There's no reason to debate guacamole. It's already gentrified beyond good taste - Note for a lecture, "E Pluribus Unum? What Keeps the United States United"

Jeff Winkler
theguardian.com

In Texas, we have real debates about real issues – like barbecue. Guacamole is just corporate-approved bourgeois mush these days

 America used to be great. So did guacamole. Photograph: Heath Robbins/Getty Images Thursday 2 July 201511.12 EDT 

America was once a great nation – the greatest nation. A nation where mice and men once went to the moon. But now? Now, as our 239th birthday rolls around, we’ve devolved into nothing more than a mass of spineless, vegetarian techies – as evidenced by the mind-numbing guacamole debate.

Trouble began, as it so often does, with the New York Times, which published a small article declaring peas a great addition to guacamole. The internet whimpered as loud as possible; the debate began to “trend.” Even the president and other politicians began to meddle. I offered a moment of silence for my once great nation and then thanked the Lord, yet again, that I live in Texas.

Here, in God’s country, we have meaty debates; debates with consequences, soaked in blood and sauce. While the media elite in East Coast havens of patrician taste (or lack thereof) snipe on social media about a so-so vegan side dish, Texans have real fights over barbecue – perhaps more so when, come January, we’ll be able to walk around carrying a spare rib in one hand and a sidearm in the other. Here, we have brisket thieves and even our lesser arguments, about tacos, involve actual cannons.

Why? Because it’s our First Amendment right backed by our Second Amendment right.

But more importantly, barbecue is a debate that matters. There really is a difference between wet barbecue and dry rub and between various kinds of smoking methods; there’s also only one right one. This guacamole debate, on the other hand, is just further proof of and warning against the bourgeois simpletons attempting to ground our country into a bland mush.

Guacamole’s origins were actually auspicious, having been invented for kings by the society that understood the need for mass human sacrifices. That culture had balls, and named its greatest export, āhuacatl, after just that – “testicles”. Even later, when people started throwing around the bastardized “avocado”, the nickname was still “alligator pears”.

The recipe, essentially unchanged for more than 400 years, is five basic ingredients. And yes, while everyone has their own little twist, a personal guacamole recipe is like one’s sexual proclivities: unique, enjoyable perhaps, but never discussed in public. These citified folk, however living with their loose morals, their public brands and hectic metropolitan hashtag-lives betray the quiet simplicity that once was guacamole.

Guacamole’s initial genius (its simplicity) is also, ironically, the reason for its destruction by the meddling class: they can’t just leave good enough alone. Blame the Spanish – the original gentrifiers – for kick starting guacamole’s emasculating decline. Like Cinco de Mayo, Guacamole was long ago appropriated by white people and its gentrified form abandoned in disgust by its originators. In all my three years in Texas, I’ve seen as many Latinos eating guacamole as I’ve seen Latinos on Twitter whimpering about guacamole, which is to say none.

The evidence of guacamole’s demise is all around, and the trouble, the gentrification, most likely began by officially christening the sixteenth of September as “Guacamole Day”. Only bored gringos (northern Yankees, most likely) and carpetbagging advocacy groups come up with such ideas.

Further damage was done to guacamole by the creation of the health food industrial complex, the shadowy cabal that proclaimed meat bad and organic products de rigueur. Then came the “hip” abbreviation, “guac” – stop saying it. It sounds fowl, like a sick duck gagging, and is no doubt propaganda from the health food industrial complex, whose previous efforts at rebranding vegetable mush as “veggie patties” still haunts middle America.

Those of us with a sense of national pride and a respect for a country founded on beef being what’s for dinner weeped as America’s hamburger joints were deposed and places like Chipotle became the healthy option of choice. It’s there, where the intelligentsia declared their fast food loyalty, that guacamole really became commodified and meaningless. No longer was it a simple and quick addition to a Super Bowl party. Instead, it was turned into a coveted “free extra scoop”, slopped on an already heaping pile of tasteless, organic foodstuffs.

The guacamole’s decline – from simple and tasteful with a respectful past, to overwrought, bland and meaningless – mirrors that of our own society. That both President Obama and the Texas GOP agree on the peas-in-guacamole debate means there is no serious debate to be had. It is merely a ruse, ginned up by health-conscious elite on social media, meant to distract from the important issues, like: When will America be great again?

We will be great again when we can return to simpler, more traditional times, when we declare our independence from the trending whims of the ruling elites. We will be great again when we can have a meaningful debate about the best kind of bacon.