Sometimes its fun when another successful Saturday without any effort on my part whatsoever, just comes together.

This is my review of Brouwerij Alvinne Land Van Mortagne:

The Jacobins are going to Jacobin…

Big Alcohol is one of the most powerful and profitable industries in the world — yet this constellation of massive corporations, lobby groups, and governments faces almost no scrutiny for the immense health and social harms it causes.

Like climate change is to fossil fuels and lung cancer is to cigarettes, these countless alcohol-related harms — cancer, organ failure, traumatic injury, dependency — are a direct result of Big Alcohol’s thirst for profits. Now, it is fighting make alcohol even less regulated, and cheaper, stronger, and more ubiquitous, as it expands into the Global South and seeks even higher returns.

A more comprehensive review of the book is available here at Jacobin (where else?).  The main argument is alcohol is a social pariah at its core.  While they aren’t technically wrong about that, they ignore any social benefit it has and focus on alcoholism as the result of poor economic conditions:

Here, Wilt puts forward a radical solution to avert total breakdown and ease the collective malaise: regulate drugs and sell them through licensed providers, and curb Big Alcohol’s profit-seeking. “The only reason that alcohol feels so inevitable in terms of its consumption is because so few options are easily available,” he notes. “The point with all of this is not to eliminate alcohol but to provide genuine alternatives to its use, whether it’s low and non-alcoholic beverages, synthetic alcohol, or other psychoactive drugs . . . Public ownership and control will allow for many other pleasurable and lower-risk alternatives to be developed.”

They not even hiding it anymore.

They argue the bad economy exasperated by the pandemic has given us clues to population behavior that can be applied to similar conditions related to population decline, climate change, or whatever stupid solutions to the contrived boogieman government figures come up with to screw over entire nations in the future.  It ultimately leads to feelings of isolation, which drives people to drink.  This in turn is picked up by the seedy capitalists in the intoxicating beverage industry who will respond to economic incentives and sell more…maybe even advertise the fact they have more booze for sale.

The horror.

Perhaps the isolation and feeling of despair is the result of actual isolation imposed by the same people now coming up with soft prohibition as “the solution?”  As experiments on rats in the 1970’s have shown, the presence of drugs does not imply abuse of drugs is inevitable.  The researchers found when the rats are isolated in a small cage and given the choice of water with heroin, or without they choose the heroin—and dose themselves to death.  Give them a significantly larger cage with physical contact with other rats, better suited to their natural environment—they still pick the heroin but not to the point it kills them or completely inhibits their ability to fully function in their environment.  Simply put, whether physical or mental:  stop locking people in cages.

What is old is new again it seems.  The same way the temperance movement has its roots in Baptist churches and simply coopted later by early 20th Century Progressives and suffragettes, right wing commenters (I’ll let you look them up) extolling the virtues of putting down the bottle as a societal good is being argued alongside actual communists.  Totalitarians never change, and to them I say:  fuck off.

 

This is a beer I picked up from Rare Beer Club, and apparently is an exclusive to their distribution network.  Not quite an amber quadruppel ale, they classify this as a Flemish Sour Ale.  Which makes sense because the brewery is located in the Flanders region.  It medium to full bodied, not particularly carbonated but very complex in flavor.  Is it sour?  Yes, but not to the point where it is a cruel joke, and is counterbalanced by dark fruit.  All in all I would certainly get it again should I ever come across it.  Ever.  12.5% abv, pair it with roasted or cured meats heavy meals. Brouwerij Alvinne Land Van Mortagne: 4.5/5