"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
The great muckraker, journalist and general provocateur Sinclair Lewis wrote those words in 1935 as the specter of Nazism was taking hold of Germany and getting ready to sink its gnarly fangs into the whole of Europe.
Lewis sure did nail it with that portentius vision. But as astute as he was, he got the clothing wrong. I say fascism is already here and it has wrapped itself in bacon, like the harmless dates and figs I've seen popping up at haute dining establishments. Drenched in lard and smothered in sizzling pork belly, our nation has slowly been sinking into a big lake of pig shit-literally.
And although I've been aware of the gaining momentum of this descent for a while, recent seemingly unrelated events (the kind that characterize the type of feverishly connected storylines that inevitably play out in every I¤árritu epic on love and human dysfunction) have led me to believe that America, as mighty as the Titanic, is finally up to its neck in a mess of feces-laden quicksand.
The first of said instances occurred over tea and dim sum at an all-too-authentic Chinese restaurant, the kind that serves up dishes that make you question your staunch belief that no part of a butchered animal should be wasted. After inquiring whether a suspicious-looking item was vegetarian, I was informed the globular delicacy was a meat-free radish cake. After consulting the manager, though, it turned out what we at the table all heard as radish was instead "reddish." Over the clang of passing steamed bun carts, the confusion between the two words was understandable. But after asking three servers whether the ominously gelatinous dish had meat in it, and thrice being assured it did not, finding out I had ingested Chinese sausage was at the least a tad discouraging.
The following week, I was reading a New York Magazine piece about Momofuku Noodle Bar, an Âber-trendy East Village NYC ramen shop that caters to carnivorous downtown hipsters and pretentious uptown foodies alike, and its brash young head chef, David Chang. So many times had I passed the perpetual line outside the small establishment, wishing they might actually offer at least one substantial non-meat option (the menu blatantly says, "We do not serve vegetarian-friendly items"). My interest faded, though, as I learned in the article that Chang purposefully removed all vegetarian options as some cracked-out form of retribution against an irrational vegan customer. Instead, he decided to throw every kind of swine orifice and appendage he could salvage into his pan-Asian cuisine, emphatically expressing his divine right to cook what he pleased. Initially, I just chalked it up to him being a hateful scumbag who deserved to be impaled through the rear by an overgrown celery stalk. No further deliberation was necessary.
Then the truth hit me like a stuffed wild boar plummeting down from Mt. Olympus. It came thanks to a scathing indictment of the pork industry and its number one producer, Smithfield Foods, in a recent issue of Rolling Stone. While the practically sadistic (if it wasn't so cost effective) treatment of the millions of pigs Smithfield raises in boxes and slaughters is egregious, it's what they do with all the toxic remains of carcasses and pig excrement that is even more haunting. They pile rotting, bloated hogs in exposed dumpsters and fill lagoons surrounding their countless processing plants with an endless supply of fresh pig feces. Then they spray their fields with the liquid, let their lagoons, colored pink because of blood and bacteria reacting with the waste, overflow into neighboring rivers and lakes and turn a blind eye as ecosystem and human settlements alike are submerged and often destroyed.
Over the putrid aroma, I can smell a hint of saffron with a touch of conspiracy. With over a quarter of every bit of swine digested in this country coming from Smithfield, they have fully infiltrated the American culinary experience and are now set on dominating how we live. Perhaps they are developing an anti-pig shit pathogen, a swindling swine cure-all that will be the only savior as our countryside and cities grow completely festooned with feces and are rendered unlivable. And who knows how deep this paranoia-inducing lagoon might be? After all, President Bush's Crawford ranch used to moonlight as a pig farm. Now that's some food for thought.
