Revenge of the Mutt People by Joe Bageant

[Clara T]

Revenge of the Mutt People
by Joe Bageant
www.dissidentvoice.org
January 10, 2006

“There are some things so disgusting that only a white man would be willing to do them.”
--Walter Wildshoe, Coeur d'Alene Indian 

Many years ago I worked at an industrial hog farm owned by the Coeur d'Alene Indian tribe in northern Idaho. The place stank of the dead and rotting brood sows we chopped out of farrowing crates -- bred to death in the drive for pork production. And it stank of the massive ponds that held millions of gallons of hog feces and rotting baby pigs, and every square inch was poisoned by the pesticides used to kill insects that hogs attract and the antibiotics fed to hogs from hundred pound sacks. The Coeur d'Alene Indians refused to suffer those kinds of conditions; they wouldn't even manage the place. They contracted it out. As my friend Walter Wildshoe said: “Only a white man would work there.”  
 
The hog farm, however, offered one company benefit. The white manager gave employees any young pigs that developed large tumors -- those with tumors smaller than golf calls went to market with the rest of the hogs -- or were born with deformities such as heads scrunched sideways with both eyes on the same side, or a leg that stuck out of the top of their body instead of the bottom. We employees would butcher and eat them. Among hog farm employees, all of whom were tough descendants of the Scots Irish mutt people, free pork of any kind was prized, deformed with tumors or otherwise. You never saw a Swede eat the stuff.  
 
So I took these pigs home and, using a huge old butcher's knife, slashed their throats in the woods, right in front of my two kids -- ages two and four at the time -- without flinching even as the pigs screamed almost like humans and thrashed around, splashing thick dark glops of blood everywhere. It bothered me not one bit, just like it never bothered my daddy or granddaddy. Nor did it seem to bother my children as they watched, just like it didn't bother me as a child when my uncle handed me sacks of barn kittens to drown in the crick. And Walter would shake his head and say, “Only a white man would wrestle a hog with a butcher knife. An Indian would shoot the motherfucker with a gun.” 
 
My point here is that we rural and small town mutt people by an early age seem to have a special capacity for cruelty, compared say, to damned near every other imaginable group of Americans. For instance, as a child did you ever put a firecracker up a toad's ass and light it? George Bush and I have that in common. Anyway, as all non-whites the world round understand, white people can be mean. Especially if they feel threatened -- and they feel threatened about everything these days. But when you provide certain species of white mutt people with the right incentives, such as free pork or approval from god and government, you get things like lynchings, Fallujah, the Birmingham bombers and Abu Ghraib. Even as this is being written we may safely assume some of my tribe of mutt people are stifling the screams of captives in America's secret “black site” prisons across the planet. Or on a more mundane scale of cruelty (according to CBS footage) kicking hundreds of chickens to death every day at the Pilgrim's Pride plant in Wardensville, West Virginia, just up the road from where I am writing this. Or consider the image of Matthew Shepard's body twisted on that Wyoming fence… All these are our handiwork. We the mutt-faced sons and daughters of the republic. Born to kick your chicken breast meat to death for you in the darkest, most dismal corners of our great land, born to kill and be killed in stockcar races, drunken domestic rows, and of course in the desert dusty back streets at the edges of the empire. Middle class urban liberals may never claim us as brothers, much less willing servants, but as they say in prison, we are your meat. We do your bidding. Your refusal to admit that we do your dirty work for you, not to mention the international smackdowns and muggings for the republic -- from which you benefit more materially than we ever will -- makes it no less true.  

http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Jan06/Bageant10.htm
 

[Canuckistanian]

1. "we are capable of doing a Lynndie England on any type of human"

Man, that's what pops out at me....

Awesome post.

K&R

[Doctor Panacea]

2. Worth reading!

This article was published in toto over on smirkingchimp (http://www.smirkingchimp.com), where it caused a lot of comment. It is worth reading in full.

[Uncle Joe]

3. Damn, good column!

Kicked and nominated.



:kick:

[DinahMoeHum]

4. Joe Bageant's got his own website, and a book coming out soon

www.joebageant.com

[Raster]

5. Oh man! That hit me with a "thump" in the chest. Last 2 paras:

"Meanwhile, their kids do the same as they did. Go uneducated. Sometimes I walk the street on which I grew up. And when I look around I see the same kinds of kids as ever. They are all fatter, but they are the same cigarette-smoking, know-nothing white punks that I was, the tough sons and daughters of the unwashed. In my old neighborhood where over one quarter of adults do not have a high school diploma, there are lots of yellow ribbons in the windows, Marine Corps and Army parent's icons on the porches and scrubby lawns, evidence enough that you do not need an education to contribute something of value the far-flung perimeter of our expanding empire of blood and commerce. Pure meanness is highly valued in Caesar's legions. Lots of Americans don't seem to mind having a pack of young American pit bulls savage some flyblown desert nation, or running loose in the White House for that matter, as long as they are our pit bulls protecting Wall Street and the 401-Ks of the upper middle class.

"The problem is this: pit bulls always escalate the fight and keep at it until the last dog is dead, leaving the gentler breeds to clean up the blood spilled. We mutt people, the pit bulls, have always been your own, whether you claim us or not. And until you accept that you are your brother's keeper, and help deliver us from ignorance, you will continue to have on your hands some of every drop of blood spilled . . . from the sands of Iraq to the streets of East L.A. All the socially responsible stock portfolios, little hybrid cars and post modernist deconstruction in the world will not wash it off.

[tom_paine]

6. As always, Bageant is interesting and informative

He brings several key points of view to the table that are sorely needed.

For middle class types college-educated and living OK, it is key to hear that kind of testimony and UNDERSTAND.

[blindpig]

7. Kick for the ugly truth.

[Igel]

8. There's something else to add to one of his lines.

"Anyway, as all non-whites the world round understand, white people can be mean."

I'd expect at least many non-whites to also understand that non-white people can be mean. Clearly putting them one up on Bageant.

We've gone from arguing "race doesn't imply culture and actions", when we want to defend a group or show they've been wronged, to "race does imply culture and actions" when we want to impugn a group. Some progress. But don't they always say you become what you hate?

[The River]

9. Just Reread it for the 3rd Time

And each time it's multiple truths
reveal a new insight into that "other"
right here in America.

Not the "other" who are new to America.
The "Other", native born and indoctrinated
into this mean, uneducated culture
where dog-eat-dog has replaced the Golden Rule.

This "Other" who, despite their outward appearance
of normalcy, are, on the inside, untouched by the virtues
that make us human.

You know the list:
Thoughtfulness
Compassion
Empathy
Connectedness
Tolerance
etc

All they know are the baser "virtues" (instincts!)
which have allowed us to survive as a species
before the Age of Law & Reason.

Wariness
Distrust
Opportunism (greed)
violence
sexism
racism
etc

This is like seeing inside the minds of
the freeps and sheeple. Good National Socialists...er Republicans all!

And, understanding how the governing powers use it to their advantage.