On Beer and Social Awareness

I’ve just recently begun brewing my own beers. No, I’ve not yet reached the point of cracking open a swingtop bottle of one of my own brews, but I do have two very different beers brewing now, and for my Wonder Woman, I’ve already brewed a gallon of completely non-alcoholic root beer that blows away ANY commercial root beer I’ve ever tasted.

All that to say that my interest in learing how to brew my own beverages–alcholic and non-alcoholic both–has brought me into contact with some interesting folks. Following a link at Strange Brew (where I picked up a modified recipe for George Washington’s Molasses Small Beer, which I further modified based on reading other molasses beer recipes and the equipment I had on hand *heh*), I found this gem that reminded me why “all politics is local” and why I take those things which politicians *spit* at the national level do that affect me very, very personally:

Some version of “caring about the health of the consumer” surely appears in the mission statements of all the major food corporations, including the most egregious violators of the public trust. In other words, it is hard to genuinely care about someone you don’t even know. Compassion in the abstract is almost always a self-deception. Much more reliable is the goodwill and mutual sense of responsibility that exists among neighbors who are bound together into a community, their good intentions enforced by social pressure and the intimacy of long association. [emphasis added–ed]

When the political elite take steps attempting to make outlaws “okey-dokey” via mass amnesties; when the political elite treats the tax dollars they extort from me as their personal funds; when the political elite pass laws that curtail my freedoms and powers as a citizen, I take it very personally. Because it’s not just some guy in Akron, Ohio that’s affected, it has direct and indirect impact on my life, the lives of my family and friends.

So pardon me just a little when I become outraged the next time a politician takes some of the money extorted from me, my family, my neighbors and friends (as an example) and hands it to someone else instead of handing it back to the people it was stolen from, with a heartfelt apology for the theft.

[Note: Yes, I know the quoted material addresses only commercial vs. home produced “artisan” foods, but the priciple (“it is hard to genuinely care about someone you don’t even know”–or events that do not impact someone you know) does dovetail with my assertion that politics is only genuinely significant at the personal level.]

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