horses when I thought of this one. “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” I wish the horses protection from their rescuers.
