Notwithstanding the musings of a courageously curious academic, however dense or tedious, the links between killing and roasting whole animals and individuals’ orientation to the world are transparent and likely more direct than suggested.

Carnivory requires deficits in or suspension of empathic relating to the suffering and fear of other living beings. Not that simple, of course, with defense mechanisms coming into play and a large role for fear of social marginalization for deviation from important customs, and for fear of appearing weak or squeamish (and consequent loss of status) in the context of sublimated group killing – little wonder that males figure more prominently than females in the practice.

But willingness to deaden empathy is the big one, a trait that does also set individuals up to tolerate and live comfortably in cultures in which racism, sexism, classism, and daily killing of innocent “others” is not only accepted but normalized. An essential ingredient is always to marginalize as out-group and to devalue the others, so that the depredations of patriarchy do become a little closer to a BBQ. Not killing the pig with your own hands and knife provides the same comforting distance that not picking Afghani children out of the rubble with your own hands provides. News reports, a volunteer military, and local butchers provide the emotional distance needed.

That one would experience Warnes’ ideas as “ridiculous” or “absurd” is nothing more or less than defenses elicited by the discomfort of momentarily losing that aesthetic distance, of being pricked out of a deep slumber by a breach of ego defenses, of intrusion into doxa of something real and frightening.

OK, look. Pedinska is on the right track. While significant new information and clarification has been generated from the exchanges here with L.W.M., the arguments remain barely productive. That’s because the interchanges remain tangential to his presenting complaint, and that’s because L.W.M.’s real complaint remains covert, rather than overt.

L.W.M. has no real issue about criminality on the part of the protesters, about overreach of police or authority, or about public safety. His posts in this thread are not about those questions, and that is why arguments and rebuttals to him addressing those points simply elicit additional oppositionality and anger from him.

L.W.M.’s posts here are about L.W.M., specifically about his fears that his contributions, worth, status, and respect are being diminished in light of all the admiration and esteem awarded the protesters, who are so unlike him. If their actions, plans, and values are so worth protecting, so vital, even heroic, then what about all that L.W.M. stands for, and identifies with as his self worth? The attention and esteem he craves from Glenn and all of you has been displaced to a competing value system:

My biggest problem with these kids is how dumb and inexperienced they probably are. ...

Actually, L.W.M. does not have a “problem” with these “kids” and at some level admires them. The problem he has is with perceived loss of entitlement to status and respect that, unsustainably, has accrued to those who, as a substitute for authenticity, invest in the rules of the game and in System’s rewards (e.g. symbolic conference of intelligence and expertise by the “doctorate”) for articulate, orthodox expression. He fears being devalued as an irrelevant or co-opted relic. The anger, displaced at the protesters, is secondary to that fear. More broadly, L.W.M.’s reaction represents unsustainability of the collective delusional structure we know as the American political system, or state.

Unfortunately, or furtunately, time is not on L.W.M.’s side. A system that is doomed to it’s internal pathology, driven by the psychology of fear and tribalism, will never be fixed playing by its rules. In a real and important sense, simply providing food to the homeless and relief to those in poverty perpetuate the structural conditions that require those collateral effects. The idea that coroporate, capitalist, patriarchal heirarchies of power and control can bring real movement toward the collective good is finished.

The scruffy protesters don’t hold doctorates or engage in civil community discourse. They lack experience playing along with political systems. And they are right, if not in all of their means, in intent. Time is on their side.

Projection of projection.

Just wanted to say how much I admire the writing of one of the regulars here, and especially the compulsive fixation on attempting to lower the status of another writer, which I frankly find empowering somehow, and how that is so cleverly disguised as praise and encouragement. Like a packaged food product.

Also the way expressions of personal rage are often woven into the essays on popular culture and media. Like a bacon cheeseburger.

You don’t find that kind of writing just coming out of nowhere.