Pine tar and poultry plumage

One of my few (but ever increasing) Political Rants will follow, and it's a doozy.  If you do not wish to read my ranting and occasional foul language, please come by tomorrow when I will talk about making homemade chocolate covered orange peels (amazing variety of topics, hugh?)

If you're still here even after the little warning, thank you.  Really.  Although I occasionally get depressed about the sloth and indifference of the majority of the US citizenry, I am happy to know that there are still people out there that give a damn about freedom and about the US Constitution and Bill of Rights.  

So.  What's my rant about today?  As many of you may know, no thanks to CNN or Fox or MSNBC, there is another fight for food freedom going on right now in Michigan.  I won't get into the nitty-gritty details not only because I'll have a stroke while typing it, but because there is so much first hand information out there from the little guys caught in the middle of it.  But in a nutshell, the asinine State of Michigan and the DNR has now made felons out of anyone harboring "feral" pigs.  (Go to Bakers Green Acres for a good, if not maddening, read.)

I'm not talking about farmers letting a bunch of wild boars out into their neighbor's farmland, or secretly breeding pigs with the ability to spread a biological weapon amongst the human population (That would be our own government doing that.  Just kidding.  But it wouldn't surprise me at all.), but family farmers growing pigs that are not the status quo.  Pigs that are able to live and thrive and grow outdoors in a pasture and not in an overcrowded cesspool like in the gigantic factory hog farms.  Pigs that look like, well, pigs.  Curly tails, stripes on piglets, hair.....you know, what a pig should look like.  Pigs that, heavens forbid, may be in greater demand than those cranked out by the mega-pig factories.  More and more people are wanting their meat to be raised in a humane manner, want their families to sit down to a natural pork chop, want to support their local farmers.  But big business doesn't like that.  And neither does the State.  Big business wants to stamp out any and all competition.  And the State is right there to help out by making (cover your ears) fucking ignorant and completely unconstitutional laws in order to force everyone into compliance.

Every single day, our rulers are adding things to their list of what you can or cannot eat.  Yes, they are.  I'm sick of being called a fanatic, or a tin-foil-hat wearing wacko, or a conspiracy nutjob.  If you cannot see the writing on the wall, you are the delusional one, not me.  

Our government is making felons out of people selling raw milk, raising heritage breeds of animals, or otherwise taking responsibility over their own lives.  Things that humans have been doing for a millennium.  Yet those same departments that would love to take your daughter from you for child-endangerment (you know, letting her drink raw milk), will happily let GMO's flow through our food system without even giving us the right to know.  They make selling totally natural products like a Stevia plant as a "sweetner" unlawful (which has been in use for hundreds of years), but will grant a patent to a huge corporation to make and sell a synthetic version of it with little or no testing.

Don't get me started on the "But the USDA, DNR, FDA, etc., are responsible for reducing the amount of bacteria/pathogens in our foods, keeping our water clean, conserving resources (for whom??)" crap.  Yes, there are many things that these departments have done to honestly help reduce disease, improve food safety, etc.  There is no doubt that good things have come from these departments.  But they have gone unchecked, been held unaccountable and have overstepped their boundaries by unimaginable distances.  

These government agencies are out of control and they have gone far beyond what they were originally created to do.  They destroy family dairy operations that have not a single incident of food-born illness in 30 years of operation.  They raid direct farm-to-consumer buying clubs.  They criminalize the sale and purchase of raw milk sales.  Is it because there are people becoming sick from the products or because consumers were being sold something other than what they though they were buying?  No.  

Just like any government agency, it keeps growing and growing, feeding on the endless supply of taxpayer money.  And in order to keep the agencies fat, happy and ever expanding, they have to rationalize (i.e., make up, skew facts or out & out lie) reasons for the billions of dollars a year they suck from our wallets.  They claim that they are saving us from horrible, horrible things.  And the majority of the people still believe that it is all for our own good.  That it is justifiable.  That it is just how things are in today's society and we should all just deal with it.  It's the price we pay for living in a civilized first-world country.

