This “industrial farmer” is really ticked off by crunchy, porch-bound critics who don’t know what they’re talking about. The truth is that many “industrial farmers” are family farmers; they’re not all that alienated from the land or nature, and they give a lot of sensible thought about how to work with nature to feed lots of people good food as efficiently as possible. (Anyone who upgrades the intellectual life of the motorcycle mechanic would want to do even more for the successful industrial farmer.) A world with this many people would be real hungry without them. I don’t know enough about farming or farmers to take a definitive stand on many of the issues discussed here. I do know the real farmer’s anger is directed against an intellectual tendency to reduce real farming to an industry, to reduce real farmers to a members of an exploited proletariat, and so to reduce their real lives to nothing. But tendencies are only tendencies, and maybe the agri-intellectuals are right that we can get somewhat more organic now as a result of post-industrial conquest of scarcity. I have to admit that I, for one, am decadent enough to be grateful for the division of labor that keeps me out of the fields and away from the pigs. (Thanks to Paul Seaton, Matt Peterson, and others for sending this article to me.)
Here is a decent beginning to a discussion of the factual claims of this article. There are very legitimate concerns about current practices concerning the treatment of animals and the distortions introduced by government subsidies.
August 6th, 2009 | 5:18 pm
One problem with Hurst’s argument is that he conflates concerns about organicism, localism, and humane treatment into a single agri-intellectual straw man. But most critics of industrial farming that I’ve read recognize that these are different issues and may be in tension. Pollan, for example, argues that buying local food is much more important than buying organic–for many of the reason Hurst cites.
The more serious problem is that Hurst assumes (as you’d expect in an AEI organ) that cheaper food is always better food, because “the market” wants it that way. But that’s exactly what the agri-intellectual dispute. Sure, it’s not good that people in many poor countries have to spend up to 50% of their income on food. On the other hand, 10%, which is what the average American spends, may be too low.
August 6th, 2009 | 6:01 pm
Well, congrats Peter, it appears you’ve re-opened the PoMoCon/FPR wars. That article was really good and his farm facts are very similar to what my farming neighbors tell me about the cold, hard realities of “making a living” on the farm.
August 6th, 2009 | 6:08 pm
Sam is right, I think, which was the point of my last sentence.
August 6th, 2009 | 6:12 pm
“I don’t know enough about farming or farmers to take a definitive stand on many of the issues discussed here.”
Given that this is undoubtedly true, you probably should have refrained from dismissing agriculture’s interlocutors as, “crunchy, porch-bound critics who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
August 6th, 2009 | 9:05 pm
My intention with that quote was to express the view of the farmer. My apologies if you thought otherwise, robert.
August 7th, 2009 | 2:40 am
That second link is not workin’ for me.
August 7th, 2009 | 3:41 am
I second Sam’s comment, even though I don’t agree with the importance of buying local. Hurst blends too many issues, without doing any of them justice, veering from a general (and unsatisfactory) discussion of industrial animal farming to an involved probe into the agro-nomics of nitrogen.
Curiously absent from this conversation about the “reality” of farming in America is the massive market distortions provided by agricultural subsidies, subsidies that make it impossible for farmers in third world countries to compete on the global market. How Hurst manages to dodge this question in an article ostensibly talking about farming practices in America is bizarre.
August 7th, 2009 | 3:43 am
Ah, having now succeeded in reading your comments to end of your post, I see you already noted the bit about subsidies. My apologies for the redundancy.
August 7th, 2009 | 4:15 am
If you are on Facebook you can click through to Peter’s second link in the post above if you’re signed in. If you aren’t on Facebook, here’s a pasted copy of some of the conversation:
Lucy:
Thanks, Matt. I’m going to send this one around.
Lane:
Good article. He really illustrates one of the single most irritating aspects of the anti-industrial farming movement: it is composed mostly of city people who have never worked outside a day in their life, and who have garnered their understanding of animals and farming from Disney movies and fisher price toys.
