Can We Please Ditch the Presidential Turkey Pardon?

Can we be done with the White House tradition of “pardoning” a turkey for Thanksgiving, as if turkeys have done something so egregious that they deserve to have their throats slit, their feathers yanked out, and their flesh roasted before being sliced into little pieces and ingested by a “superior” species — and isn’t this a fun family celebration for the president to “pardon” an undeserving bird?

No, it’s not fun. It’s repulsive.

I usually post a Thanksgiving Day semi-humorous blog about vegetarianism and may still do so. But my sense of humor about the topic has been dulled by a talk I attended this weekend with Dr. Will Tuttle, a well-known vegan who has written a best-selling book called World Peace Diet: Eating for Spiritual Health and Social Harmony.

Although I’ve been a veg-head for forty years for spiritual and ethical reasons, I still found Dr. Tuttle’s talk eye-opening. I have always understood that eating meat makes us harden our hearts against the living beings that we murder for our recipes. That’s why we call pigs “pork” and cows “beef.” It’s not as disturbing as “the flesh of dead pigs and cows.”

Dr. Tuttle takes this understanding to a much deeper level. He contends that our whole culture has been programmed to accept this denial. “No one is consciously choosing to eat meat, “ he says. “It’s what they’ve learned. They are like robots.”

He has a point.

I just had a conversation with an eighth-grader at the school where I teach. Madelyn has been a vegetarian since she was seven. Her parents aren’t vegetarian, but accept her choice. “I just couldn’t get past thinking about what was sitting on my plate,” Madelyn says. “I couldn’t eat it.” Madelyn refuses to be a robot.

Enough about vegetarianism. You’ll be glad to hear that I’m not going to lecture you. I’ve never been into that. In fact, Dr. Tuttle implored his vegan listeners to get over being “angry vegans” and instead strive for “deep veganism,” which sees meat-eaters as wounded souls disconnected from other living beings and deserving of compassion. Veganism (like Christianity) should be about compassion, not judgement.

All I’m saying is that the idea of “pardoning” a turkey — as if the poor thing should be grateful for our graciousness — is beyond the pale.

(I’m not even going to touch the topic of the current president and pardons. That’s another blog.)

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I Pledge to Use the Freedoms Protected By Our Veterans

 

Thank you to the men and women who have served and continue to serve our nation. Thank you for protecting our rights to kneel during the national anthem, to protest publicly in the streets when we see injustice, and to count every vote in every state in every election.

I personally pledge to take full advantage of my rights as an American. I will not be intimidated, frightened, gaslighted, or exhausted by the president’s efforts to suppress votes, stifle the free press, undercut our justice system, and oppress minorities. I will stand up, I will speak out, I will not be afraid. Thank you to our veterans who have made this freedom possible.

 

 

 

PROPHET OR MYSTIC? EITHER WAY: VOTE

It’s a fine line many of us walk these days. I’m a big believer in not “normalizing” the man-child’s behavior; nor should we ignore it, though that is one strategy a parent might employ with a child throwing tantrums and spewing lies and invectives. We may occasionally laugh at his outlandish hubris or his ignorance about our system of government. But we must not fall into the habit of seeing him as a joke, as the Germans did with Hitler. This is dangerous and we should call it dangerous, even if friends tell us we need to lighten up or “let it go.” Let decency go? Let values go? Let justice go? Let our planet go? No.

So there’s that.

At the same time, how can I be a “light in the world,” as Jesus said? How can I “sow joy where there is sadness” and “hope where there is despair,” as Saint Francis prayed? How can I deepen the roots of my faith and truly believe, as mystic Dame Julian of Norwich believed, that “All shall be well and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well?”

Then there’s Philippians 4:18: “Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable — if anything is excellent or praiseworthy — think about such things.”

So there’s all that.

But what about the prophets of old who called out depravity and violence in their political and religious leaders when they saw it? Not that I fancy myself a prophet, but it doesn’t take a prophet to see how depraved the man-child is. Yesterday, he complained that his political momentum was slowed down by a massacre of Jewish people and some assassination attempts. In case you missed it: “Now, we did have two maniacs stop a momentum that was incredible. Because for seven days, nobody talked about the elections. It stopped a tremendous momentum.”

It also stopped eleven beating hearts and threatened dozens of others, but who’s counting?

Also yesterday, at a press conference designed to terrorize his voters about an “invasion” of brown-skinned people — “a lot of young men, strong men” — trump declared that he had told the military they should view any potential throwing of rocks as an attack by rifles. “Consider it a rifle, I told them.” Which means, of course, shoot the brown-skinned people.

Fortunately, there is a high likelihood he’s lying and did not actually order our soldiers to shoot desperate families seeking asylum. He’s just trying to make this sound like a crisis so his 32% will vote and he can justify using the military in a political stunt, right? Right? Because our military wouldn’t do that, right? Right?

Much as I’d like to write a funny post about the challenge of closing up my New Hampshire house for the winter, or an inspirational post about the scents and scenes of autumn, or a despairing post about the mess that is my memoir, I can’t do that today.

Today my prophet needs to speak out, and she’s yelling from the rooftops: If you don’t vote Democratic this week, a lot more people are going to die, whether by assault weapons, loss of healthcare, white supremacist murders, racist police or soldiers egged on by their Commander in Chief, or the storms, floods, and fires brought by climate change.

Think that sounds like an over-reaction? Think I should “let it go?” If you are a trump fan, no doubt you think I’m fear-mongering. Know what? I don’t care. This is no joke.