The cow is on the table, she takes on roles to disguise her guise, she must assume names that soothe the savage sapiens who seek satiety. A “meat” cookbook is a collection of vignettes for social occasions and celebration. Let’s look at just one: veal medallions — carefully crated cow-boys separated from their mothers at birth and slaughtered at youth, at the exact moment when their flesh is optimally tender to the tongue and teeth. The name ‘medallions’ evokes an honor bestowed upon the diner, esteeming the favor of their palate. Vegan diets are healthy for children and other living things.
The Jungle opened a section of curtain to reveal where the cow body parts on your plate originated. The best minds of inhumane capitalism hire the most devious among us to serve man. Capitalism wretches souls that way. It’s for dinner.
Sinclair Lewis had already predicted the vicious horror that a body politic driven by greed and wanton power could unleash. He did a damned good take on a fictitious character who possessed certain skills and ambitions, including a despotic trumpish draw.
The Jungle’s heart-wrenching critique of industrial capitalism was lost on readers more worried about the rat faeces that, according to Sinclair, contaminated their sausage. Sinclair later observed: “I aimed at the public’s heart, and by accident I hit it in the stomach.
Sinclair Lewis THE JUNGLE 1906
Mr. T took on fifteen fellow Republiconnivers and finished them off with considerable ease in 2016. Lewis wrote It Can’t Happen Here, revealing that every brick of its heavy foundation had already been kilned.
Artificial intelligence is approaching the capability of moving its not-so-invisible finger, in a curiously recursive way, to write robust robotic code to compile algorithms of cruel but profitable intention. A perfection of agency commanded by global geopolitical intention without the slightest sliver of morality. Let there be slaughterhouses, and there were slaughterhouses.
The turkey is also in the room
Thanks for reading.
billziegler1947 
So many points tied together neatly here, Bill.
I’m reading a book written in the late 80’s called ‘The End of Nature.’ Hindsight being 20/20, it is eerily on point to today’s effects. Still, even with heightened awareness and constant conversation about how a warming earth affects us all, I have little hope that human beings — although capable — will ever be complicit in behavior change required to reverse course. There are so few of us willing to give it the ole’ college try ..
My quiet resolve has instead focused on observing what is left of the wild, while it remains to be observable. To lose wild nature is to lose ourselves.
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Thank you for the kind comment, Shannon. Journalists, investigative reporters, whistleblowers, information leakers… take great risks. I try to amplify their voices, as you have just done by mentioning Bill McKibben’s ground-breaking work because I have just now discovered that McKibben and Kolbert were just interviewed by David Remnick of the New Yorker. In fact, the link showed up on Google just 4 minutes ago 🙂 Here it is:
https://www.newyorker.com/podcast/the-new-yorker-radio-hour/karen-russell-on-nature-and-bill-mckibben-and-elizabeth-kolbert-on-the-end-of-nature
Synchronicity strikes again 🙂
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Synchronicity indeed! I just listened to the podcast. Superb pairing. Yes, Kolbert’s 6th Extinction was a real wake-up for me several years ago. I was already vegan, but you could say I stepped up my game a bit after that .. educating kids became my hyper-focus. Still at it, Bill. They’re the future. 😀
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Naomi Klein (This Changes Everything) connected very many loose wobbly dots for me, as has Elizabeth Kolbert. I plan to look at The End of Nature too. The titles for those three books don’t mince words, do they? Am also following Greta Thunberg on Twitter too. She retweets some great stuff, like this:
Hyper-focus on educating everyone I can. Thanks for stepping up your game!
🙂
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While out and about today, I happened to chance upon a conversation and a woman said to another woman, “I don’t eat anyone’s meat anymore. I just eat chicken breasts.” I just shook my head and sadly, I don’t even think that she would get the point of this post.
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Thanks for that, Shelby. An enormous chasm exists between the barbecue pit and the slaughterhouse. People eat fish on something they call “meatless Fridays”. Speaking of fishing, here is an article from The Guardian today on the impact of something called “seafood.”:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/may/09/seas-stop-eating-fish-fishing-industry-government?fbclid=IwAR2YZOZ0bzBSCOV6jj1Ros5zm6wtCzMAIIO3SQMhBKSyPzkpzlyWfqSSYsk
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I really like this one. It must be the one you worked days on. I truly loved it. You are excellent at conversion. You greatly influence my mind and heart. Me
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Hi Lilly, thank you for those kind words. This one kept coming back to grapple and snap at my wordage choicery, bled from the ears I did. The curse of being too self-critical and overly nit-pickerish, that’s what! It helped not a whit that LokiCat, my chief editor, kept loking for mistakes to paw at. 🙂
I do have a knack for converting rods to furlongs, there is that.
For more on the exploits of Loki:
https://billziegler1947.com/2017/12/20/the-loki-keyboard/
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