Ryan:
Well, they’re not all like that. There’s Polyface farms in Virginia, for instance (I think it’s Virginia). I actually just finished The Omnivore’s Dilemna … on the whole, I recommend it. I don’t care what any of you say though, industrial beef and poultry farming is sick–and unnatural. But it does let me eat $3 chickens …
Bill:
Yeah, great article, but let’s be honest: the shite they do to chickens is horrifying.
Jake:
Excellent find. There is a difference from those on the left who criticize with an eye towards gov’t regulation, and those from the right who naturally favor small industries rather than large monopolistic ones. He addressed both sides very well. I also, upon Lane’s comment, would support fisher price toys that are based on large soulless corporate farming, or alternately, pig toys that eat and crush their young.
Donal:
I have an entire bookshelf of “anti-industrial” farming books written by life-long farmers, Wendell Barry, Gene Logsdon, Joel Salatin, and many more. Hurst completely misses the point and his article is garbage. He begs the question of whether “industrial farming” is necessary by proclaiming his faith in it, undoubtedly drawn from years of participating in corrupt farm bills and being a stooge for Monsanto. He picks on an easy stereotype — the city slicker who knows nothing about farm life — to draw in the reader, but unfortunately, the jig is up. It’s totally irrelevant if the person who is against GMO products because there are no long term tests of their effects on humans or other animals, who is against having detectable levels of pesticides in 90% of the population, who is against having their chickens being composed of a significant percentage of feces — it is irrelevant if that person has ever strangled their own supper or not. Do some more research!
Jake:
Don… there’s no sense getting so inflamed about it. I am open to arguments on both sides because I would really like to know where to stand correctly. I think it’s unfair to assume that his conscience has been bought off. You brought up 3 particular reasons against industrial farming – do you believe these are the greatest reasons against the industry, or just some of the reasons? Could you say more about addressing his particular points and arguments?
Bill:
Okay, so I only finished the article now. I take back my “great” comment. It’s a good article for debunking the errors Pollan makes re tilling the soil, nitrogen, etc. But as regards raising animals, color me distinctly unimpressed.
Sure, chickens will peck each other to death and pig mamas will devour their children. That doesn’t mean that we should all be completely untroubled by some of the freakier things chicken/cattle farms do nowadays. I second what Williams said. Also, the question of price is completely thrown off by ag subsidies. So…calling some BS on this piece.
Me (Matt Peterson):
The article is def a mixed bag. I agree with Bill and Donal: the fact that a lot of people ARE drawn to these arguments and agree with them without much thought is because they would find what goes on at ANY farm awful and nasty. But that does not an argument make against the objectors to current practices. However, he does make seemingly (I don’t know enough about all of this to say) good points re pesticides, etc. I like the article because it lays out some realistic objections to much of what is commonly held by many today. I don’t have a problem with complaints about the current system, but I rarely hear the other side. Some of that is in this article, and some of it makes sense. Bottom line is that we need to understand why we got where we did. It wasn’t all evil corporations/big government (I am against subsidies and collusion for the most part, to be sure), but a lot of well intentioned steps as well, many of which were taken for a reason.
Me (Matt Peterson):
Changing things will obviously involve tough trade offs and sacrifices, and some of that comes through here. I just think that sometimes proponents of change on this issue speak without much opposition that I hear and often act as if things are lot clearer or easier than they likely are. But I would like to read more of Donny’s books, and as he says many of them ARE written by farmers.
Me (Matt Peterson):
And Lane’s point above is simply true, after all. It doesn’t mean that the people against the establishment are wrong, but it is true. And maddening.
Me (Matt Peterson):
And that mooing sound the Fisher Price barn made kicked major arse.
J.A.:
I’m with Mr Turrentine on this one. It’s not just Bobo urbanites in this: there are many real farmers, from Jose Bove to Joel Salatin, who have a solid case against mega-industrial agricultural practices. And with regard to GMO and monoculture, there is so much that be said against it as a disastrous practice, and not only as a practice, but also with regard to the irrationality and injustice of the legal apparatus its purveyors have developed, which is a profound perversion of the the idea of intellectual property. One the other hand, many critics of industrial agriculture are uninformed and have little to offer by way of realistic prescription.
