Among the countless misfortunes that those four-legged angels we call "dogs" were left by God, in His malice or indifference, in the hands of the devil (us), one should include—alongside the slavery and suffering of spending a lifetime bound to a chain, enduring incomprehensible and unjustified abandonment, serving as slaughterhouse meat for consumption —fortunately only in the East, I believe—, or serving as cannon fodder in dogfights to satisfy the greedy gambling urges of owners and enthusiasts, among so many others—the misfortune of being destined to be a farmhouse dog (perro de cortijo): to continue serving the owner's interests above any other circumstance, while remaining for him a mere tool whose value usually depends exclusively on the profit obtained
We humans are no strangers to the fate of the farmhouse dog. There are those, quite a few, who are happy to be one; and there are also some, far fewer, who have almost no alternative, risking their very skins in the process —like the Jewish prisoners forced to collaborate in the gas chambers, or the combat soldiers afflicted for the rest of their lives by post-traumatic stress disorder
Farmhouse dogs appear directly or indirectly in many stories due to their intimate connection with human actions as despicable as betrayal or denunciation. One of them, the film On the Waterfront, is a fascinating example, possibly not entirely detached from the remorse of its director, Elia Kazan, for having collaborated (or having been forced to collaborate—cancellation was not invented yesterday!) with the House Un-American Activities Committee during Hollywood's so-called "witch hunt."
There are also, in my subjective opinion, somewhat surprising cases of similar behavior driven by reasons akin to stupidity: citizens with precarious lives who passionately defend the interests of the powerful; immigrants who lash out against those who arrived after them; women who declare themselves feminine but not feminist, attacking feminism—and not just its excesses—as a rule, in order to win admiration among certain men; those who swallow all of its excesses to win it among certain women; and also, of course, the reverse: men swallowing any chauvinist excess to fraternize with some of their peers, and others swallowing any feminist excess to please certain women
Other cases, far less surprising, occur when the owner's interest intertwines with one's own. Here we can probably no longer speak of farmhouse dogs, but of simple hypocrisy, and the examples are abundant—politicians, journalists, bureaucrats. Occupying the apex of the pyramid, the masters cannot be many, and no expense can be spared in protecting status and heritage. Though, pressing a bit further, in reality there is only one master: money, and sooner or later, we are all forced to serve it
Accessed 102 times