United We Can't Stand

We're living in contentious times. Concerted efforts have been made to divide us in any way possible, for all sorts of purposes. Libertarian billionaires have funded Astroturf movements like the Tea Party to keep us squabbling with each other instead of banding together with pitchforks. Russian oligarchs have flooded us with disinformation to discourage voters or split votes in order to build their own power. Newscasters fan the flames because there's money in it for them. And, of course, sometimes a single man might wedge us apart simply because he likes to call people doody-pantses and get crowds roaring, because it gives him a little woodie again. Ah, nostalgia! There's all kinds of reasons to make us One Nation, Divisible.

So we must look for ways to bridge the gaps between us, and celebrate those areas where we still have common ground.

For instance, nobody much likes vegans.

We just don't. We don't really mind a lot of the other diets. They're so easy to make fun of. They eat only grapefruit. Or algae pellets. Or bacon. There's always a justification.  This diet aligns with the stomach contents of a perfectly sound frozen person who died of old age 10,000 years ago. That diet makes your urine crystals line up with the magnetic field. The other diet stimulates your metabolism in the morning, your chakras at noon, and your balls at night.

We think vegetarians are silly but sort of cute. But vegans? Man. They're just too extreme. They think they're better than we are. And if there's anything we can't stand, it's other people thinking they're better than we are, even if they are. Some people hate it so much, they even throw in with Donald Trump, who is a pus-filled waste of carbon.

Vegans choose their food and clothing and other things on principle. And principles are annoying as hell, in other people. Principles don't just sit on the sidelines. They accuse. We want to mock vegans. We want to poke them with a fork and speculate on how well-marbled they are.

Vegans will not partake of animals or animal products or consider animals a commodity in any way. Some vegans particularly revile factory-farming because of its unspeakable cruelty. Others emphasize the dire consequences to the planet of the whole system of animal agriculture. In the face of these strong, unassailable points, it is incumbent upon the rest of us to catch vegans stepping on bugs and accuse them of rank hypocrisy.

Because they're clearly out of control. For instance, good vegans avoid standard vaccines because chicken eggs are used to incubate their viruses. Lots and lots and lots of chicken eggs. There are ways to make vaccines that use cells from insects instead, which, technically, are animals. This is what the wise vegan would opt for, as opposed to forgoing vaccines, because it is not a perfect world and an insect is assumed to be a few notches less suffery than a chicken.

Not photo-edited. Dave didn't hold the camera steady.

You can make fun of this view if you want, but I won't join you. The vast majority of vegans are people who do not shy away from ethical dilemmas and who educate themselves about the fallout of their actions and conduct themselves accordingly. This is the mark of a grownup. Mocking vegans as scolds who don't want anybody to have any fun is totally toddler territory. That said, I had a flu shot, and so I believe a chicken has contributed to my well-being this year, and is liable to contribute to my plate this week.

I eat less meat all the time. You could call me a Flexitarian. Or just plain chicken. But I'm a work in progress.

I did hear that Sebastian Gorka, a former Trump aide and conservative bile factory, thundered "They want to take away your hamburgers! This is what Stalin dreamed about but never achieved!" Well, I swan. Ol' Sebass, there, might finally make a vegan out of me. Here's a tip. As soon as you hear people yelling about taking away your hamburgers, or your pickup trucks, or your guns, or your light bulbs, or your toilet, know this: that person really wants to take away your health care, your pension, your wages, and your Social Security. Screw them and pass the yams.

The View From The Driveway

It was a comment in response to a post about the urgency of forestalling climate catastrophe.

"All I know is that we have friends who have a hybrid car. They could not get up our driveway. We had to pull it up our driveway using a tow rope with our Jeep. I am not giving up my car."

Oh, sweet pea. I am sorry that is all you know. There's so much else.

All around you, people are making choices in their daily lives that must baffle you. They are paying more for items that aren't packaged in plastic. They're voting to tax themselves for greenspaces. They're checking the tags in their clothing to make sure they're not supporting slave labor. They're choosing to live where they don't need a car at all. Maybe they've found out that animal agriculture is the biggest driver of climate change and environmental devastation, and they've quit eating meat. They're doing these things because they have learned some stuff about the world, and they're unable to keep operating as they had before they learned it. It becomes a moral choice for them.

What they're not doing is changing their behavior in order to shame you. Something about your statement leads me to suspect you think your friends bought a hybrid car because they think they're better than you. But what do you do when you find out something you're doing is hurting others? Maybe it's something you didn't realize before, but once you learned better, wouldn't you change? I'm sure you would. Maybe that's what they're doing: trying to do less harm.

Of course their hybrid is still burning fossil fuel. And this is what is going to make our planet uninhabitable, in a matter of a few short lifetimes. It's a big deal. If you knew we had only ten years to get off fossil fuel altogether or risk an unlivable planet, wouldn't you embrace a solution? Maybe not--because there is so little one person can do to affect such a massive problem. It needs to be addressed on a national and world-wide level.



But here's a related massive problem: we are operating under a system of profit-driven capitalism that does not begin to account for the costs of enterprise. Shouldn't corporations be required to pay for the harms they cause? Should they be able to destroy our environment without any consequence? Should you be able to get away with poisoning your neighbor's well? We put people in prison for knocking over the corner store; why do we reward people who endanger every single life on the planet?

So nobody is going to confiscate your Jeep. You can keep your Jeep. But maybe gasoline should be $250 a gallon. Maybe that's what it would take to mitigate the harm done by the extraction and burning of buried carbon. It's not meant to be punitive--it's the cost of doing business. You might decide to make some different choices.

Seem like a lot to pay? A few decades ago someone had the idea of pegging gasoline at $5 a gallon. That was a lot at the time. People would use less, more efficient vehicles would be on the market, and the excess tax would be devoted to changing our infrastructure toward a more sustainable plan. It was a good idea. A number of things we could have done a few decades ago would have made things a lot easier now, but we didn't do them. And now we're out of time. It might even be too late.

I don't blame you or your Jeep. It's not your fault. There are real criminals involved in this scheme to further enrich the wealthy at the expense of literally everyone else. But it would be a good thing, for starters, to take a step back from your driveway and see how big the picture really is.