Erik:
I want cows I eat to be depressed. I want them to welcome death with open hooves and tender flanks… mmmm tender flanks.
August 7th, 2009 | 4:25 am
Check out this blog post from a libertarian over at Reason [I must admit that every time I read the name of Reason's "Hit and Run" blog I hear Paula Abdul's voice]:
“So what effects does conventional agriculture have on our health? He doesn’t say, but perhaps he’s pointing to the 5,000 Americans who die of food-borne illnesses each year. That’s not great, for sure. But Mitchell overlooks the fact that the situation was a lot worse in the good ole days before “industrial farming.”"
http://www.reason.com/blog/show/135173.html
As well as these two articles and a review by the same author:
“Organic farming could kill billions of people.”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34820.html
“I Don’t Care Where My Food Comes From
And neither should you.”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/34890.html
“Barbara Kingsolver’s Latest Fiction
Life on the farm ain’t always a picnic”
http://www.reason.com/news/show/120449.html
The major problem I have with the issue is that people need to acknowledge the good that has been done regarding food and the last 100 years of development in ‘Merica. By all accounts, we have gone farther towards feeding ourselves and the world most thought possible. This doesn’t justify current injustices, but one must acknowledge that much of today’s problems were cause by yesterday’s solutions. I like reading these objections, because (while I don’t agree with all of ‘em) they remind us that there are probably some hard trade offs that need to be if we want to reform the current system, which has in the grand scheme of things to my mind achieved incredible things.
August 7th, 2009 | 8:01 am
Political theorists could learn a thing or two from pigs and other dirty forces of nature.
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=1797
The absolute division of labor makes our intellectuals dumb, on every side.
Here’s a critical take on Pollan from the Porch that is in some sympathy with Hurst but which remains equally critical of agribusiness models.
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=2135
And just in case you think I “romanticize” small town life …
http://www.frontporchrepublic.com/?p=2462
August 7th, 2009 | 8:56 am
Caleb and Matt, Thanks.
August 7th, 2009 | 11:10 am
Caleb, thanks much for posting those links. I agree with you (for the most part–I am going to go back and read again more closely and reply via email later) on all three counts, which are each worth savoring. I think for my part I am expressing a general frustration with these issues when they come up: and it is not directed at Front Porchers per se. I don’t think one can simply caricature the thoughtful written work of all of your hands. Increasingly, I wish more people would listen more seriously to your experience-based critiques.
I think political theorists and everyone else could learn much from “dirty forces of nature” as well: both to demystify what they might romanticize and to elevate and ennoble what they might despise. I agree about the absolute division of labor and specialization. Thomas Jefferson would agree with you, and I think many of those who have advocated the liberal arts over the centuries would too. I think that this is why our culture and ideally our educational institutions and our traditions in the ideal would encourage a more precise notion of balance in education for life–true liberal education. We ought to have clearer set societal helps for people to balance out their workday. One sees this naturally to some extent regardless. The best sorts of souls working more physical sort of jobs, I think, will often be found on vacation or after work reading the work of a popular (and therefore likely worth reading) historian, or hell, even a crossword puzzle. As anyone knows who has worked jobs that are physically demanding, this takes effort, but one sees that whatever its defects something about the education of the generation of those who are now grandparents and great grandparents led to something like this. On the other hand, those in the teaching profession might work on renovating their house themselves in the summer, or tending the garden. These are small examples, but they work, I think. Both will end up watching too much TV.
Anyhow, I will cease the floating rambling. I agree with much of what you express in all three of those pieces, and thanks for posting ‘em.
My problem regarding the agri-interlectuals stuff is simply that I haven’t heard the other side speak much and I am suspicious of the one-sided arguments I hear from all of those up in arms. I think we got to where we are by trying to solve real problems and to some extent succeeding, and this will need to be acknowledge. And also, more generally, as it was, is now, and will be…farming becomes a sort of ridiculous abstract symbol pf all that is good and holy for those who are upset with contemporary life in America in ludicrous ways.
