When roosters come home
After a century of stewing, it's suppertime
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“There must be a YouTube for this,” I muttered as I squinted and peeled translucent skins off of tiny pearl onions. I cussed quietly as one escaped from my fingertips, rolled across the counter and landed on the floor.
Bits of onion skin were lodging permanently under my finger nails when I glanced over and saw the inside cover of the onion box.
WTF. Well, I was already halfway there, so I stuck with my paring knife and bad eyesight, this time.
I was making my first coq au vin.
“Coq au vin” [pronounced like “cocoa van”] sounds more like a lap dancer than a meal to me. I’ve learned it’s actually French for getting a dead rooster drunk and making it taste like fancy cuisine.
We’re seeing all kinds of silly things dressed up fancy these days. We call it putting lipstick on a pig. That’s easier to pronounce but it’s a lot scarier because it’s what’s for supper in America:
Pete Hegseth – our future Secretary of Defense who couldn’t name a single country in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. When Elon and Friends fire our veteran civil servants, Hegseth’s ignorance will be running $900 billion in military hardware, nuclear weapons and warriors. Every senator who votes for him should be charged with treason. Lookin’ at you Joni.
Pam Bondi – our future Attorney General, who still thinks Trump won Pennsylvania in 2020, but all’s well now (cue the “I Won” dance). She promised, under oath, to the U.S. Senate, that she’ll never maintain an enemies list. This while serving at the pleasure of a president who has repeatedly promised one. Let’s start a pool on how long it takes for some enterprising journalist to unearth the list that doesn’t exist.
The Ceasefire – Ah yes, Netanyahu the diplomat who heels to fascists (I won’t call them Nazis out of respect for the Holocaust dead) so he can drop a few more bombs on Gaza civilians. The Oct. 7 “massacre’s” got nuthin’ on the “war” a.k.a. genocide this indicted war criminal has committed. Don’t get distracted. When in the Middle East, it’s all about land and water.
Getting our rooster to this place took some work. First, we had to kill him. We froze him ‘til the time was right, then defrosted him. Paul, my husband, offered to cut him into pieces. Paul has two titanium shoulders but he almost broke both of them trying to hack this rooster up. This would require a very long simmer…
Getting these political roosters where they are today took more than 80 years of prep work by conservatives. I’m sure there were times they put those birds on ice, but they never stopped pulling together their pearl onions and wine.
I thought I was pretty aware. Then I read Democracy in Chains. I encourage you to wake yourself from a decades-long political coma. It’s as if while you were out, you heard muddled voices in the distance, but now you can hear every word. You can connect complete sentences. Your brain wakes up to their meaning. You open your eyes…and it’s too late. The victory parade is marching by outside.
The original popularity of coq au vin comes from the ability of booze and low heat to make a bird as hard as a jackhammer head into a meal you can choke down.
Next week, we start consuming the tough, old bird of conservatism simmered for decades in a stew of fear and hate, carefully tended by the descendants, protégés and allies of wealthy, White, landowning and not coincidentally former slave-owning men from Virginia.
The recipe itself was developed over centuries by passionate chefs everywhere. The world is now choking it down, whether we want to or not. Our chickens have come home to roost and our roosters are on the menu.
We have choices.
We can walk away from the table. It’s tempting, but a mass exodus from America of people with a conscience will do nothing good for our country.
We can gag, which many of us are collectively doing right now. There’s a time for everything. Take smaller bites if you can and must.
We can take over the kitchen and change the menu. That’s the long, hard work that faces us now.
Let’s give America better choices. Let’s start our own rooster stewing.
William B. Yeats The Second Coming, 1920 because it can’t be said enough.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
(Second verse.)
Got New Year resolutions to fulfill?
Start by “exercising” your democratic rights.
National People’s March, Saturday, Jan. 18, 10 a.m. to Noon. Find your local march.
Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day celebrations and day of service. Our 82nd Indivisible group is joining others to recognize community volunteers at the Tipton Senior Center at 1 pm with videos and refreshments.