by Carol Warner Christen
(Swans - December 3, 2007) This recipe has evolved from the original two hundred thirty years ago. At that time, the People were off limits except when flagrantly breaking laws made by the Founders because the People were supreme. They were tried for crimes only before a jury of their peers. The entire process was cooked in public and the human being set aside from mere brutes even when that human acted brutish towards others. There, of course, were exceptions in the dehumanizing of Natives, slaves, blacks, and mere women, which is still the case. Not gaining true humanness is still a bug in the melting pot for them. They can still be rendered, raped, or killed by, or in, action(s) defined by some rather than as the People.
By and large, the recipe worked and the country prospered, devoured books and learning, invented endlessly, brought forth heaps of produce to feed humans and livestock. Small independent farmers and tradesmen cooked up prosperity across the land and honored the human state that stood then above arbitrary human actions of leaders in other countries, such as those with despots, kings, queens, clergy, and dictators. The Founders removed those five "spices" from American life using the constitutional kitchen.
The old constitutional kitchen had three main rooms below the main house. There was the congressional room divided in half, thus deciding and cooking the recipes themselves. There was the executive branch that ordered supplies, stored them, cared for them, tested them for poisons, and passed them out to everyone in need. Finally, there was the court of judges who did the supreme tasting of the congressional repasts after some People were harmed by the brew.
At one unfortunate point in time, some of the People decided to create their own kitchen in the South. It was war on the home front over competing recipes for human life. The South's kitchen was overturned because the main North kitchen decided those cooks would spoil the American broth. The truce is still uneasy; the soup still boils here and there over the recipe.
Many immigrants arrived to share the feast that was American freedom until a single secret chef wrote "person" upon a court case that gave groups control over the recipes outside of the congressional kitchen. The First World War destroyed many of the world's kitchens and recipes in Europe and led to the Second World War when we dumped radiation into the brewing soup, rendering two cities deadly in Japan and strewed radiation all over some other islands and Nevada. Our success with that recipe caused us to build 30,000 more of the things to keep in stock. We never know when we will need more pulverized material sans humans as a spice.
World War II clarified and reduced the fat in the world culminating in some of the most humane laws promoted by the United Nations as treaty recipes to spare humans any more of these debacles in roasting and rendering humanity itself unfairly. The Cold War recipes were exchanged with the Soviet Union and cost a great many new and dangerous utensils to be created, leading to hunger and want worldwide. A crisis brought some very close to the country with shoes pounding on tables until finally resolved by withdrawing the utensil. This created fear, which finally dissipated when Russia came to her senses and dismissed the cooks. Our cooks became extremely hawkish after this triumph and brewed more devastating soups and condiments for us; none of which we dared to use except to let islanders in the Pacific taste of some of them. We made them sick.
Since Americans were on a roll, inventions and money and prosperity sprang up across the country when Richard Nixon threw dirty tricks into the recipe. He resigned as chief cook because the constitutional kitchen intended to impeach him (read skewer him) for his distasteful intentions with the soup of state. An interim cook took over and added a little of this and a little of that to a most insipid dish. The country decided that some Southern cooking might liven up the broth and elected Jimmy Carter for one short term as cook.
Then the real trouble in the kitchen began. The country wanted Hollywood-style cooking and elected a movie star without any credentials in gastronomy and without any clue as to what was cooking at the time. Unbeknownst to the new cook, his vice president was the son of a banker to Germany during Hitler's reign of terror. That vice president became the country's cook from 1989-1993. Hitler preferred to gas his share of humans, which rendered them quickly dead; the cash flowed to Germany from many other bankers until the United States called a halt to their enterprise in the name of humanity.
We were appalled at such cooking practices, considering it barbaric at the time. We went to war to end all wars. Little did we know that the French cuisine was overstretched in the Vietnam kitchen where we cooked a little of this and a lot of that from about 1950 through 1965. We finally took over that chore and felt the heat in 1973 and left when one of our chemicals -- Agent Orange -- got out of the kitchen into the environment. The Vietnamese still haven't been able to clean the mess up. It deformed many Vietnamese children.
The country decided that the Republican cuisine was too conservative for their tastes and then elected a Democratic cook -- William Clinton, a southerner, too. Easy-going Southern cooking was dished up for eight years ending in impeachment for what the public, or rather Re-publicans, decided was in very bad taste; an affair in the country's main storage unit.
That led to the current cook's election, another Bush; i.e., the son of the previous Bush. His assistant chef appointed himself because he preferred to stir things in back rooms, adding more of this, a lot of that, and boiled the broths too much. For his own safety, he prefers reinforced bunker-style kitchens and totally secret recipes. Most vice presidents are quiet, unassuming men. This one presumes far more.
