Eating is political

You are what you eat, literally of course, but also morally and philosophically.

I want to be unequivocal right from the start: cannibalism is wrong in nearly all cases. We as a species have developed a common ethical aversion to eating other people, a taboo so strong that it doesn’t even have to be written down. It supersedes even the most ancient written laws, so while you might find ancient texts that say, “thou shall not steal” or “thou shall not kill” you just don’t see anything that says “thou shall not eat thy neighbor.”

When you are invited to a friends home for dinner they might ask you if you have any food allergies or if you’re a vegetarian or vegan, but they never ask you if you eat people or not. And that pretty much goes for pets too, because pets have a ritual status as people that everyone accepts as inherent. They are family, and despite how difficult, annoying, or destructive they may be we love them as much or sometimes more than some of our blood relations. If I was walking down the sidewalk with my Trump supporting uncle and he squatted down and pooped I would clean it up - under great protest! But for Badger I carry a roll of little bags manufactured for the sole purpose of picking up dog poop. I do it without thought. It’s just what civilized people do.

So cannibalism is out, and not just because hardly any people look delicious. It’s not even a moral or philosophical question. I think people like to think that they think about their culinary  choices, that they feel like their palette of menu options are solidly based in moral practice, but real world evidence indicates otherwise.

In America it is accepted doctrine that beef, pork, and chicken look delicious! Cows and pigs, not quite so much, but chickens apparently look delicious by any name. Their wings especially!

If you grind up various parts of those animals (including their lips, especially their lips) and squeeze that mixture into their own intestines…wow that’s good eating!

Lots of other creatures look good to eat. Turkeys (but not turkey buzzards), squab (but not pigeons), various fish (do not even get me started on fish), sheep (especially the baby sheep), look good to eat. To many of us anyway.

There are some creatures that are situational like deer, goat, squirrel, rabbits, geese, ducks, antelope, buffalo, pheasant, quail, and wild boar which is somehow thought of differently than pigs. At this point let me caution you - no matter your personal philosophy - do not eat Boar’s Head.

Then are some that plenty of people consider just fine to eat like horse, snake, alligator, giraffe, elephant, seal, (but not elephant seal) and bear. [Insert your own RFK jr brain worm joke here]

Lots of people eat fish of various kinds. I know, I said not to get me started on fish, but here I am. Trout, salmon, tuna, snapper, halibut, cod, and many other fish are very popular to eat. People eat whitefish of all kinds, catfish and bullhead, too, but that’s starting to get weird.

Some people love eel, squid, octopus, shrimp, and lobster. I know that some of those aren’t really fish but people eat them just like they eat shark and whale, which aren’t fish either. But they all live under water.

Basically, if it seems like in some situation a man’s-man could have caught or killed it many people would not have a moral objection to eating it. They might think it was weird or icky but generally speaking the rule of thumb has always been if you kill it you eat it. (Remember that humans are an exception to that rule) (And so are bats, but Jesus! Don’t kill bats anyway)

Many people eat bugs. On purpose. Not just, “I swallowed a bug!” They eat locust and grasshoppers, ants…

And in some places people eat dogs and cats. I am certain that Don Jr and Eric ate the cat they killed, because that is the code of the hunter. You do not kill just to kill. You eat it. Totally normal to fly to a remote place to kill animals not in your own neighborhood. Look how happy they were killing a cat.

Funny thing is that people who seem to have no moral or philosophical qualms about eating living, thinking, feeling beings seem to enjoy ridiculing the food choices of other people. They especially enjoy mocking people who actually make conscious moral, ethical, or philosophical choices about the foods they ingest.

Ask a vegetarian.

Making fun of people who choose not to eat animals is hilarious! Hahaha, they eat lots of beans! (As we know, beans make you fart! You don’t even have to say it for people to get the joke. As we sophisticated 21st century people know farts are always funny!)

So any philosophical qualms about killing God’s creatures, of eating in ways that have less impact on our environment and our planet are trumped by fart jokes.

Being a vegetarian is also a marker for being a liberal. Meat good, liberal bad.

Liberals want us to think about our values, but one of those values is a relationship with a personal savior, and the thing is, a lot of liberals are godless heathens.

Liberals don’t want the 10 Commandments posted in schools, and that is wrong because more people need to learn about important commandments like those about not coveting, stealing, and killing your neighbor’s pets. Look it up! It’s the Commandment that comes right after “you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” even if that neighbor is a Haitian immigrant and bearing false witness will help you steal an election.