OPINIONS THAT ARE INGRAINED IN IGNORANCE

By Graham Potter | Wednesday, November 7, 2018

Should you respond to people who put forward an opinion that is so ingrained in ignorance that it is best left in the dark where it belongs?

Probably not … but when radical animal activists come out of the woodwork and lash out at the sport of horseracing and its participants using evocative terms and phrases that have no bearing on reality, as they predicably have done again after this year’s Melbourne Cup, there is a huge temptation to put them back in their boxes (oops, they probably won’t approve of that terminology).

And no, I will not try and persuade them to change their minds. That looks like that is a closed shop … suffice to say that I pity their beliefs if this is an example of the lens through which they view life in general.

Certainly, in the racing context, it’s a warped view to be sure, seemingly discoloured by a predisposed malicious attitude.

The activists want racing banned. They seem to think that racing stakeholders are only in it for the money and nobody cares about the horse.

They don’t know what they are talking about.

If stakeholders were in it for the profit they can make there would only be between five or ten percent of current volume of stakeholders left in the game. The ledger book for most stakeholders does not make pretty reading.

They are merely in it for the entertainment racing provides … bugger the horse … is another suggestion of the radicals.

Provides for who?

Again, the radicals don’t have a clue!

Do they seriously want you to believe that many of the racing participants … strappers, work riders, trainers, vets etc … all get up at 4am in the morning, gallop horses, walk horses, feed horses, look after their every need both mentally and physically in every type of weather … for entertainment pleasure?

Why wouldn’t they take the easy way out … pull up a chair, pour a drink and watch a movie instead?

What a ridiculous notion that they are doing all of this for some race-day ‘entertainment.’

That chair, drink, movie option is probably what the radicals do. Perhaps that’s why they have too much time on their hands … time to get the wrong end of the stick. (I said stick, not whip. Don’t panic guys).

I am not going to tell the activists why so many thousands of people are directly or indirectly involved in racing throughout the country. They would have heard it before if they were listening … but they don’t care.

They don’t want to know.

The reason for that is the truth takes the wind out of the self-righteous sails and deflates their roaring outrage and reduces it to a mere, sad whimper.

They say a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

I’m not sure what you would you call ‘no knowledge’ but I do know I have seen it in action.

It generally comes around once a year … usually around Melbourne Cup time.