I think the problem here is the concurrent effects of climate change. The US couldn’t have picked a worse time to move from flirting with facism to full-on marrying it.

You can deal with one crisis if you’re coordinated enough but the chaos that’s already occurring with the climate - and is set to become exponentially worse - doesn’t give me much hope for a harmonious conclusion to this. Obviously, I hope I’m wrong and you’re right.

Not quite: it means “yeah, but you’re a girl so you would say that to be my friend”. Source: I’m terminally Glaswegian

I don’t know why I find this so hilarious.

Okay, if we’re getting serious about it, I’m not sure I agree cruelty scales up alongside intelligence. It’s an interesting take, but, as you say, it’s an entirely human concept which doesn’t really exist outside of our own conceived morality and can’t be applied to beings which aren’t capable of understanding it.

Put it this way: a cat batting a mouse around isn’t considering its actions cruel or even considering its actions in a wider context at all. A human doing the same would be doing both. However, by that logic, animals aren’t capable of any other abstract thought such as compassion, empathy and altruism. We are. It might be the case that everything abstract scales up with intelligence which, yes, leads to concepts such as ‘cruelty’ but also all the other amazing shit humans are capable of.

Sorry man, but I can’t stop laughing at you calling an entire animal species ‘evil’. Not only that, but ‘notoriously evil’. Like there’s a chapter in the Bible devoted to the tale of a dolphin riding Jesus up his dead arsehole.