Martha:
>Kirt, have you reconsidered your position against hyperbole?  You
>make it sound like USA is crawling with vegans.

The raw foods community, not the USA, is crawling with vegans. There are
many kinds of people who consider themselves vegans, and/or in sympathy
with vegan philosophy. The number of people I meet in "normal" life who are
aware of the hardline vegan guilt trip is growing. In the high schools, and
even junior highs I sub in, it is a growing fad, especially among girls
(from the preppy to the "alternatives") to adopt the superiority stances of
the "animal food is the cause of many modern evils and I don't eat it"
arguments. Books like "Diet for a New America" and its copy cats are indeed
approaching mainstream status, and the ideas in them seem to be used as
artillery in some sort of war all too often. Few of them apply to RAF the
way a rawist approaches it, but the shots are fired regardless.

>Or are most of the
>vegans in America hanging out in San Marcos?  I don't know ANY
>vegans personally (that is, in "real" life, as opposed to E-life).  I've
>met two before in my entire (considerable  ;-)) life, and both were
>quite nonmilitant and nonproselytizing about it.  Perhaps you are
>self-selecting acquaintances by meeting people through
>organizations and functions with a dietary focus.  I draw friends and
>acquaintances from the ranks of co-workers, neighbors, relatives, in
>other words, more of a "general population."

My take on the prevelance of hard-core veganism comes primarily from my
on-line and M2M experience. (I have met several vegans in my travels, but
only a couple were in-your-face about it, and they were easy to avoid.) The
trouble, in part, is that the most obnoxious vegans are the ones you hear
the most, or at least the ones who _I_ hear the most because they
relentlessly trash me for eating animal foods and/or for calling others to
support their nutritional rap. (Even Ombodhi takes a beating on the
raw@mcmuse list!) I'm afraid that if the rest of the vegans don't want to
watch the word become tainted by the behavior of the most vocal vegans (NFL
for the most part) they may at sometime have to stand up and let their
tolerance be known.

Much more personally, this whole thing is outta hand. Years ago, I started
with the conception that vegans were well-meaning folks trying to do the
right thing. But in the year I have been posting online (and to a lessor
degree in M2M) on the RAF issue (and others, though RAF is always what gets
the "publicity" and responses), I have seen a much deeper and troubling
layer to the vegan ideations. Beyond the constant browbeating the mention
of RAF eating gets me, there are deeply disturbing cultish aspects to the
whole scene (some of which I described in the post you responded to: what
do you think of them?). Whether the prostelytised diet includes RAF or not,
my ambivilance about raw diets is melting into full-fledged embarrassment
as I see idealism more than anything else as the main theme or raw diets,
from fruitarianism to instincto.

I am soon to pull back from my on-line public participation, in large part
because I am weary. (This list is in top form these days and I doubt that I
could resist at least lurking, but my days of posting informational stuff
is about over. I get blasted for them more than anything else and I start
to wonder why I bother.) A friend mentioned to me a while back that the
(then) veg-raw was like Gilligan: no matter how many times the Skipper
tried to tell him something he just kept on being Gilligan. I thought it
was a funny take at the time. But now we have three raw lists operating
and, while the Professor has this island in order ;) the barage continues
elsewhere. I guess the bottom line is that I have been interested in
learning about what makes the USA raw scene tick, finding out for myself
what it is all about. And I have done that. Of course, I am as interested
in serious feedback to my musings as the next fellow. But I have little
else to share and have little interest in the next round of NFL battlings
in whatever form it is demanded. If I keep trying to do the "right" thing I
suspect I will end up as bigoted and hateful of anyone associated with the
word vegan (or even raw!) as many of them now are of me.

People probably get what they ask for in the end. And if they ask certain
questions, some of the answers are in the archives. Whoopdedo...

Cheers,
Kirt