Response to "Sad But True," by Malik Coleman

I couldn't insert this image into the comment box, so I have to respond here.  (And yes: the language is sexist -- grounded in its time in history -- yet the sentiment is true.) So, are we supposed to accept dysfunctional systems just because they haven't brought us to our knees?  Is this what it is going to take to change Americans?  A complete breakdown?

Young people will not remember this, but at one time the tobacco industry had American consumers in a chokehold.  Even after we learned that cigarettes were lethal, people continued to smoke.  "What can we do? People won't change." And nicotine is addictive, like the worst opiates.  They are tougher to fight than a 99 cent hamburger.

But people did change.  Little by little, through government regulation, and through marketing that countered the tobacco industry's claims that cigarettes were for fun and sexy people, people changed.  It did not eradicate smoking -- we all know people who still smoke.  But it is SO MUCH better than before. When we see a system that is so unjust, so sick, so driven by the "profit over people" mentality, and so damaging to our Earth and our future as a species, we just have to start somewhere.

So we should redesign the TAX system so healthy choices prevail over unhealthy ones; we need to raise consciousness and awareness; we need to unmask those who hide their sins behind the CAFOs and the slaughterhouses and the corporate labs, we need to pay attention to the food we feed ourselves and the people we love because that food becomes our sacred body!  What is more intimate than food?  What is more important? More exciting, more delicious, more pleasurable?

OK.  That's it for me.  I didn't mean to go crazy here.