Bullshit.

The price we pay for these "services" and "safety" is bloated, inefficient and downright criminal.  But as time has gone by we have been brainwashed into thinking that it's OK.  That there are just some freedoms that we will have to give up in order to live in this civilized society.  That humans are infallible so we should just assume that those institutions constructed by them are inherently flawed.  While there is truth in the fact that our governing bodies are imperfect, there is absolutely no reason that we should accept or encourage those imperfections.  Wrong is wrong.  Evil is evil.  Regardless of who institutes it or if they got away with it before.

Let's play a word game.  If I say the word "Politician", what's the first word(s) that comes to your mind?

Honest?  Civil Servant?  Law-abiding?

I'd be willing to bet it was somewhere along the lines of "Crook" or "Liar".  And the fact that we take this negative connotation in comic stride is a perfect example of how bad it has become.  We expect to hear scandalous things about our elected or appointed officials.  Nobody utters a loud and horrified gasp when we see the local mayor, judge or senator on the television being accused of breaking the law; we just shrug our shoulders and say "It's just politics" and wait for Dancing with the Stars to come on.

I see I have regressed (or progressed, depending on how you look at it) in my original ranting.  But it is really all connected.  

It is time for us to hold our ground.  It is well past time, actually.  If you watched the latest video from Baker's Green Acres (see link above), he says something to the extent that the guys lower on the DNR totem pole are "just doing their jobs".  Ok.  So maybe the poor sap who just works there to mow the grass at the forest preserve should't be held accountable (although I could argue this point also).  But anybody who would employ state-sanctioned force at the point of a gun on those raw milk sellers, heritage breed pig farmers, etc. should be held liable and accountable for their actions as well as should their superiors.  It's so much easier to say "It's my job" or "But my boss told me to do it" than to take responsibility for oneself. 

So don't pull that "just doing their job" crap on me either.  Those guys at Auschwitz where just doing their jobs.  Is the jack-booted thug with an itchy trigger finger pointing a gun at a dairy farmer going to shoot him if he dares sell that gallon of milk to a willing and knowledgeable consumer?  Just because it's his job?   Just because he has a shiny badge with ABC Dept. stamped on it?  Just because some politician said it was "OK" for him to do it? 

It's time to tar and feather.  It's going to be difficult.  There are going to be friends, acquaintances, maybe even family that you will have to come to terms with.  But we must tell them that their line of work is unethical, immoral, even evil.  That we will no longer tolerate injustice just because it's their "job".  These people need to be ostracized by their community until people realize that those jobs are not honest employment, that those jobs are nothing more than state-sanctioned evil.  We must make those jobs some of the most insidious, most disgusting, most hated occupations known to man.  When somebody tells you that she's a citation officer for the XYZ Agency, we must look at her in distain and ask why she can't get an honest job.  If a friend is applying for a job with the XYZ Agnecy, we must tell him that we no longer value his friendship.  When a guy at a bar is bragging about how he gets to carry a gun because he's going to raid a family farm for selling chickens processed on-site, we need to tell him what a POS he is.   It's not going to be easy to do, but it has to be done.

PS - I wish I didn't have to write this, but here goes:  I am not in any way, shape or form suggesting nor implying that you should use violence against any government employee (or anyone) at any time.  Violence is not the answer (although I wish the State would take the same stance).  And please don't take your anger out at your local mail carrier, city park lawn maintenance crew or the guy collecting money on the toll road.  There are government services that are worthy and justified (and you all thought I was an anarchist).   I'm not directing my anger towards them, but towards the tyrannical gun-wielding and Constitution-trampling thugs and agencies that think they are above the law just because some self-serving egomaniac in a political position told him it was ok.

The First Amendment is still (mostly) upheld in the USA.  Use it to voice your outrage.