I think the problem you all face is that when you start pointing out aspects of life that you argue are flawed today, and these aren’t recognized by many as flaws, you are fighting an uphill battle. Whether you are right or wrong. And when the whole overarching problem is coming up with realistic solutions to these problems, then people will too quickly dismiss anything you see because “you don’t have a solution.” I hope no one here writes you all off in that we, and that there can be honest to goodness, directed debate on various specific topics.
August 7th, 2009 | 12:47 pm
Peter, I am beginning to learn about some characteristics that attend blog writing, particularly for those who are political theorists. One view is to declare things: “the truth is…” and then very sweeping generalizations about groups of people who are not alienated from the land. I rather imagine that you are correct in much of this, but some people are more cautious about declarations without empirical evidence at the ready. The tendency of theorists to declare is then made stronger in a blog format, as is the tendency to divide people into camps.
The other characteristic is to write elliptically, leaving out so much assumed knowledge. But for that to work the knowledge (if such it is) must be shared.
On the subject of dividing people into camps, you seem to want to find out people’s position–but what if one wants to guard one’s independence? For instance, had I not been influenced by your work I could not have written this review of Wolfe’s newest book:
http://www.firstprinciplesjournal.com/articles.aspx?article=1291&loc=fs
Particularly not this passage:
“Pale liberals call for no great sacrifice. They smile indulgently, like the aged do at the young, at passion, at noble dreams, at sacrifice and duty. If passion persists, they fear its latent power. When liberals dream they envision a prosperous land with a tolerable record of justice, peopled by decent folk who respect the individualism of others and who find the social and moral space to work out their own lives on their own terms. An ideal, self-actualized liberal, thin and healthy in his now late middle aged body, expresses his moral commitments through his gregarious openness to the interests of those he meets, and he displays a historically unique democratic elitism as he carries his expensive organic groceries while wearing the carefully crafted casual clothes and easy gait of his species. Having traversed two thirds of his journey through this vale of tears, he finds satisfaction that he has tolerably few tears and that he knows none of the angst upon approaching the end.”
Having established my wish to be my own person in these fascinating debates, let me remind you of what historians have known for many years. Ever since the 1890s there has been persistent and often organized propaganda from farmers to characterize their work as full of unrelenting drudgery. But in fact the historical record establishes that farms usually had too much labor for the needed work and beyond periods of harvest that their work required little time each day. Only women, who had the worst chores on the farm, might fit the farmer stereotype.
The romanticized view of farms and farmers is so obviously untrue that I can hardly find a person even vaguely familiar with farm life to suggest it. And this makes me wonder if people aren’t fighting straw men.
August 7th, 2009 | 12:52 pm
Matthew,
Before people can begin coming up with real and workable solutions, there needs to be – as you point out – recognition that there is a problem to begin with. I take it that’s what’s being argued at places like FPR (or by folks like Pollan, etc.). But, there should be a resistance to the business-as-usual belief that our mission as knowing and scientifically advanced moderns is to pinpoint a set of problems and arrive at a set of policy solutions. Much of what’s being argued by contrarian conservatives is that the problems lie deeply in the culture, and culture is not subject to simple policy solutions.
That said, it doesn’t help to identify the deepest roots of these problems when it’s argued that everything is getting better and worse. That sort of suggests that the true conservative position should be don’t worry, be miserable. Except, apparently, Obama’s despotic health care proposals or being ruled by the Chinese. Those are apparently objectively worse conditions, seemingly without an upside, knowable even to postmoderns. It gives reason to hope that resignation and acquiescence isn’t the only disposition possible for conservatives, even postmodern ones.
August 7th, 2009 | 1:23 pm
[...] more debate about this article see Peterson’s Facebook note and this post over at First Things. Published: August 7, 2009 Filed Under: Reading Leave a Comment Name: [...]