The latest federal kitchen has been stripped of previous helpers, utensils, ideas, old recipes thrown out, and ancient recipes revived. The "new" recipes are older than 230 years. They have been gleaned from the old spices thrown out by the Founders; to wit, despots, kings, queens, clergy, and dictators. The new cook aspires to be the dictator of the realm making his soups everyone's soup and he has positioned many clergymen to assist him in his theological dishes. No monies are spared for his creations; the entire global world is his oyster. His dishes are so attractive to the hoi polloi that they flock to his dinners and spend his People's money without a care in the world for anything except his recipes. His People's grandchildren will have to pay the bill for his debauched recipes over time.
The original constitutional two-room kitchen's duties were delegated to the executive branch, which used to store and care for the country's ingredients and implements. The chief judges tasted and approved or not the recipes. When secrecy came to Washington, DC, the very ancient ways of rendering humans, storing them in secret places, beating them into tenderness, and denying them their due became, once again, the practice. After merely 230 years, history repeats itself by tossing the old recipes: Habeas Corpus, constitutional rights to assemble peaceably without being arrested or beaten, privacy in one's home, wars and bases all over the planet to permit us to take ingredients at will from those who might feel they own them, etc. All of the decent American recipes have been discarded. New recipes worthy of the five old spices are being put in place. The final fillip to the national dish will be allowing the military to police the People. The recipe is being tweaked as I write. The holding pens for the "less than human" members of humanity have been built by Halliburton all over the United States. Is it possible that they will become future meat when we destroy the natural world as we are wont to do now?
What brought all this about? Greed. Gluttony. Lust. Sloth. Wrath. Envy. Pride. Recipes for these abound, but humans have always been warned about these. These are the worst, not the best, recipes. Arrogance (hubris) is the worst American trait. To use even a little in any dish may be too much anymore when greed and the other deadly sins are so easy now. We can wallow in them as we have since 1987 when greed was pronounced good and, presumably, tasty. The recipes for the others above are everywhere: on television, in the streets, in the homes. Everyone seems intent on selecting and cooking ancient recipes to cover the ennui of modern life, boring as it is becoming.
The humans called neocons who banded together are partially responsible for the change in kitchens. The other groups responsible are the worldwide global capitalists. Together they have forged an alliance of which most humans are unaware. Capitalists run corporations, which are now often so large in scope and so beyond the reach of editing their recipes that the planet is now in hock to their foul practices. They dump offal wherever they wish and however they wish. It does not matter if it poisons your stews, your bones, your lungs. It's as if the precept of "cleanliness is next to godliness" has been overlooked. Hospitals spread disease within themselves; dumps overflow in Naples, Italy, and the offal is piled in the streets; housework is rarely done unless help is hired, for no one has the time or the money to even dust. Do most cooks cheat by not washing their hands? Have they always pretended? The government chefs are throwing out the scientists and replacing them with thralls, the better to lie to anyone who cares to question the new recipe paradigm.
The current chef and his assistant are guilty of spoiling the national broth in many, many ways; yet, the current congressional kitchen cares not a whit. They all want to be elected again and again. After all, the lobbyists of the capitalists are very generous with money for their coffers if the elected will just pretend not to see after they pocket the money to be reelected. We the People could donate far more but we don't because the mechanisms are not in place to retool the kitchen. The executive branch is redecorating our gustatory lives, not the proper congressional kitchen. It is busy cooking its own goose. The justices all agree with the executive because when you give a dog a bone, he comes back for more.
The master recipe is almost in place; i.e., the Master will soon oversee everything in the world, just after the next coup d'état like the one baked five years ago. No one knows whose recipe that was. There is speculation galore, but the executive refuses to find out whose pot created that mess. Nah, they couldn't be implicated, could they? It was some tiny group of chefs we always worked closely with in Saudi Arabia. We still work closely with them. There were a lot of pollutants in those two pots, so much so, that the third pot just fell down by itself under its own weight...it was so full of money because most of the stew meat was warned and jumped out ahead of time.
The "Decider" chef didn't feel his minions had enough oil for their pots; thus, he took our armies to Mesopotamia, the birthplace of humankind, the beginning of cooking. And, inexplicably, he smashed it to smithereens. The other no-no was that he strewed depleted uranium all over the land of oil which means, eventually, all the cooks there will die of radiation poisoning. He did this as the Chef Commander without a qualm to this day. They still haven't signed the oil over on the dotted line. He is hoping to do worse to Iran next door. He never will have enough oil, will he? Or, will we keep aiding and abetting this chef from hell whose helpers do not value anyone or anything except themselves and their tastes?
It would be lovely if the kitchen doors were thrown open and the kitchen cleaned of what it may be harboring to our detriment. It would be lovely if the old recipes were simply restored to their rightful places in the kitchen and we humans could breathe a sigh of relief. It would be lovely if the executive was required to do hard labor on his ranch and learned to cook basic dishes for a change. It would be lovely if the capital of the United States was cleared of dangerous spices, baked wholesome foods, and cut all the strings off, discarding them properly. It would be delicious and the fascistic Master Recipe would be burnt, forever forgotten, if we still have a forever. Rome's kitchen burned while Nero fiddled, didn't it?
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