The Chicken or the Egg?

380 million salmonella eggs. Not yummy, but, apparently, neither is 80% of the chicken. It's regularly contaminated with the very same salmonella involved in the recent recall. Still, no one is talking about that. People only speak in sound bites now--even my adoptive Italian Grandma stated: "It's not worth the risk." Just hours later I read her exact words in an article by Mike Adams.

No, the FDA, the CDC, and the USDA aren't telling you to throw out of those tiny tainted chicken corpses. Proper cooking kills the contaminant. Same with the eggs. They don't report that.

So was it the chicken or the egg? Both? Neither? In this case, if you plow through the misinformation, it is obvious that it is the farming practices that are wrong.

Awww, come now. THAT doesn't make for exciting television. We need sensational news stories with sci-fi endings, like the idea of nuking all the eggs, eradicating nutrients along with the contaminants. Why attempt to cure the big agribusiness disease completely when you can invent a new oppressive solution that will evenly distribute poor health to everyone? Now that's equality!

What's useful about the age-old chicken-egg question is that it probes for root causes. What started it all? That's why I almost became a naturopathic doctor. I appreciated the methodology: restoring balance by addressing the most basic problem.

Nowadays, we treat the surface. Not just in conventional medicine. In so many arenas.

Take, for instance, insults to supposed "teabaggers" by so-called progressives who believe that Tea Party values are without merit simply because neocons like Palin, desperate for followers, are hoping to capitalize on this record-level disenchantment by posing as champions and saviors. They are not. This situation has smeared the good names of Patriotism and Political Dissent, which are GOOD THINGS. Vital things.

If Republicans are racists, Democrats are socialists, and Independents are just wasting their votes, where does that leave us? You know. Us. The people.

Nowheresville.

Popular adherence to the false left-right paradigm is infuriating and dangerous.

When will pseudo-progressives and faux conservatives quit their petty assaults on each other?

Isn't it evident that most politicians, be they Democrats or Republicans, are beholden to corporations whose primary motivation is not our well-being but their profit?

In this atmosphere of zero accountability, we can expect that such interests will contribute to the promotion and election of more corporate shills who seek to co-opt movements by both true conservatives and true progressives and to subvert their agendas. The problem is not the other side: it's the infighting among those of us who realize something is amiss. We need to befriend the Other. We need to dig into our differences and find the overlap, or it is curtains for our country.

The exacerbation of political difference is our greatest weakness. We are powerless until we see this. Only from a place of empowerment will we be able to identify those parties who wish to exploit that weakness by fomenting tensions and thereby keeping us too distracted to start rooting for ourselves and each other. You know. The home team.