Ban Red Meat

I've gotta warn you. This is pure rant. Some of what I say will be borderline truth, potentially psychotic, and forever stabbing at the issue.

It seems to be assumed that eating red meat causes aggression. Rubbish. I know one meat eater who harasses vegetarians, and he just likes to tease them. Sure there are lots of jokes flying about, endangering eyesight, but I see more of the opposite. Take a t-shirt worn by a young lad at my fave Collingwood indy cafe: Meat Eaters Need to Evolve. This was wrapped around the outline of a T-Rex. Urrm, yeah. What about the brave, peace-loving brontosaurus? Surely the Godly plant eaters survived whatever plague destroyed the stupid carnivores?

The Kellogg brothers grimm may have accidentally discovered Corn Flakes, but marketing it was purposeful. Both were anti-meat, and the elder felt that young people were oversexed because of excess protein. In The Times of India I came across an exquisite bit on Rajendra Pachauri, chair of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). He contends that we need to eat less meat to fight climate change owing to "emissions and environmental problems associated with rearing cattle. 'Give up meat for one day (per week) initially, and decrease it from there.'" (The Times of India, New Delhi, Sept. 8, 2008, p.19) Wonderfully, the man has just been re-elected for a second six year term. Thank God. Our salvation is here.

Stats and pseudo-science aside, doesn't it stand to reason that meat eaters should be more aggressive? They're killers. With every bite of that steak, a primal urge is nudging its way through the tangle of cave-dwelling unconsciousness: kill or be killed. Devour meat. Drag woman by hair. Uugh, me Thack, garaggaga.

All right. Now that we've established basic aggression patterns, and I do absolutely apologise to any of you who are ardent students of anthropology, I have a question. Why is it that for every ten pro-veggie shirts I see, I spot...ummm...I don't recall ever seeing a shirt insulting vegetarians. Not that they don't exist. It's just that our wonderfully aware, estrogenic* weeping population glares menacingly at them. So where are these aggressive meat eaters? Are they all in Afghanistan? You know that's not fair. Perhaps they're quietly aggressive. You know. Passive aggressive.

"Don't get Ted mad. He won't talk to you for a week."
"Aw man. Damn those carnivores. Damn them to hell!"

How is it that the peaceful plant slaughtering folk are the primary aggressors? One possibility is a variation on Little Man Syndrome. Veggies feel in the minority here, so they overreact and attack. I can almost hear their rallying cry.

"Get in their face. They will believe."

It's the case of the person who feels or is slighted and responds by doing exactly the same thing. Repeating the offence always makes the pain go away.


* Absolute beautiful truth to do with pharmaceutical habits and yes, hormones in meat. Good thing there's nothing wrong with that pesticide/herbicide under-ripened tomato you're munching. Organic? Are you certain? Truly organic is very difficult to get consistently. I doubt there has ever been a population so intent on poisoning itself as ours.