Real Versus Fake, or The Pink Slime Flowing Under the Golden Arches

My brother posted something on Facebook yesterday that caught my attention. Later in the day, having largely put his post out of my mind, I ran into it again. What was it about? Pink slime.

Pink slime? Yup. Pink slime.

Let me explain. I appears that McDonald's has opted to eliminate what is referred to as "pink slime" (charming name, isn't it?) from their burgers. This pink slime actually is created by treating beef trimmings and combining it, evidently, with "ammonium hydroxide to kill bacteria".

Sounds yummy, doesn't it?

According to Alex Johnson of the MSNBC site, ammonium hydroxide is used in "fertilizers, household cleaners, and some roll-your-own explosives". Eat a McDonald's hamburger prior to their terminating this practice, and that was some of what you ate. I'll bet you never knew, right?

I will say this, however: I am glad that this actually comes as a shock to people. After all, pick up most items at the local supermarkets (and edible and non-edible items alike in most homes, for that matter), and look at the ingredients that the product consists of. I consider myself a fairly well-educated man, but many of these things, I cannot even pronounce, let alone have knowledge about what they are, and what they do to our system once consumed, or inhaled, or touched, or perhaps even when we are near them. Open up a candy bar, or perhaps those sweet, fruity candies that your kids love. What exactly are all of those chemicals, anyway? Are these things made in a science laboratory, some kind of giant experiment at our expense, perhaps? How much of this stuff is in there, anyway? How many chemicals are present in order to make this stuff taste the way that it tastes, or to make it have as long a shelf life as it does?

Of course, this is not just true of food. Do you like to spray your house with air freshner? Did you ever wonder how "fresh" the air gets when you put those chemicals in the air, or what those chemicals consist of to make your home smell oh, so pretty? How about the stuff you use to spray down your car, or perhaps even furniture? Maybe some other cleaners, or maybe even some of your toiletries.

Plus, what about the possibility of radiation from all of those electronic devices that we surround ourselves with and cannot live without? Sure, they tell you that it is not dangerous. We are also told by these anonymous authorities that we base much of our information on that our life expectancy has never been higher, and is on the rise. But who are "they", and how accurate is their information, anyway? After all, even while this may be true (at least for now), is there not evidence that other things are on the rise, such as diseases, particularly cancer? Is it completely out of the realm of possibility that these chemicals from our food or household products, or from the small levels of radiation from these electronic devices, or the energy plants and telephone poles and cell phone towers and other such things that we all see everyday, and all too often live close by, have some kind of a factor in these harsh, sobering truths?

Let us get back to food. People seemed genuinely appalled and disgusted by McDonald's pink slime. Yet, most people are aware, at least on some level, that they consume food that has things in it that they cannot pronounce, let alone know anything about (including the health benefits, or the complete lack thereof). We eat vegetables and fruits, but we are advised to wash them thoroughly because of the pesticides, although these are deemed "safe" enough to use in order to kill insects and other pests. We have reports all over the world of artificial growth hormones for beef, and what have you, but these stories just somehow disappear, seemingly. They flare up briefly, and much is made of it, but it always comes down to finger-pointing, doesn't it? That is to say, it was an isolated incident, and nothing that you should worry about, right?  Right? That happened somewhere in Europe, or Canada, but we don't do that. When it does seem to happen here, then it is always some lone loser who was going against the law, taking it upon himself. Surely, it is nothing wrong with the way that we are living our lifestyle, though, right? RIGHT?!

Yet, it seems to me that almost everything we do has this fake, artificially engineered quality to it, and nowhere do people en  masse subscribe to it unquestioningly than right here in the United States. This is true of our food, and our hosehold products, sure. It is also true of our economy, where wealth is built on paper, built on a buble, and everyone is happy and remains blind, until somehow, somwhere, someone pokes a needle a bursts the bubble. What happens? Finger pointing, then a scapegoat. Bernie Madoff becomes the news item of the moment, and we all act shocked and offended, and are glad to see him go to jail. Something similar happened in France right around that time, when the loss of billions of dollars of hard working people were blamed on one man, rather than on the system that allowed this to happen.

Nor is it just relegated to these areas. It has permeated everything. We get our convenient little filters through which we experience our world and our lives the way someone else believes that we should. We get our news filtered by those who own the major media outlets, and they get to tell us what is important enough for us to know. When there is a war in some rich oil country, we get a steady diet of unnatural news, and we the people digest it, and feel satisfied. Saddam Hussein is the next Hitler, he;'s the next Stalin, he has huge stashes of Weapons of Mass Destruction and a forty five minute response time, so we need urgent action! So short is our term of memory, that we forget that he fought us with World War I era strategies (trenches) and World War I era weapons (mustard gas). Yet, over a decade later, he is the next superpower, after being disarmed? Really? The rest of the world warns us that we are wrong, but we insist, we initiate a conflict that everyone keeps telling us in unnecessary, and what do we find? Nothing. No WMD's. We find the next Hitler hiding in a hole in the dessert, and it makes us proud to see him humiliated just before he is hanged. We talk about de-Ba'athization like it was deNazification in Germany, we occupy the country like we did in Germany and Japan following their defeat. The man who starts this useless and costly war is regarded as a hero, and he gets Saddam's gun, and keeps it in the White House. No wonder the world views us, and what we say, with a high degree of skepticism. No wonder not everyone is buying the Iran Nuclear threat. Didn't anybody ever read "The Boy Who Cried Wolf"?

Of course, this then spreads to our politics, naturally enough. We have two options that are considered viable, and anything else is "throwing your vote away",, we are told. Yet, the Democrats and the Republicans seem to agree with each other on an alarming number of issues, so they perhaps have to make much of what differences do exist between them. To me, this also has the feeling of "fake" to it. Sorry if this offends anyone, but it feels that way.

All I'm saying is that in an age when "reality TV" consists of people up for a challenge thrown on an island or another very remote location to survive longer than everyone else in order to hit the jackpot and get the riches down the line, or when "Jersey Shore" dominates the ratings, we have lost sight of "reality". I am not the first to say it, and certainly will not be the last, but sometimes I wonder if there is anything left out there that isn't fake.