August 7th, 2009 | 2:34 pm
[...] note apropos of the important comments down here by Professors Deneen and McAllister. It’s true, as Prof. McAllister says, that “The [...]
August 7th, 2009 | 3:02 pm
“But, there should be a resistance to the business-as-usual belief that our mission as knowing and scientifically advanced moderns is to pinpoint a set of problems and arrive at a set of policy solutions. Much of what’s being argued by contrarian conservatives is that the problems lie deeply in the culture, and culture is not subject to simple policy solutions.”
I agree whole heartedly. I take it that this blog and the Front Porchers exist to uncover those deeper problems. That’s what makes this interesting. I don’t think you solve anything without creating or recreating new institutions in education, for instance. This does not mean simply changing out classes, but cultivating an entirely new (and very old) sort of educational community. Because we learn in common, and whether we like it or not institutions of higher education are institutions that promote various kinds of life and study, holding up certain common goods. And changing this may not be possible for the reasons you mention.
Maybe you get the wrong impression because I delved into particulars above re farming policy. The philosophic issue that arises from the article in question is “alienation in the modern world” as it applies to farming…summed up in the last 3 paragraphs, and its why the article is worthy of discussion on the blog.
But the policy side of the issue is related and interesting as well. I think its appropriate and necessary to talk about practice as well, full well agreeing with your caveats above. All this calls for caution.
Shouting out against abstractions in the wind can be tricky. Whenever someone I don’t know starts talking about “alienation in the modern world” for instance, my mind is on auto-pilot for better or worse. I assume the person is talking about being a graduate student who has lept onto half truths and happens to live the alienated life of a student. Without being facetious, I honestly wonder what percentage of the actual substance of dissertations and bloviating on the topic is caused by the life of the student, the academy, and the sort of personality that gets drawn into the humanities these days. (Obviously I think yall say things of substance). We don’t want to have legislative type bullet points for change based on “policy” wonk type talk to be sure. But if all this is just an extended venting fest of inter-lectual malcontents, even albeit malcontents attuned to the sorrows of this valley of tears in which we live, than I question how serious the thoughts themselves are. I’m betting you agree on that score.
Whenever academics on the left or right start decrying “liberal-ism,” I start paying attention with a sick feeling in my stomach. Thoughtful people like to think they see what no one else does, but there are few new complaints under the sun’s rays from the last century or so about ‘Merica. “Liberal-ism” this; “liberal-ism” that. The lamentations are real themselves and arise from real issues, I think, but they are a tricky business. It is difficult to pinpoint what causes the things that disturbs us about modern society, and what is modern and what is not, and what is endemic to this regime’s written and unwritten constitution and what is not, what is endemic to human nature and what is not, etc. (Again, I like these parts because there are real and fascinating efforts being made here).
Anyhow, a last broad sweeping blogviating comment: modern philosophers often talk down contemplation and talk up doing. The irony is they themselves usually “do” far less than the ancient/classical/Christian types throughout western civilization who talked up contemplation and the speculative enterprise…yet in their own lives “did” far more. People like Aristotle and Plato, or Augustine or Aquinas, were fairly active members of society (heh) if we look at the facts, whatever academics and sophists of all ages would like to think.
August 7th, 2009 | 3:13 pm
So Ted, The purpose of this post was to see what people would say about the articulate farmer taking on the pointy heads. And we did, this has been a fine discussion. There are obviously good and bad things about our present largely argribusiness regime, but the good is good enough that I doubt we have a crisis. We do have plenty of room for improvement along the lines of Caleb’s links, but I think there’s no denying that the improvements won’t be the utter negation of a system that feeds lots of people cheap. It’s our very prosperity that’s causing people to ask whether we might take other “values” into consideration in feeding the world. A family with both parents in blue collar jobs and six kids has a lot to be grateful for in the one-stop, inexpensive megastore. Plenty of us and probably 97.8% of us blog readers are lucky enough to have other options.
