- "Again, if PETA is putting something out, I will
always have my doubts - they see things one way and one way only. Theirs.
In many ways the activists in this country are terrorists of a kind."
[Excerpt from an email written by a heavily indoctrinated and reactionary
US American]
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-
- For a year now I have been an ethical vegetarian. Last
Thanksgiving, I made what I thought was an enlightened moral decision to
stop eating meat and to severely restrict my egg and dairy consumption.
However, an email recently hit my inbox that presents such a powerful argument
justifying the wanton torture and slaughter of animals (so we can please
our palates) that my moral sensibilities and capacity to reason have been
utterly disarmed. Signed with a cryptic "JC," this missive pummeled
me with points I had not even considered when I made what I now rightly
view as my ridiculous decision to go "meatless."
-
- In fact, rarely a day goes by that I don't catch scent
of the pungent aroma of the famous Kansas City barbeque I still crave-one
can barely travel a mile or two in KC without finding oneself in olfactory
range of restaurants that prepare extraordinarily delicious servings of
non-human animal flesh. I fully admit that I miss devouring tender, succulent
sauce-drenched ribs, burnt ends, sliced beef, brisket.As I write this,
I'm salivating like one of Pavlov's dogs tethered to the Cathedral Tower
in Limerick on a Sunday morning.
-
- What an extraordinary dilemma JC has created for me.
At times I am still consumed by an almost overwhelming temptation to indulge
myself in the consumption of one of my fellow animals. Feasting on sentient
beings that had endured tortured, miserable existences (existences that
were mere warm-ups for the sheer savagery that awaited them in the slaughterhouse)
was one of my favorite pastimes.
-
- So the question is, do I continue denying myself the
sublime pleasure of dining on animal tissue in order to appease my conscience,
or do I embrace JC's brilliant justification of meat consumption and satiate
my hunger with a thick rare burger drowned in Heinz?
-
- Allow me to examine and dissect some of JC's eloquent
and illuminating conclusions:
-
- JC: "I can't be held responsible for how turkeys
or any animals are slaughtered. I'm never going to give up meat or fish
or fowl, as our diet does require us to have protein and other nutrients
that we receive from these products and I and many others enjoy eating
them."
-
- So forget the notion of the banality of evil. As a consumer,
even if I eat meat I am absolved of ALL responsibility for the unimaginable
horrors the producers inflict upon factory-farmed animals from "cradle
to grave."
-
- For Christ's sake! I've been subsisting for over a year
without said "protein and other nutrients" from meat! I am a
miracle of modern science!
-
- And I find it nearly impossible to disagree with JC's
statement that "I and many others enjoy eating them." (The "them"
being animals of course- I would be lying if I said I didn't enjoy eating
meat). As I was growing up my mother frequently confronted me with the
question, "If everyone else jumped off a bridge would you do it too?"
Obviously the "correct" response was "no." Sorry, Mom,
but JC's lemming logic is a hell of a lot more enticing than going against
the grain and "doing the right thing." Screw that-I'll have the
porterhouse, please!
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- JC: "People have to eat and the bulk of their protein
comes from animal sources. They have been doing it since the cave man and
it isn't going to stop anytime soon. Tofu just doesn't cut it for most
people as a meat substitute, nor those grotesque meat imitations made from
veggie products and then shaped into meat like looking products."
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- Now that is a truly impenetrable Maginot Line of reasoning.
I can't begin to argue with the assertion that people have to eat. And
the bulk of my protein did indeed come from animal sources for about 39
years of my life. JC is a tough nut to crack! And to think I've actually
been eating tofu and "those grotesque meat imitations made from veggie
products and then shaped into meat like looking products." I cannot
imagine what I've been thinking. Hunks of blood-saturated animal flesh,
fat, and muscle that at some point in the production process were commingled
with various organs, hooves, fur, and shitforget those "grotesque
meat imitations." I can really wrap my appetite around mutilated and
raw animal parts that quickly rot if they aren't refrigerated.
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- Sorry Bossy, Wilbur and feathered friends. Since we human
animals don't find "meat like looking products" to be delectable,
we're going to continue confining you in dark, cramped quarters throughout
your rueful lives, pumping you full of a toxic stew of antibiotics and
growth hormones, causing you to grow so rapidly that you become crippled,
performing surgery on you with no anesthetic, ripping out your teeth and
clipping off your beaks so that when you go insane from the conditions
we keep you under you can attack your fellow victims without damaging our
product, loading you into severely over-crowded trucks in which you will
do without food or water for several days, and ultimately hanging you by
your hind legs, slitting your throats, crushing your skulls, and boiling
you to death.
