A Vegetarian's Manifesto, Part 1

Our small and abused little Chihuahua, ironically named Lassie, is in heat.  Although I’ve never really taken her for a looker, wherever she’s gone lately, a group of three or four dogs has followed her, sniffing her here, licking her there, lipstick extended, attempting to spend a few minutes (is that how long dogs take?) in doggie-heaven.

Perhaps it’s because she’s only two and just not ready for motherhood; maybe it’s that the dogs haven’t shown that they’re father material; it could be that the shear size of two of her suitors, a Great Bernard at least six times bigger and a sweet, black mutt, only 4 times bigger, makes her shudder at how such a union might work.   For whatever the reason, Lassie wants nothing to do with anyone in her eclectic group of suitors: she barks for hours on end in fear, runs as fast as her little legs will carry her, attempting to hide from then, and, perhaps saddest of all, appeals to her human owners for protection. 

She should know better.  It is no surprise that the same people who hit her and kick her (in their defense, not too hard, but hard enough), have ignored our little dog’s search for safety.  Instead, titling the somewhat comic escapades as Lassie’s Search for a Husband, they have imported a skinny Chihuahua from another farm to get the deed done, and, whenever they can, lock the two “amantes,” or “lovers,” in a small shed to facilitate the completion of the dirty deed.  After about twenty minutes, Lassie’s scratching of the wooden door and her high-pitched barking subside, and we are only left to speculate.

“Why are you doing this to Lassie?” I ask my colleagues.  “It’s seems pretty obvious that she’s not interested.  Why not just let her be?”

“Do you know how much Chihuahua pups sell for?” They ask me excitedly and without pause.  “Almost 4,000 pesos,” or a little over $100.  “The rich people love these dogs.”

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Whether it’s for money or entertainment, to release aggression or just because we can, we, as a society, have condoned the maltreatment of animals.  Examples range from forcing sex on defenseless dogs to cock fights, to the gruesome, inhumane way that animals are raised, slaughtered, and processed.   The subject for today’s post is not a description of these practices (which, if interested, can be found in many, many books such as Fast Food Nation, feature length films, such as Food Inc., or in undercover reports on the PETA website), but rather an investigation of how we justify the abandonment of some of the principles that we hold most dear in the treatment of other species.

The most common arguments I’ve heard in defense of our treatment of animals are remarkably simple.  First, they’re not human.  Many of the people who contend this, not religious, claim that we, as humans, have a celestial quality that separates us from the other members of the animal kingdom.  There’s something about us—created on the 6^th day, maybe, not the 3^rd, 4^th, or 5^th—that sets us apart.  The difference cannot be scientific: the more we study animals’ DNA, we learn that is strikingly similar to our own; the more we learn about animals, the more we understand that many have eerily advanced communication systems and that much more is happening in their brains than we can detect.  The second argument I’ve heard, also surprisingly simple, is that, as part of the animal kingdom, we are at the top of the food chain.  This is the natural order of the world, they contend, and we’re just doing our part.  This second argument is made by many who have just bought their shrink-wrapped hamburger patties and hotdogs at Shop and Fresh.  It ignores the fact that, naturally, mano a mano with many of God’s creatures, we don’t stand a chance.   

The real justification, the assumption underlying all of the other arguments, is that we treat animals like they were unfeeling, unthinking, inanimate objects because we can.  Because they are smaller, weaker, less expressive, or less powerful than us.  Because there’s no one whom they can complain to, the consequences few and far between for their abuse.

This same reasoning—that we can treat other beings that might not be as smart, as evolved, as expressive—when applied to people holds no water.  It is cruel, unusual, inhumane, and completely unjustifiable.  Such ratiocination helped justify the infamous abuses at Abu Ghirab (to the abusers), where American servicemen and women treated suspected terrorists as if the language and cultural barrier converted the prisoners into lesser beings.  In the DR, much less blatant but all the more pervasive, husbands, who go out dancing and drinking whenever they please, play baseball and dominoes at all hours of the day, apply the same principle to their wives, whom stay at home doing laundry and take care of the children, because men, the reasoning goes, are more fit for most things than women; sexual abuse is supposedly rampant here, as one generation feasts on the next in actions which they know lack reprisal; fathers take switches to their children for minor infractions; kids regularly mock Christian, the handsome, strong, and smart deaf-mute who lives here, who can’t hear when people call him names and couldn’t respond even if he did.  What all of these examples have in common is that people feel like they can take advantage of others because the victims have no recourse.  No matter the context, no matter the victim, no one should remain silent.  On the contrary, we have a responsibility to say something and to act against those who can’t speak up for themselves.