As a teacher and a blogger, I strive to provoke and not to preach to the converted. The camp thing is largely way of focusing–obviously I’m not in the AEI or the Wendall Berry camp when it comes to food or even Wal-Mart. All social scientists deal in “ideal types” or categories; bloggers do it with irony. For historians, apparently, it’s just one damn thing after another.
Obviously I didn’t endorse being ruled by the Chinese (in fact, I’m pretty darn alive to the need to resist that–and so our defensive foreign policy has to have an imperial and maybe even spaced-based dimension), and as Ted shows us I’m all for intense cultural criticism (see my Solzhenitsyn post). But it’s easy to exaggerate how bad things are, or to dot our world with countless crises. My don’t worry thing has to do with our inability to totally eradicate our humanity or in opposition to the hubristic thought that the very future of being human in somehow in our puny hands. I’ve explained (and Pat D has displayed) that people today worry more than ever–and not without reason. High technology and the false perception of purposelessness have to do, as Solzhenitsyn explains, with our specific trial of free will, but men and women are always, thank God, stuck with those trials and–again–it’s either hubristic or naively chauvinistic to believe ours are the worst even.
I wouldn’t identify either Obama’s health care plan or Wal-Mart with absolute evil, and we certainly can applaud Wal-Mart’s ability to deliver generic prescription drugs cheaper than you can even get them in Canada. Wal-Mart isn’t absolutely good either, and I can’t say how anyone can’t say that things get better and worse when Sam and his people come to town. If you read the article on Solzh. above, you can see my rudimentary views on health care–which are neither government nor employer based, for the most part.
August 7th, 2009 | 3:19 pm
Patrick, just read your lecture on liberalism, progressivism, and nostalgia and I think I get your comment better. Amen to most of that. I’ll take the mean between the extremes for a $1000, Alex.
August 7th, 2009 | 3:46 pm
Peter,
I agree with you that in so many ways the creation of cheap foods is a great blessing. I’m going to review Paul Conkin’s new book on this subject next month and he points out that the greatest (and with no close competitor) industrial revolution in American history (by any measure, but especially by productivity relative to human labor) took place “down on the farm” between about 1950 and 1970. Fascinating ironies attend this fact, however. What interests me is less the dualistic question of whether the changes in government policies as well as technological innovations produce unambiguously good or bad outcomes but rather a subtle examination of cultural and spiritual eddies that these ongoing historical forces produced. The organic rage would have been impossible had it not been for dramatic increases in farming efficiency that led to both increased wealth for most Americans (less money devoted to food) and research money that made possible the organic means of treating soil and so forth to produce a healthy crop. This is where it gets interesting to me.
Moreover, all industrial revolutions, including those down on the farm, alter ways of living and therefore ways of being and seeing and thinking. This change, without looking at it as a narrow partisan, is worthy of extended discussion and examination–preferably with an empirical foundation.
August 7th, 2009 | 4:01 pm
Thanks for your comments Matt. I’ll look forward to receiving your further thoughts.
August 7th, 2009 | 4:16 pm
Fair enough. It seems, though, that a detailed discussion of policy is essential to differentiate the contrarian conservative from the naive liberal with pastoral visions. As much as I love FPR, Pollan and Berry are hardly soulmates and I think the muddier the water they share, the worse off the contrarian conservative position.
@Ted:
Which is why discussions of agribusiness need to center on what is, not what was.
August 7th, 2009 | 5:33 pm
Ted, I’m thinking we’re agreeing on this…
August 7th, 2009 | 8:48 pm
“I wouldn’t identify either Obama’s health care plan or Wal-Mart with absolute evil…”
Well, I can do Wal-Mart but Obama may have you reconsidering this opinion shortly!
August 7th, 2009 | 10:15 pm
Much of what’s being argued by contrarian conservatives is that the problems lie deeply in the culture, and culture is not subject to simple policy solutions.
Interesting…
August 8th, 2009 | 8:42 am
For what it’s worth, the little essay by Bill Goodwin linked above on what our articulate farmer “skirts” seems on the money to me. There’s no reason, for example, why we couldn’t do a lot to improve the places we keep our turkeys short of air conditioning or room service or thinking they have some natural right to be free.