-
- Besides, consuming animal flesh worked well for Neanderthals
and a mere 50,000 years have passed. Don't rush us into making changes.
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- JC: "All the people that chose to eat vegetarian
style to attempt to make a statement, can do so, but their numbers will
never increase enough to make a difference in the amount of animals that
are slaughtered. Its supply and demand and it appears that the demand is
still there. I think a more riveting point in considering limiting human
consumption of some of these products is to be more careful about the meat/fowl/fish
one eats is because
- of all the contamination w/ e.coli, salmonella &
mercury. That to me, is the real concern."
-
- She's right. Every last one of us who "eat vegetarian
style" just wants "to make a statement." It has NOTHING
to do with ethics, moral or conscience. We're just showing off, carving
out a niche and making a name for ourselves. And there are so damn few
of us that the immutable laws of capitalism (which all good libertarians
from Texas KNOW were handed down to Moses along with the Ten Commandments)
will inevitably prevail. It is God's will that we adhere to the law of
supply and demand as the chief guiding principle of humanity. So when JC
so astutely observes, "it appears the demand is still there,"
who are we humble herbivores to argue?
-
- And what self-respecting speciesist inflated with the
hubris of humanity's inherent right to subjugate and exploit "lesser"
beings wouldn't agree with this gem from JC?
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- "I think a more riveting point in considering limiting
human consumption of some of these products is to be more careful about
the meat/fowl/fish one eats is because of all the contamination w/ e.coli,
salmonella & mercury. That to me, is the real concern."
-
- Fuck the non-human animals. Humans are the REAL concern.
Why didn't I think of that before I wasted 12 months of prime meat-eating
time? Keep brutalizing the cows, pigs and chickens. Just take care not
to get sick when you eat them.
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- JC: "This is not one plight that I'm going to worry
about - especially since itis an American tradition. If people want to
eat plain lasagne for T-day or just a green bean casserole for any holiday
they can certainly do so, but it isn't something that I would personally
choose to do."
-
- Inflicting unconscionable pain and abuse upon non-human
animals so that we can eat them is an "American tradition." JC
is right! And you don't fuck with traditions, especially American ones.
Like bombing smaller countries into the Stone Age. Manifest destinying
our way across the North American continent. Installing and supporting
ruthless dictators who adhere to the Washington Consensus. Wielding our
economic power like a cudgel to beat sovereign nations into submission.
Lynching. Jim Crow. Slavery. Native American genocide. Just to name a few.
-
- And I have to admit that there is something fundamentally
flawed with anyone who would "want to eat plain lasagna for T-day
or just a green bean casserole for any holiday." That is just plain
un-American. Let's start carving that bird!
-
- JC: "Again, if PETA is putting something out, I
will always have my doubts - they see things one way and one way only.
Theirs. In many ways the activists in this country are terrorists of a
kind. They think they are more civilized in their behavior but they try
to terrorize people "by educating them" to the extreme conditions
some animals face and are unable to be reasoned with at all. Its their
way or the highway."
-
- "If PETA is putting something out, I will always
have my doubts - they see things one way and one way only." Amen to
that, JC. Simply examine their name. Can you imagine a more arrogant, rigid
group than the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals? Thanks to JC's
email, I too am beginning to harbor many doubts about them. Where the hell
do Ingrid Newkirk and her band of "terrorists of a kind" get
off thinking they are "more civilized in their behavior?" As
human beings, don't we have the God-given right of dominion, which would
mean we can abuse animals whenever we damn well please? And PETA members,
don't you dare terrorize us with your knowledge. The reality is that we
enjoy eating the flesh of dead animals and the more ignorant of their pain
we remain, the better. So PETA, you can take OUR way or the highway. I
think you know where the meat-eating population wants you to shove your
ethics. We're broiling pork chops tonight!
-
- So for a year now I have engaged in this rotten behavior
known as vegetarianism. I have been depriving my body of protein, have
been eating "grotesque" meat substitutes for no reason, have
been violating sacred American traditions, have been "making a statement,"
have been engaging in a form of elitism, and have been a "terrorist
of a kind." Somebody stop this bus! I want off!
-
- Mea culpa!
-
- And just how many pounds of meat must I consume before
I am once again practicing the "American Way of Life" and reveling
in its "non-negotiable" splendor?
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- Jason Miller is a recovering US American middle class
suburbanite who strives to remain intellectually free. He is Cyrano's Journal
Online's associate editor (http://www.bestcyrano.org/) and publishes Thomas
Paine's Corner within Cyrano's at http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/.
You can reach him at JMiller@bestcyrano.com
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- http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=460
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