The way I see it, then, being a vegetarian is about many things.  In addition to environmental and health reasons, which I will cover later in the week, it’s about standing up for those who can’t stand up for themselves.  Some may try to paint such a position as extreme, that we should abuse animals, only less.  Maybe I’m missing something, but whether it’s 9 times a week or 4, I just can’t remain silent.  But maybe you can.

*An update: There’s no question about what went down in the shed: Lassie and spouse had a good time.  I’ll update you on her condition as the year progresses.  Is anybody interested in buying a pure-bread Chihuahua?  Know anyone who is? I can get you a good deal!

Eat Your Vegetables!

I will preface this post with an admission: I am no longer a vegetarian.  The reality of life on the farm, where Charo, a genius in the kitchen, cooks for us, simply does not permit the lifestyle choice that, with the exception of a few (now much questioned) months, partly define my teenage years and early adulthood.  It’s not that food is scarce here, exactly; there’s almost always enough rice and beans, the staples, to leave you full.   But after 6 hours of chopeando or even a day without snacking, sometimes the body is screaming for the sustenance that habichuelas con arroz, or moro, just can’t provide.

So, with this post now prefaced, I can still draw from years of vegetarian experience and post-vegetarian guilt to finally answer that question, the one that people ask us (can I say “us” anymore?) and then immediately stop listening, eyes glazed over, waiting for you to just finish already, they were just being polite; that surefire conversation killer, that seeming obligation that, by its nature, must be filled over a meal which features meat on everyone’s plate but your own; that cannot be answered 100% truthfully, or surely your friends, meat left untouched, would be partly responsible for the pointless death of an animal or, were they to keep eating, would be heartless, ice-blooded pendejos who didn’t respect your opinion; that question, seemingly so innocent, that reveals 1) that your friends are judging you and 2) that you have already judged them: Why are you a vegetarian?

Oh the disappointment when I hear those horrible words! A wonderful date ruined (who am I kidding? I should say “a wonderful time ruined)! A lovely dinner disrupted! A quick shudder, a falter, an attempt at a witty response: “Oh I like to kill animals, I just don’t like to eat them;” no, no, that’s just creepy; “have you ever read that story where the father makes his son eat roadkill? You know, how in the end the kid, so terribly shaken, waits with a fork and knife for his father to run him over?” No, that won’t work either, even creepier.  “Because you’re eating flesh of another being.”  No, too obvious, too honest, even creepier still.  Oh what to say! What to do!

Michael Pollen wrote a supposed eater’s manifesto in In Defense of Food (a book so disappointing, so poorly written and researched that I could barely get through 100 pages); the series of posts that follow will feature a vegetarian’s manifesto, a defense of what seems like a noble diet but which, to its followers, is really just obvious and no big deal.  My hope from the entries that follow is twofold: first, that omnivores will read this site and decide to pose diet-related questions more carefully or not at all: “You really like your vegetables, huh?” or, “I’m a big fan of salad, too.” I’m not trying to convert anyone, I promise, although I wouldn’t object were someone who, after reading these posts, to agree to do the right thing (I joke. Or do I?),  Second, I seek to give vegetarian’s confronted with this question, surely by troglodytes, locked in caves for years, unenlightened and uninformed because they don’t know about this site, a ready response.  “Wonderful question, (insert favorite curse word here).  Just read ’In the Arena with Eli Berman.’  He, like always, says it all.”

So, brace yourselves, lettuce lovers and meatheads alike, for what’s to follow.  It really could be a game changer.  By the end of my series of entries, people won’t be asking “Why are you a vegetarian?” but rather, “why aren’t you?”

Email me your thoughts, and I’ll be sure to include them over the course of the week.  Until then, eat as much meat as you can.  You may never have the justification to do so again.  Unless you’re on a farm in the Dominican Republic….No, I don’t think that works so well, either.