*MS Paint Showing Mussolini's Approval of Heather Mill's Vegan Ruthlessness
Some dumb celebrity by the name of Heather Mills decided to buyout a seafood restaurant in England. The plan: close the establishment that was popular in the area and open up an all vegan restaurant called "V-bites." Oh, and whilst conquering the world with your endless celebrity resources, make sure you take no prisoners. She proceeded to fire every single staff member of the old restaurant without consideration. Slash and burn business ethics -- hmm, very fitting of a holier-than-thou, supposedly ethically-motivated vegan.
Now I support anybody's decision to pursue vegetarianism and veganism. I think it's damn great in most cases. I love vegetarian and vegan restaurants myself. I also love clearly marked vegetarian meal choices on menus at non-vegetarian restaurants so I can feel comfortable knowing that there isn't ground up horse balls in my soup. But, all is not well in our utopian, vegan fast-food chain world. There is a very essential principle that comes first before the well-being of the environment and animals. It is vital for people to choose free of coercion, threat and symbolic assault. Vegetarianism shouldn't be dogmatic, punitive and religious like it is when it's forced down people's throat in this manner. Without the volition of the individual to choose rationally, free of any threat is essential for a healthy vegetarian community and society -- a healthy society in regard to any issue.
V-bites which sells "veganized" fast-food is not a decision made by a community group or by the demand of the local people. It is some fucked up, vegan McDonald's that wants to force its product through any means necessary; well, almost any means, since this brand of vegetarianism that Heather Mill's subscribes to, something akin to PETA's praxis of their ideology, demands that while its ultimate goal is world-wide conversion to their ideology, it still can't help but play its loved role as the martyred victim; without failure, vegan stunts and identity would struggle to understand itself because its core need, in this brand of veganism, is a stuggled elitism that won't allow itself to be absorbed into greater society. V-bites will probably fail at least in some way or another if it doesn't completely shut down; it most definitely will not bring about any new converts of average omnivorous eaters that will feel alienated, attacked and resentful of Mill's symbolic condescension. It will also help to feed the fire that surrounds vegetarianism as a snobby, petty and militantly aggressive group of people that exist for the sole purpose to agitate greater society -- an outline for the mainstream's opinion about any group deemed "radical" or "leftist."
What vegetarianism needs is not public stunts and ploys that play into and use the very structure that birthed the injustices that forced vegetarianism to be form in response. How different is V-bites from a shitty Hardee's or a McDonald's? A veganized chain would significantly reduce animal cruelty, environmental destruction and may provide slightly healthier alternatives to standard meat-based junk food by cutting out all the excesses of the meat and dairy industry, but the entire order, the structure, the fast-food, consumer capitalist universe of easy, endless, efficient, thoughtless consumption is still being fed itself -- fed like the fat vegetarians that look a lot like the fat meat-eaters at McDonald's but fat off of cheap soybean oil and highly-processed food rather than drug-ridden animal fats disguised as meat. One of the main reasons people are so unhealthy, fat and live personally and globally destructive lives is because they're removed from their food. This type of vegan restaurant just perpetuates the initial attitude that is so destructive in consumerism by selling itself as another thoughtless, quick and cheap way to feed yourself. Vegetarians don't need and should be opposed to these consumerist institutions of how we eat, because they are founded upon the very principles that devastate what vegetarians claim to value.
What vegetarianism also needs is the endless patience to accept that it will be an undoubtedly long process to allow for traditions, power structures and personal habits to be broken down on a massive scale that would allow for a true paradigm shift. But this process has to be slow, has to be thoughtful and has to be rationally motivated and free of the alienating forces of coercion that groups like PETA have mastered in their agitating assault on the public through consumerist media. Its lengthy gestation is equal to the final depth and strength vegetarian will have in a thoughtful society.
And I leave this for you, PETA-type vegetarians and vegans: "Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And when you look into the abyss, the abyss also looks into you." - N-dawg
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