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| Michael Pollan |
what Donald Trump never talks about, what even Bernie Sanders never mentions, when they rail against a "rigged system" is the very thing Michael Pollan has been trying to get Americans to hear for more than a decade: the miracle of abundant food in this country has provided cover for a very dark side of the American power structure.
When it comes to power, the politicians, even Mr. Trump, are bit players to the men who control our food supply. Their impact on every American home, on the environment, on the bodies and health of our nation is far more direct and pervasive than almost anything (beyond nuclear war) which is controlled by the President.
Michael Pollan has one of the most important articles of the year in this week's New York Times magazine about "Big Food."
It all brings to mind that wonderful, paranoid, the-fix-is-in film, "The Parallax View," staring Warren Beatty, about a journalist who uncovers the real power behind the American throne, and what happens to him when he gets too close to the nerve.
Reading this brought to mind a time when I asked the local Hampton, New Hampshire Democrats' club to play "Food, Inc." at "movie night" the group sponsored. I felt I had to explain why a movie about the American Industrial Food complex, based on the writings of Michael Pollan, among others, should be relevant to a group whose main concern is politics.
The group agreed to show the film, and I prefaced it with a story about how I once met a man jogging in Washington, D.C. We were always out at the same pre dawn hour, and when he finally revealed he was the Secretary of Agriculture, I naively blurted out that it must be good to have the one job in the cabinet which was pretty free from political concerns--"I mean everybody is for food and farmers. How controversial can food be? We're all on the same side there."
And he laughed bitterly and said, grimly, there is no more political job in Washington than Agriculture.
I did not understand what he was talking about until Michael Pollan published "Omnivore's Dilemma" and other work years later.
Pollan outlines how a very few large corporations gained control of the American food chain supply and how their trade associations and lobbying groups have achieved a strangle-hold on American politicians, thwarting President Obama's well meant efforts to gain some control, to protect real farmers, as opposed to the mega corporations who now own poultry farmers and hold them as indentured servants.
The conspiracy, and that's what it is, has meant that if a farmer does not wish to buy ADM seed for his corn but pollen from that seed blows into his field, he is sued out of existence by ADM for "stealing" their patented product.
And the courts uphold this claim. That one branch of our government which is supposed to dispense "justice" is as deep into the darkness as the legislative branch. The executive branch is impotent to right the wrongs.
One can start sounding as paranoid and unhinged as the Donald himself, if one reads and digests the Michael Pollan article. You begin to think, "When Bernie said the system is rigged--He had NO IDEA."
Big Ag, Big Meat, Big Poultry, fast food chains, corn of single genetic code, vulnerable to the next big contagion in a way far worse than the Irish potatoes were centuries ago--it all makes for doomsday reading and could provoke sleepless nights for those who lose sleep over climate change and big apocalyptic things which could make what happened to the dinosaurs after the asteroid hit look like an environmental hiccup.
Of course, if Mr. Trump wins, none of the dark powers will have anything to fear. The Koch brothers, (who are deeply involved) will sleep well.
Corn is king, it turns out. Corn for which the genetic code is owned (courtesy of the Supreme Court) by ADM and Monsanto, which feeds virtually all our livestock from cows to pigs to chickens is vulnerable to blight. If corn fails, the whole house of cards topple. Meanwhile, if you control corn and its genome, you control every pantry, every kitchen in America. And you can burn all the oil you want harvesting the corn, transporting it, selling it to farmers and getting laws passed to mandate corn in gasoline. It's the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," 21st century style. A nightmare scenario.
Meanwhile, we sing the lullaby of blissful ignorance.
The lady at the end of the wonderful Robert Altman movie "Nashville" sings, "You may say, I ain't free...Well, it don't bother me."
As far as the rest of us go, what we don't know about Big Food don't bother us at all.
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