Braunschweiger
May 8, 2024
by William P. Meyers

Site Search

Popular pages:

Who eats it besides me?

My wife is away, helping her ailing parents. I went to Fred Meyer, a local chain owned by Kroger, to restock. It had occurred to me that pre-wife I used to eat liver with some regularity, so I had liver on my mind. I thought Braunschweiger would be a possible change, or that I could at least find liverwurst. I did find Kroger branded Braunschweiger. It tasted exactly how I remembered the childhood version (probably bought at A&P).

It is a connection to my (long-dead) father. He is where I got my Germanic last name from, Meyers. My other three grandparents are from three other European ethnic groups. My father like to eat braunschweiger on toast for breakfast. So I started eating it too. My mother and my two siblings refused to eat it. Generally my mother was a food enforcer: if it was served you ate it, whether you liked it or not. But Braunschweiger was optional. My father had learned to eat it as a child. Why not liverwurst, I do not know.

Everything else I know about braunschweiger I just learned from Wikipedia. Well, I did know that different brands were available in different markets, or at different times, but they were remarkably similar. Apparently not so in Germany, which has several local varieties of Braunschweiger, none of them very much like the standard American manufacture. Our Braunschweiger is a mix of port liver, pork meat, bacon, and spices. It has a liverish flavor and a bitter aftertaste. I understand why most people don't like it.

Am I ethnically German? I was told I was, growing up. Or half German and half Scottish, a perfectly acceptable white boy. Except for my Catholic religion, however, most of my culture was Brit, or Anglo-American. Both my parents were very Americanized, and I suppose the Braunschweiger had been Americanized as well.

In fact, over time I dropped much of my family culture. I dropped Catholicism and even Christianity. I dropped the Marine Corps (both my parents were former Marines and my brother (almost) fulfilled their dreams by becoming a Marine Corps officer, advancing to Colonel (just missing General). My sister wandered off into the wilderness and then became a Jew. I studied many great minds and came to see myself as a world citizen, though I have never lived outside the States. I just think everyone would be better off giving up old ethnic and religious identifications and asking themselves: how can I be a good human, a citizen of the planet?

Food can unite us. My favorite ethnic food is Thai, followed closely by Vietnamese and Chinese. And Indian. I like Mexican and Middle Eastern foods. I like some French foods. My own cooking tends to be Italian-ish to pretty plain American fare: lightly fried vegetables, chicken, pasta or potatoes or brown (sometimes white) rice.

I like the culture of best practices. If the Japanese do something better than I do, I have no problem learning to do it their way. I am still an American citizen. The idea of remaining entrenched in some stupid religious or cultural belief, well, I do not advise it.

Which brings us to the Slow Motion Apocalypse, industry, and politics. A contradiction: if we had not started mining coal, then using steam engines to mine coal, then drilling for oil and traveling in locomotives, etc., we would not be in this mess. Oh, modern medicine cutting back on infant mortality led to overpopulation that is a key driver of this mess. Global warming. Ecosystem collapse. Heat Domes, category 5 hurricanes and typhoons, drought and famine.

So you could argue that if we had all stayed in our idiotic 17th century cultures and religions, we would not be in this mess. We would be in a different mess.

As Marxist apologists liked to say, mistakes were made. The entire global population could have adopted a two-child per family policy in, say, 1960, like scientists back then were recommending. We would have had less global warming and ecological destruction. And more time to get back to a sustainable industrial system and economy. But the industrialists and politicians, and probably most ordinary people, did not like that idea. So here we are. If you have the dough and the passport and visa, you can get almost anywhere in the world in a single day. But there is nowhere in the world you can escape the Slow Motion Apocalypse.

In America we can't even get people to agree who really won the 2020 presidential election. Yet we want to boss the world around. We veto perfectly sensible resolutions at the United Nations. Under both Trump and Biden. Not that the U.N. is all that reasonable in general.

We need a Provisional Government of Earth (PGE) to set things straight. As it gains power it is going to piss a lot of people off. People who lose power, of course, but also people who do not like the new global No Nos. The Provisional Government could be led by some U.N. members or factions, or national governments, or it could come up from the grassroots (despite established national governments being good preventing that), or it could evolve in an unexpected way. But it is clearly time to put Earth First, and to have a global government that oversees that.

Yes, that means national governments will have to give up their sovereignty. They would exist as administrative units, with power to adopt global imperatives to local conditions.

Think about it. The olde America and Apocalypse, or a new world healing led by the Provisional Government of Earth.

Stay tuned. Don't wait for Instructions. Act Up.

More to follow, as I know more.