I read with dismay the letter from the reader in the Sept. 21 Mountain Xpress [“Slaughterhouse ‘Blues’ Is Shocking”]. If she wants to abstain from eating meat and try to persuade others to behave similarly, that is her prerogative.
But her comparison of the killing of animals for their meat and other products to the genocide committed by Nazi Germany against 6 million Jews, countless others from other ethnic groups, not to mention other “undesirables,” such as homosexuals and the mentally disabled, is disturbing, to say the least.
Apparently, the reader’s singleminded disagreement with raising and killing animals for their meat has blinded her to the crimes that have been and continue to be committed throughout history by people against people. Or, and this is generous, she is simply ignorant of the true horrors of the Holocaust and should endeavor to learn more about it.
At a minimum, she should apologize profusely to any Jewish person that she knows for her misguided statement.
— Raymond Capelouto
Asheville
In my experience Raymond, every time there is an article about meat of any kind, suddenly 10 new posters pop up to post the tired and inaccurate Holocaust reference, complete with quotes that come from the PETA playbook, thereby ‘flooding the airwaves’ in order to push an agenda, but on topics other than meat, they are strangely silent. Nary a word about so m any other problems in our society.
What happens is this- numerous PETA types scan any LTE sections of this and many other papers/online rags in order to then rally the forces, usually by a mass shout out for talking points to be espoused. Heck, for all I know a computer algorithm does it for them, thus freeing them up to do whatever they do.
Meanwhile, the question that I’ve posed for years goes un answered-
What do we tell folks like American Indians and other hunter/gatherer tribes that have made their way subsisting on hunted meat not raised on a factory farm?
Do we tell them 3 million yrs of hunter/gatherer culture is simply wrong and we should follow PETA and off our pets, free our horses/livestock from farms
thus giving them no chance to survive and also not even feed/clothe anyone? Do we plow under the remaining untouched land on Earth in order to emulate the Agricultural counterRevolution of about 3,000ish yrs ago which gave us lovely problems like overpopulation, famine and of course war? Somehow this question is never answered.
Meanwhile, then the far righty/borderline Stormfront types mock and ridicule everyone under via numerous unmoderated sockpuppet names.
Because, uhhh, Hillary’s emails and we should go see that movie that purports to tell the real story about the Democratic party?
Finally, someone points out that the Holocaust was an attempt to exterminate (wipe from the earth forever) an entire religion, not keep them on farms to raise for meat, milk, animal products, clothing, medicine, etc.
Then comes another letter that claims eating meat is the equivalent of the Holocaust.
Lather, rinse, repeat. All of this has happened before, and will happen again.
I’ll answer your unanswered question (the first one, because you sorta go off the rails as you go on):
Of course not. Because you’re talking about talking to people who no longer exist. Meaning the people who are the remnants of those cultures exist within the current system.
Are there people who hunt for food? Absolutely. Exclusively? Are there entire subcultures of people here in the US who exclusively hunt for their food? That don’t consist of a couple dozen to a few hundred people at most? Of course not. Most get the majority of their food from commercial grocery conerns.
We don’t have to say “3 million years of hunter/gatherer culture is wrong” to say that industrial meat production is wrong. (And no, our current system is not an “extension” of hunter/gatherer culture. Sorry.) We don’t even have to get into how hunters generally revered and showed grace and gratefulness for the lives they took. And we don’t have to talk about how the scale of meat gathering then pales to what it has become, but I will digress for a moment:
USDA slaughter stats 2008
Cattle: 35,507,500
Pigs: 116,558,900
Chickens: 9,075,261,000
Layer hens: 69,683,000
Broiler chickens: 9,005,578,000
Turkeys: 271,245,000
We only have to talk about what it is now. It has become a vomitous torrent of callous, careless disregard that is wreaking havoc upon the planet.
http://science.time.com/2013/12/16/the-triple-whopper-environmental-impact-of-global-meat-production/
We don’t have to talk about what came before, because what came before is, for the most part, gone. If you want to talk about moving us back to that system, that’s one thing. (Let’s be honest: that would be a miraculous shift in the world, to the benefit of animals and the planet as a whole, if it were to happen.)
The reason you don’t get an answer to your unanswered question is because it’s a straw man, intent on diverting the question away from what is going on here and now. We don’t have to heap scorn on generations long gone. We have to address the world we have.
But if you want to litigate millions of years of culture before you decide how to act in the present, please, feel free.
Actually plenty of hunter/gatherer tribes do still exist and have every right to hunt to feed themselves in any manner they see fit. Thanks for at least acknowledging the Circle of Life idea aka giving thanks for an animals life.
I did lose count of all the pertinent issues you told me that we don’t have to talk about.
Again, the Holocaust comparison is malarkey as Jews were not raised, bred, and used for food. The Holocaust was a sick attempt to wipe out an entire religion from the face of the earth.
You know, the point of the letter to the editor above.
Nice, dude. Now throw the holocaust in my face. Real class behavior. Did you learn that from Tim Peck?
I was specifically addressing one of the torrent of little broadsides in your first comment, because, you know, you asked.. I think I addressed it pretty clearly. And you just ignored it.
So, I’m gonna do the same. Next time you don’t want an answer to a question, consider not asking it, and saving everyone the trouble.
Um, yeah. If you bothered to read any of my posts, you’d know I don’t buy the Holocaust/eating meat argument either. It’s written in letters that make words. Does the word malarkey ring a bell?
Geez, comparing me to Peck, I feel unclean.
Fact. Head of the SA Earnst Rohm was a homosexual. In fact the SA,, or better known as the Brownshirts, centered around a hidden homosexual theme. And the night he was captured, he was with another man in his hotel room. It wasn’t his homosexuality that was the reason why though. It was his vocal opposition to Hitler.
Many Nazi’s were closet homosexuals.
And I almost forgot, the night Rohm was captured is known as the Night of the Long Knives. It was the final purge that enabled Hitler and the true Nazi’s to gain total power.
Annnnd, it degenerates into a thread about Lulz’s role model.
Somehow I have a feeling that he is a wellspring of information on this hijacked topic.
I’m wondering if he even bothered to read past the first word in the title.
Did I call this or did I call this?