MEAT. IT’S WHAT’S FOR MURDER.

By Vi Ransel

7/11/09

It invariably comes down not to “their” eating other animals that have been killed for them, but our “killing” plants and eating them. In an effort to derail discussion and take the spotlight off the issue, meat-eaters refuse to deal seriously with the topic, remaining in denial, or refusing to interrupt the delicious comfort and convenience of the habit deliberately grown in them by the public relations, advertising and mass production mechanisms of corporate capitalism’s need to increase sales of meat products. Pavlov’s dogs would understand this.

The argument that humans are carnivores is outdated by scientific information. Raw meat, anyone? That carnivorous animals who have no choice in what they eat should be singled-out for their meat-eating is, what, disingenuous? That human animals should always come before any other animals is a supremacist premise. Animal Farm, perhaps? Try peddling that passivity in the face of annihilation is a virtue to Palestinians, Iraqis and Afghanis, the current recipients of Western Civilization’s obsessive/complusive drive for dominion. Nota bene: No one has suggested preventive nuclear attack on slaughterhouses, CAFOs and meat venders. No one has advocated shooting meat-purchasers in the face with shotguns. The most ludicrous suggestion of all is that the odor of burning flesh has an “instinctive” appeal to human animals. Would that be with marinade or BBQ sauce? The smell of charring flesh, unadorned with condiments, is off-putting, to say the least. Perhaps some white phosphorous would make it better.

While the “authors” of such “arguments” claim to want scientific fact to back up vegetarian/vegan statements, this is not the case. They simply seek to continue to do as they have always done without anyone’s comments, to be left in peace while the cultivation of “livestock” for the titillation of their tastebuds hastens the destruction of the planet and the onset of hundeds of thousands of cases of preventable, chronic disease. Like it or not, whether you care about animals’ – or plants’ – lives or not, this is self-destructive behavior. Is there a part of SELF-destructive that remains unclear? The science of climatology and the science of medicine have proven that meat-eating is eating us alive. Case closed. That the culture of meat-eating should be held sacrosanct, forbidden to be exposed for what it is, that discussing this subject seriously is held up to ridicule is again, self-destructive.

Dominion, once tasted, is most often forever. The messenger is metaphorically slaughtered. Whether the victims of dominion are human, or other animals is not the crux of the argument. The root of the problem is some animals feeling entitled to dominion over others to the point of discontinuing their existence, whether by WMD dispensed remotely on weddings and funeral parties or ripping them apart while conscious in slaughterhouses, whether by confinement in concentration camps or in CAFOs. The slaughter of human animals springs from the slaughter of their brothers, non-human animals, as the story of Cain and Abel and the subsequent murder of everything that moves illustrates. There is a breadcrumb trail that leads from the murder of animals to the murder of people. It’s like a gateway drug. Ask Bush#43, who delighted in blowing up frogs as a child and graduated to blowing up entire countries full of people.

How many times must this site state that the fight is for ALL sentient beings to be able to their lives as their own, not as prey, physical, economical or cultural? How many times must it be stated that this is a war in which there are many fronts, that each of us may choose his or her own battle, but that we are all, supposedly, on the same side here? What is it about the dominion of one over the other that fails to be perceived as counterfeit, bankrupt and immoral?

“Man’s character is his fate.” – Heraclitus

“First you must learn to smile as you kill.” – John Lennon, from “Working Class Hero”

The ABCs of Atrocity

sow the seeds of future perversity.
Animals are the means we use to teach
our children not only the basics of speech,
but to give them the tools they’re going to need
to begin elementary reading.

We ask “What does the cow say?”
“P is for pig” we tell them
while their animal friends scream in agony
as we mechanically and mercilessly slaughter them,

renaming their dismembered body parts
beef, pork, mutton and poultry
in order to distance the abattoir
from the innocence, the purity, of the nursery.

And as children learn that they are complicit
with their nuggets, wings, ribs and cheeseburgers,
they lock it down deep in denial,
repressing interfamilial murder.

Further, children learn god has given them
“dominion” over all other animals
and some of them practice what’s termed
“animal husbandry.” The 4-H is an example
of the indoctrination of impressionable children
into support of this hypocritical debacle.

It teaches children to care for an animal,
to feed her and groom her and name her,
grow up with her, win a blue ribbon,
and sell her to a restaurant in a stone cold betrayal.

In another perverse twist, we take kids into the woods
and arm them with deadly, high-powered weapons
and teach them to hunt down their animal friends,
who are essentially defenseless against them.

And since we no longer need them as food,
having made factory farms a mass murder industry,
their desecrated bodies are abandoned,
their stuffed heads prove their killers’ masculinity.

Thus what were once
bunnies, Bambi and myriad birds,
cows, sheep, chickens and pigs
who taught us our very first words
are changed into “game”, trophies and edible commodities,
which are undeniably tasty and outrageously profitable.

The point, however, is not sport,
not animal husbandry, nor even macho display,
but to inculcate in children that the value
of friends, love, loyalty and especially fair play

may be dispensed with in simple self-interest,
in particular with regard to “the other”,
thus turning them all into Cain, that they may
more easily make money off and murder their brothers.

It divorces the force of children’s emotions
from the consequences of having a conscience
in the service of their Financial Masters,
for whom they are willing to perpetrate violence

and from responsibility while feeling entitled to rape,
slaughter, plunder and excuse mass atrocities
with not an inkling of compassion or compunction
for either animals or the rest of humanity.

The Pecking Order

Pick
a distinguishing
characteristic
like ————–Black.
Almond eyes. Foreign
accent. Begin to attack.

Label them “other”,
not people at all.
Ignore them. Abhor
them. Push them to the wall.

The more
differences they
have, the lower their
worth. Heaven help
them if covered with
scales, feathers or fur.

Because the more
visible the difference, the
worse off they’ll be. That’s
segregation, designation
to “le caste poverty”.

It’s about having your
cake and eating everyone
else’s, too. The Perpetrators
of Poverty have their
eyes on you!

But you’re not worried
’cause your difference can’t
be seen from afar. Vell,
dollink, zey haff vays to
tell you apart. Remember
those armbands with six-
pointed stars and get up off
your ass before it gets that far!

“Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.”

- Dr. Albert Schweitzer

Because, indeed, it may one day be your own.

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