Rebuild from Depression Blog

Highly divided societies are characterized by having a lot of reinforcing cleavages: one race of people goes to the same church, lives in the same neighborhood, etc. The other goes to another church and lives in another neighborhood. What makes this problematic politically is that these groups never talk to each other. If you go to the same church or are at the same school open house, you have the opportunity to see that other racial group, interact, and in the process, you realize that they are people too, not just objects of your political disaffection. You are then not only more likely to talk to them about the events at school, but you are likely to become increasingly open to a discussion of racial politics, for instance.

The raw milk issue is highly polarized. Rarely do the two sides meet and, when they do, it’s in a “showdown” sort of situation. What would help the discussion, in my opinion, is to form a Little League team or a beer appreciation club with the regulators. That way, all players would learn that people on the other side are actually people and might actually have a productive discussion. Surely beer appreciation cuts across all political cleavages.

All that said, a couple of the panelists for this Seattle meeting contacted me in my pregnancy to find out how I was doing. Granted, one was concerned that I not contract listeriosis by drinking raw milk (LOL), but anyone who can show compassion for someone else gets points from me even if we don’t agree on all political issues. For the record, I didn't drink raw milk in the pregnancy.

I am going to hang all by myself

Lynching doesn't happen at academic meetings. If it did, I would have been lynched some time ago. Academic meetings are not as exciting as people might think, perhaps because academics generally don't know how to fight. Veterinarians may be a different story and they might literally kick my ass. If that happens, I’ll be sure to get it on video so we can all laugh about it later. But really, what do I have to lose? Money? Fame? Tenure? My five acres in the Sequoia National Forest are nearly paid for and my money comes from another stream. If the event goes badly, I’ll just go get some sushi or start a beer appreciation club.

Tokenism

Am I the token raw milk consumer at this conference? Absolutely. WAPF doesn’t have token regulators at their meetings and a recent regulator-type meeting had no raw milk consumers on the agenda. Am I being used? Maybe. Do I care? Not really.

Am I so mentally impoverished that I need the brain power of WAPF's "heavy hitters" for my paper? I suppose we'll find that out in Seattle.