Unelected PM (that’s almost a tautology in Australia) Scummo had more outrage for people who invaded farms or blocked traffick than for the murderous white supremacist Australian who went to New Zealand last month and murdered 50 innocent people while they were at prayer.
Shameful, he sez. Un-Australian.
"This is just another form of activism that I think runs against the national interest, and the national interest is [farmers] being able to farm their own land," he told radio station 2GB. (Does this mean he was chatting with Alan Jones, Moral Compass of the South? Is Alan a Pitt St Farmer?)
Never mind Scummo blew a cool $185 million re-opening Christmas Island for a photo shoot – obviously people who care about non-European humans or other animals instead of money just don’t have his respect at all.
But Scummo is in election mode and was really just doing what he and his kind do best – harvesting resentment. (Hmm, seems to be a recurring theme, here at the Clarion.) He wants to tap into the outrage of all offended omnivores, carnivores and barbecuerians across the land.
Every nook and cranny of the internet (or the internOt, as I like to call it after Malcolm’s effort) was abuzz with lively discussions of the ins and outs of veganism. Such fun.
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Eavesdropping, I did hope to learn what “white veganism” might mean.
Don’t know if this is true, but it more or less somes (late edit "somes"? good grief, Maude!) sums up the spirit of the expression, I guess:
So much of what we do is directed by blinkered thinking – whether those are the blinkers of selfishness or just plain stupidity is often hard to say.
Perhaps white veganism is a more kindly meant version of what happened in Europe precipitating many revolutions in 1848; but especially what happened in Ireland, where an early version of neo-liberal economics exacerbated the impact of the potato blight and caused not revolution but the starvation of millions. And, well, not vegan but certainly Anglo and Male and Patronising thinking.
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| Exports were not the cause of starvation It was really ideological drivel of the sort we've had from Labor and the LNP for the last 20 years |
Or, during the green revolution of the 1950s and 60s, when western companies casually made deals with males in power in Third world countries to buy great tracts of land, lift GDP, create jobs. Oops - exposed those living at subsistence level (often from a woman's /women's garden) to – yep, more man-made famine.
Capitalism is indifference. White veganism, at its worst, is insufferable igrigance*,
I suppose, because it presumes no matter what people’s circumstances, traditions or beliefs, that which privileged westerners currently assert as morally correct is what ought now be the rule.
*Arrogance with more than a soupcon of ignorance
But back to food and the idea of eating morally.
ClaireGColeman (who most of the time seems quite with it) got into a bunfight with someone and, I suspect, deserves a point:
Somewhere in there I think the “whitesplaining” comment implied “you can’t have an opinion cos you are white” which is sorta not really the definition of whitesplaining. And if that (me) sounds like semantics, then Claire's “lacto-vegetarianism is not the same thing as veganism” is not semantics; just a clarification.
And, lest we need a reminder:
Race is a social invention; a caste system –
though some try to pretend it’s science.
As Nature does not choose our socioeconomic class for us
and is thus not obsessed about our children conforming to some visual “type”,
we must allow those who live with colour to know who they are and what they live.
(Maude Nificent)
But mostly I’ve just gotta hand it to Ruby Hamad for cutting through most of it.
That second point sort of turns the Aussie saying "if you don't eat you don't shit" on its head very politely. TBH when I see people on TV or in pubs or wherever eating a giant slab of meat I ALWAYS a) wonder why? and b) look to see if they eat any grass with it. What American entertainment serves up at a barbecue always looks like a roast meant for a family of 20 to me.
In 2019 Australia, people have different incomes, opportunities and living arrangements.
As a single pensioner I’m gobsmacked every time I go to a supermarket. With veg I can usually have a truck full of something, or none of it at all, because of the way it is packed to facilitate transport.
As a child with a rather unsettled existence, I often found myself living in various parts of rural Australia in the 1950s and 60s. Growing up, I’ve herded cows to a large milking shed, and also milked a house cow. I’ve killed and dressed chooks (rarely, cos it was never a common food item) and pitched in when sheep were killed and dressed. I know all about how other animals are treated, and where black pudding comes from. I’ve made pocket money by trapping and selling rabbits. But in all that time and with all the adult figures in my early life, I never met one with a cavalier attitude to the treatment of animals (except two apprentice jockeys in stables at Newmarket).
What I was always taught is that every animal deserves a decent life and a clean death. Even when calves were taken from their mothers, I was aware that it was hard on the cows, and I always saw people spending time with them (tho I suppose that made the hoomans feel better, not the cows).
As time has marched on, our relationship with animals in this country, as a people who eat them, has shifted dramatically. Many of us have no notion of where our food comes from, or how animals are farmed.
Where I once never had qualms about being omnivorous, I’m increasingly uneasy but only because of the way animals are treated. A few years ago, in response to consumer pressure to clearly show which eggs are free range, the RSPCA so radically downgraded the definition so that eggs that are labelled free range are more likely than ever to come from birds that are not treated well.
I have to drive miles to find eggs that are from birds kept in a low population density, that haven’t been debeaked, and must say I usually just go without.
It’s a good job I’m lazy cos protein from all sources is shrinking, all the time, as a portion of my diet. Sometimes I eat tuna but if anyone tells me they are poled instead of caught in a seine net, it’s still not good – both options are horrible for marine life and for the environment.
The sight of a sheep with fly strike is just woeful, but mulesing is cruel. Even without our shift away from dependence on wool, there is no need for mulesing to continue – the government just dicks around on the issue cos primary industry is the teat on which government suckles. And there are other breeds of sheep than merino we could be farming; breeds that shed around the tail area. (Though sheep have done so much damage to the environment it's a whole other thing.)
On and on and on.
Governments could do more about the food industry or for all sentient creatures without turning us all vegan – heaps more that I’ve not touched on at all. But the bottom line is the top end of town – totally unaffected by what happened in Christchurch - don’t want the inconvenience of helping us eat more ethically.
It's almost as if, since we moved away from a mixed economy into a neo-liberal outpost of fanta-land, ministers are no longer supposed to help the sector flourish, but are rather lobbyists with the title Minister for this that and the other vested* interest.
*(From the old English, Vestey, once owner of a large Australian cattle station.)
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In case you think I'm wrong about "neo liberal economics" - the prequel - in the 1840s:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/apr/10/neoliberalism-freedom-control-privatisation-state?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=soc_568&utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1554879920
(ideological fervour+pure laissez faire theory) = fundamental perversion
If this is all in the TLDR or head scratching category, you'll understand why I've tried to introduce some of this stuff in a simpler way, in useful contexts or in the contexts of familiar stories in my Dramatic Reviews blog. The least you need to know about free market theories is this:
"You can't pretend apples are oranges without hurting people".
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