August 8th, 2009 | 11:06 am
To Ben–That’s right and I don’t disagree, except with the reminder that “culture” always has its problems. The excesses of our and “medieval times” are different–as, say, Tocqueville and Solzhenitsyn point out.
August 10th, 2009 | 10:18 am
Ahhh yes, another chance to don or doff the shirt and line up for a little issues dodgeball.The truth rarely lies in that much ballyhooed province known as “the middle”, it picks and chooses itself out of a wide firmament. The reason our Well-Dressed Bolsheviks in Washington love to crow about “centrism” and “moderation” and the Shangri La of the Middle is because it allows them to reach the widest level of half-truths thus gaining the widest support of the half-informed.
Sure, the industrial format has created certain , shall we say “efficiencies” that have fostered enormous scales of production and distribution but there is something that continually freights the model with a considerable achilles heel known as “external costs”. These are the real costs that are allowed to be written off into a netherworld of non-accounting, free-passes and benign neglect. Unfortunately, much of the benignity is starting to turn malignant. Meanwhile, to think we can happily return to the days of the family farm and Doc as Marshall Dillon cuffs the bad guys is preposterous.
The real villain here is not that there are polar opinions but that we cannot seem to tolerate scaled approaches that benefit a wide range of reality. We have surrendered ourselves to a paradigm that has gutted work of its meaning, dismissed the efficacy of the family, raised debt to a commodity and therefore a pastime, abandoned a healthy dispersed economy for a highly centralized economy that increasingly benefits a more select few and allowed large institutions a free hand to benefit themselves while creating an ever-accumulating and compounding threat to our future that is the “external cost”. The up shot of this fate is that we do not inhabit a halcyon “middle” as much as an increasingly dangerous and increasingly impoversished extremity.
But the political show must go on and there really is nothing quite so picturesque as a raised fist and frothy spittle. The reason I can say this with confidence is that I traffic in them all the time myself.
August 10th, 2009 | 10:58 am
DW, Beautifully said, that’s for sure, if a little too left conservative or Marxist alarmist for me. I still think there’s something to be said for cheap food, and I doubt that the great mass of people have been reduced to nothing–materially and spiritually–by soulless oligarchs. I’m just not seeing the raised fists that come when fear is turned into hatred because there’s nothing left to lose. But, to repeat, very poetic and in some ways above Karl’s pay grade.
August 10th, 2009 | 11:44 am
I don’t disagree that there is something to be said for “cheap” food but then again, with external costs paying the freight for no small measure of the assumed “cheapness’, one never really knows if that Discount Tilapia is really cheap or not….let alone fresh and tasty.
Contrary to Marx, I do think some of the oligarchs have souls.
As to me being “left conservative ” or “Marxist”, my Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers Granpappy might like it but as for me, I’ll repair to my inner Sanctum sanctorum of dyspepsia in search of a proper riposte. Then again, it won’t be a riposte then, now will it? You have achieved the impossible, finding me wordless.
August 10th, 2009 | 3:30 pm
Brother Sabin, you are waxing eloquent today! Re: the time for the raised fist and spittle is upon us now, so it’s off to the barricades. Obama’s sent in his forces, the conservative “Rodney King” was thumped by white, union, thugs, and we gotta ask, what’s next?
Axe handles and tire irons anyone?
August 10th, 2009 | 4:29 pm
DW, I gotta say I like it. I’ve been accused of suffering of dyspepsia, but you’ve topped me by far by bragging about it.
August 11th, 2009 | 11:06 am
I fulminate, therefor I exist.
Cheeks, be careful with all that tire iron brigandage you are advocating because these things have a way of overtaking one’s finer sensibilities. I urge you to read the Yasser Arafat Manual of Public Insurrection and pay close attention to the chapters where he explains the finer points of identifying back windows and trap doors to bolt out of when the Mossad comes visiting for tea and fisticuffs.
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