Free Range Idiots
01 September 2005

I think the world is one giant free range idiot farm.

Apparently, we’re just growing idiots and letting them run around out in society. Free range idiots seem to be everywhere, just going about their business, getting in your way, slowing you down, and generally annoying you. But for some reason, there seem to be no shortage of free range idiots who think that free range animal agriculture is god’s greatest gift to people who can afford to eat free range meat.

By now, most lefty vegans are used to the right-wing attacks. You must know the familiar litany: meat is good for you, meat makes you manly, meat is traditional, meat is right, meat is good, meat makes you strong, meat gives you a big weenie, meat makes you happy, ‘i like the taste,’ etc., you name it. We’ve all heard it all a million and one times.

As a lefty vegan, the last place you might expect to get shit is from your lefty companions who—surely!—understand that your veganism is just another part of rejecting yet another form of intolerable oppression. But cross a meat-eating lefty, and man, you just may find yourself doing a birkenstock-ectomy from your own meaty bum. If you try talking to a meat-eating leftist about veganism or animal rights, you’re apt to hear in whiny tones just how great free range meat is, how we really can raise animals sustainably, and how free range is better because the animals “die happier.” (I’ve noticed that the person saying this is always forcing a smile under which they’re hiding a tiny bit of horror).

For the record, I’m tired of this shit, and I’ll never understand why these otherwise good-hearted lefties have to be so damn stupid on this point.

I’m a vegan (duh). I think using animals for our own purposes is wrong. I think eating animals is wrong. To me, it is pretty damn nice that animals enjoy the fresh air, frolic in the field, and have a good time before they die a horribly bloody death, but free range and organic production is still horrible exploitation. Organic milk is still about forced pregnancy, still about animals and their ‘productivity’ and still about the fact that if the animals aren’t productive enough, they’re killed. This may be more “sustainable” than conventional factory farming, but it certainly isn’t a joyous outcome, and it still reinforces the idea that animals are ours to exploit as we see fit.

When I’ve raised these points to the free range idiots, they always tell me that they’re happier eating meat if they know the animal lived a happy life and was raised well, as if this justifies the death. To me, it doesn’t justify the death; it simply helps the free range idiot justify the creeping feeling that what they’re doing isn’t right. For them, free range isn’t about making animals feel better: it is about making themselves feel better.

  Posted by Bob Torres    Permalink    Filed under:
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