Chris Hedges has a new article out proclaiming all forms of life are sacred. I wonder what he will do when he gets a bad case of MRSA (methicillin resistant stap. aureus). He might suddenly realize some forms of life are more sacred than others, or perhaps he can talk democracy with the bacteria. Perhaps he can persuade himself that Imipenim isn't so much a drug to kill them, as a humane birth control suggestion. Or perhaps he can simply try to stagger along with a boil.
I hope he reads this and pictures himself with a big MRSA boil on his head....because here I come with my scalpel of common sense, and an itch to incise and drain it. My occult reference of my medical professional status is not insignificant to some of my arguments against Hedges'. Anemia is a VERY serious problem that strikes a significant portion of the population: mostly women and children.
But first things first, let's think about this philosophically and psychoanalitically...to Chris Hedges credit he does seem to make the distinction between sentient beings, and life in general. I've met vegan lunatics who unironically agreed with my snide statements about how carrots cry when you pull them from the ground, the holy mother earth. Unfortunately, Chris Hedges painfully puts his ignorance in terms of what actually happens in the world on display. I can't say I am surprised. I met him at a protest march about the Gaza war. When I asked him some pointed questions, he mansplained me a bunch of opinionated nonsense he seemed certain was fact. I was pretty surprised. He had lived in Israel, and should have know better. If he actually listened to my questions, which he seemed almost unable to do, at the very least he should have picked up that I also had lived there, and not fallen into trite rhetoric combined with dogmatic distortions wouldn't cut it with someone who understood the situation from a daily perspective.
I shouldn't have been surprised by his lapse into leftist paradigms without reality checking them. Hedges is a theologian in 2015. He is almost by definition less interested in reality than tales of morality. Hundreds of years after the age of enlightenment , this man uses the word sacred as if it were going to justify much. He is in reality a powerful preacher of the left wing. Unfortunately, unlike many of his colleagues he hasn't even bother pretending to be secular.
Hedges draws on sources as diverse as biblical morality and modern feminism to justify one big thesis: using animal products is immoral. I hope for his sake this isn't the first clinical sign of the lack of B12 that comes from a vegan diet. As a vegan Hedges is at risk for the effects of this B12-free way of eating including permanent irreversible dementia. Maybe he's already there. He certainly seems to have had some convenient memory lapses since he has been accused of plagiarism. He also fundamentally misunderstands both biblical and feminist thought.
Chris's first assertions- that if you murder animal you will murder humans- have an eerie religious ring. "What you do to the least of them, you do to me!" of so said that Jesus guy in the movie I saw when I was a kid before some really bad specially effects of a glowing halo. But what you see in the movies ain't necessarily real. Jesus was an Arab-Jew from somewhere near Bethlehem if we take the myth literally. He would definitely have eaten meat. The meat would have been slaughtered according to the laws of Kashrut. But let's say, for the sake of argument it was slaughtered by some local Bedouins. There would barely be a difference in the fundamental tribal understanding of meat slaughter. Respect. Hedges lived in the middle east for years. He knows full well that the barbaric practices against animals he speaks of are almost entirely Western inventions. Whether he speaks of pulling baby calves from their mother's teats of killing baby chickens, he must know in reality outside of the West many people just don't operate that way. Seriously, Chris, when was the last time you saw a nomadic group of people factory farming...never! A nomad almost by definition must raise her livestock to live and multiply while moving over scarce grazing land. Killing baby animals? That might kill the whole damn tribe.
Such a brazen attitude towards the truth as Hedges displays may reveal ulterior motives for his navel gazing need to share his veganism with all of us, especially at a time that many of us occasionally eat from the trash and can't afford organic let alone vegan lifestyles. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder if his real motivation isn't love of money more than love of meat, uh excuse me sentient beings with whom we share out sacred planet. At the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist, I wonder if veganism is being promoted as some hip new trend by the CIA to convince world populations to ignore the obvious: we are all getting so damn poor we can't afford meat anymore, not even the cruelly factory farmed antibiotic coated unhealthy stuff I'll be hoping to eat soon. I haven't met a good steak my feminist mouth didn't want to kiss, bite and devour. And as it turns out that is a pretty good idea ever now and then given that as a woman I bleed. On a monthly basis. If Chris Hedges had a heavy period from menstruating inducing iron deficiency anemia as I do I doubt he's be extolling the feminism of veganism. He's instead be caught up between two competing nonfactual leftist dogmas: natural medicines are best, and meat is always cruelty. His head might explode.
Lucky for him he's some rich man who can afford to eat meat or not. He needs to go down to the known food dumps outside his local area and observe the behaviour of the less fashionable freegans. By whom I mean the homeless. The last time I was dumpser diving a local homeless man was managing the scene. He carefully sorted out everything from sandwiches to sushi by not only condition and contents but the sell by/spoil by date as printed on the packages. I dumpster dive extremely high priced places in the hopes of scoring some good stuff I would otherwise never eat, so as expected this man had catalogued a treasure trove of everything from pate to sushi on the pavement. He saw my delight when he explained to me that the sushi was dated for today and had come out 2 hours ago. "You like sushi, don't you?" The man unselfishly picked out some sealed fresh packages of really nice sushi, and handed them to me. He just as easily could have mugged me for my valuables. Maybe even justifiably considering his obvious total poverty and the fact that I was dumpster diving while vacationing in London. Maybe meat is murder, but at that moment fish was unspeakable kindness. Carefully sorting packaged meat and cheese sandwiches in the trash was also about that homeless man living with a certain kind of dignity that comes from maintaining one's usefullness to society even if the society was literally throwing him onto the pavement.
What disturbs me the most about Hedges peice is the total tone deafness to normal people. This charecteristic is all too common among leftists. When I say normal people I mean the kind of people, admittedly many of whom reside outside the USA, who can barely afford meat, but scrap up money to serve it to their guests as an honor. Veganism is a fine trend for rich upper east siders who can check their B12 every 3 months, but if he thinks he's going to convince the Massai tribe of Kenya, the Bedouins of the Negev, or even American food stamp recipients to give up meat, or that they should give up meat, he has another thing coming. If he spent even a bit of his time being Christ-like and healing the poor he would immediately see why. Even in the wealthy US, a significant percentage of women and children have iron deficiency anemia. In our teenage girls the number is around 10% according to the CDC. Possible symptoms include loss of energy and difficulty concentrating. Think about how anemia plays into gender stereotyping the next time you claim veganism is feminism. In very young children whose brains are still developing, and iron is extremely crucial for the numbers are even higher than that. But Hedges was never really concerned with the intellectual development of the poor now was he. Intelligent poor people would be leaving his precious sacred church in droves. And no, sorry Chis, meat is not the same thing as the American war against Iraq or the holocaust. The fact that Hedges even compares these seriously shows some seriously faulty logic. Hedges claims he witnessed dismemberment of humans, and it was impossible not to make the link with animals. Well have you ever been to a surgery? It's also pretty easy to see the link with animals; but this stuff saves lives. Hunks of meat look like hunks of humans? Well duh. We are all mammals here. Now like I lioness, I'm off to hunt a steak.
No comments:
Post a Comment