this post was submitted on 28 May 2026
182 points (98.9% liked)
Memes
55847 readers
912 users here now
Rules:
- Be civil and nice.
- Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.
founded 7 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Police dogs are trained to rat you out, either legitimately or illegitimately.
Them being victims who weren't given a choice doesn't make them not active participants, just sympathetic ones.
Like modern pirates. They're doing it because they need to feed their families and often have no real choice, but that doesn't make it okay to hurt random fisherman and freighter crews.
Police horses will do their best to not step on you when forced to ride into a crowd. Not bastard.
They don't understand what they're doing. They're not participating in policing. They are being used by cops.
That would not be an argument that horse "officers" are not bastards. E.g., lots of human officers drive their cars safely, but that doesn't make them any less bastards.
ACAB because all cops choose to participate in the vile institution of policing. To the best of my knowledge, most non-human animals are cognitively incapable of making that choice. And typically, the "training" to "convince" non-human "officers" to abuse people is itself abusive to the animals.
So, animal "officers" are victims of policing. And they're not bastards because they can't be; they don't have the cognitive functions to intelligently make moral choices. Any monstrous thing an animal "officer" does to any other victims should be considered a crime committed by the animal's human handler and policing as an institution.
They can be victims and be bastards.
A police dog, put in a position to hurt you, will.
A police horse out in a position to hurt you will try not to.
Drug dogs were probably the worst example I could have chosen. A better example would have been a dog used to attack people. They may have been trained and treated with various degrees of mistreatment to do so quite so enthusiastically, but they know they're hurting you.
The police horse uses what agency it has to try not to hurt you.
If someone forces you to drive a car through a crowd, you're still morally culpable if you try to hit people. If you do your best to avoid hurting anyone within the confines of what you were forced to do you're pretty much in the clear.
Considering the stakes of bastarddom are pretty low, I'm willing to judge an animal based on what it would do with its limited autonomy.