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An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, and Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River

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Lawyer/writer Steven Wise might well be the John Grisham of the animal-rights movement. While he doesn't write novels, his books have the depth and substance of our favorite pulp fiction. In An American Trilogy, Wise descends upon Bladen County, NC, from where he relays a fascinating story of a five-century-long triumvirate of oppression on this single patch of land: First indigenous North Americans, next African slaves, and currently factory-farmed hogs. His tale unweaves a tangled web tangentially tied to one family--the Robesons have lived on, worked, and summarily abused the inhabitants of the land (whether native, enslaved, or bred), from pre-Colonial America to present day. Well-researched and eye-opening, the initial chapters on Indians and slaves offer fresh insights into the growing discourse linking oppression of humans to oppression of other animals. Wise shows that abuses against natives and slaves were overcome by religion, and argues that it is once again the religious, particularly evangelicals, who are beginning to challenge factory farming. They just might be the hogs' best hope out of slavery.

In "An American Trilogy", Steven Wise has painted an understated, and yet searing, portrait of Bladen County, North Carolina, symbolic of the sins of our entire nation, past and present. In spare, punchy prose, he artfully shows us how long-past horrors such as slavery and genocide, and the still-ongoing hellish slaughter of millions of hogs, could have occurred in a nation founded on belief in a merciful god and political freedom and justice. Wise blends history and reportage to reveal not merely the facts, but also the chain of cause and effect, of this complex reality. While making no effort to conceal his own advocacies, he nonetheless allows the other side to state their case in their own words, and thereby to also indict themselves.
The cluelessness of those who claim that global warming is not real is best epitomized by the "hot air" that was "emitted" in 2006 by those right wing jokesters, Charles Colson (yes, Nixon's hatchet man), James Dobson, Donald Wildmon, Richard Land, et al, whom Wise quotes: "The existence of global warming and its implications for mankind is a subject of heated controversy throughout the world".
"Heated" controversy, indeed! Such a Freudian slip would be hilarious, but, as Mr. Wise so thoroughly demonstrates, denial of global warming, and denial of callous, money-grubbing cruelty to hogs in mega-slaughterhouses, are two sides of the same bloodstained coin, and they are both no laughing matter.
But, bleak and disturbing as his litany of horror is at times, Wise also offers us genuine hope for the future. In his final chapter, he tells the surprising story of the growing movement among younger visionary Evangelicals, to accept Biblical responsibility for stewardship of the earth and all its abused creatures, human and non-human. As Americans finally begin to unite in finding common ground across our cultural divides, Wise persuades us that we must include reduction of global warming and humane treatment of the animals we eat, among the issues on which we can unite. Wise's book has earned the right to be included in the new "Bible" being written by a younger generation, documenting and bolstering the new consensus that is cutting across and beginning to heal the planet we have broken.

There have been many articles and books in the scientific press about:
1. the evolutionary origins and predominance of tribal us-vs-them thinking
2. how our brains are structured to quickly categorize people and animals as "us" or "them", "for" or "against"
3. how we still exclude certain faces and races and species from inclusion in our own personal "us", despite the fact that those faces, races, and species in fact share our sentient reality
4. how we emotionally detach from those we place in the "them" category and tolerate all manner of cruelty, subjugation, and even death from that
place of detachment

"An American Trilogy" is the kind of "boots-on-the-ground" journalism required to flesh these ideas out in the real world. And it makes for a very captivating story when so much history of "us vs them" cruelty can be found in one place - Bladen County in SE North Carolina.

Mr. Wise has researched, then interviewed people all across the Cape Fear River area, about the genocide of the native Americans, slavery on the
local plantations, and horrific present-day factory-farm treatment of pigs (the "Trilogy" of the title). The things these folks say ! There have been hundreds of movies about the Nazi's and their arrogance, the cold detachment of the prison guards. But, from a psychological standpoint, those folks have nothing on the brutal masters of the Smithfield pig farms in Tar Heel, NC. One interview with a long-time pig industry scientist reminds one of the Nazi scientific experiments and the sheer ennui with which those studies were performed.

Never over-bearing or overtly threatening, Wise lets his simple questions do the work. Amazingly, his subjects spew forth all manner of inhumanity. It is very reminiscent of Borat and the pretending-to-be-sympathetic interviews of right-wingers on the John Stewart and Stephen Colbert shows.

With interviews with past and present Smithfield employees, Wise takes us inside, to the extent possible with their tight security, the
factory pig farms of Smithfield in Tar Heel, NC. It is no wonder that one of these abusive places, under the same ownership but in Mexico, is possibly the origin of the current SWINE FLU epidemic. With perpetually sick animals requiring huge doses of antibiotics, they are, for practical
purposes, plague incubation facilities. Humane treatment laws for livestock were recently passed in Switzerland, and are generally better in Europe. Whether you agree or disagree with meat-eating, there is no reason animals under our care cannot live lives of dignity.

The surpise ending of this book is the interviews with the present-day custodians of the Southern Baptist Conference - the main denomination in
Bladen County, and the home of some of the leaders - who are now in favor of "Earth Care" (their main focus is on pollution and global warming but
also includes the decent treatment of animals). It is amazing to read Wise's account of how these folks are overturning the long-held religious
doctrine of human domination of the earth and the animals, in favor of earth stewardship. These mavericks are encountering resistance from the old guard, but even the old guard realize if they do not take a more modern stance they will "lose the young people". They are admitting in their public pronouncements and policy papers that they "made a mistake" regarding racism and slavery, and, on the issue of our survival on this planet and our responsibilities towards animals, they do not want to be on the wrong side of history again!!! It's a heart-warming finish to a wonderful book !

Let me see if I have this right, author Steven M. Wise in "An American Trilogy: Death, Slavery, & Dominion on the Banks of the Cape Fear River" tries to link the lives and deaths of animals raised for food to chattel slavery and war on Native Americans as three co-equal instances of violence against innocent victims. The commonality between these three aspects of torture and violence, according to Wise, is found in the happenstance that Smithfield Foods currently has a slaughterhouse on land once worked by slaves on the Cape Fear River in North Carolina. And this same land, Wise notes, was once the home of Native Americans who suffered from European settlers.

While I don't deny that many of the practices of livestock growers is gruesome and needs to be reformed, this is not the same as earlier injustices perpetrated on human beings. It is a false equivalency and must be recognized as such. In a rather heavy-handed, solipsistic, and sometimes sophomoric narrative, Wise tries to draw a line between biblical statements concerning slavery in both the Old and New Testaments used by proslavery theorists in antebellum America with modern religious ideas about dominion and suzerainty. This connection does not work. Essentially what Wise does is offer an exposé of the pork industry; of course, the public certainly deserves to be informed about its practices. The problem with this poorly structured, disingenuously organized, and jumbled treatise is not so much the exposure of legitimate outrages perpetrated by the pork industry; it is the over-the-top connection to the treatment of Native Americans and slaves. Add to this Wise's commentary on ridiculous peeves and it comes off as an uncontrolled and outrageous screed deserving of little serious consideration.

Most important, Wise's central thesis that Christianity has contributed to animal abuse, slavery, and Native American exile, is overdrawn and ultimately not particularly convincing. As it is, Wise would have done better by focusing on the pork industry and left out of this book the Native American and African American parts. "An American Trilogy" does not work as history, fails as muckraking journalism, and does not do justice to the very real issues associated with animals and their treatment.