There are plenty of instructive takes about yesterday’s presidential debate you can read in other places, but one point of contention been left unpacked. I’m talking about Trump’s scaremongering regarding immigrants eating pets. Judging from my socials, many people found this hilarious, taking pictures of their cats in pots and pans, etc. There’s more than a modicum of irony in this mockery, which seems to have escaped everyone on all sides of the political question: what Trump and his detractors share is the idea that eating dogs and cats is absurd and abominable, while eating cows, chickens, and pigs is completely normal and reasonable.
Cultures differ dramatically, worldwide, in their food taboos, and feel very strongly about them. French people are fine eating horses, snails, and frogs. People throughout East Asia eat dogs (because of the Western obsession with dogs as pets, this is a particularly pernicious thing to deploy against Asians). People worldwide eat a variety of insects. If one recoils from eating animal X while devouring animal Y without giving it a second thought, it is practically assured that someone elsewhere in the world has the opposite view and is just as viscerally disgusted with Y-eating folks as their counterpart is with X-eating folks.
To summarize: the Trump-mocking folks are stuck in the same moral and logical rut as the subject of their derision:
Trump: “These immigrants are gross! They eat Y, while we eat X!”
Trump detractors: “You racist fool! Immigrants are good! They eat X and not Y, just like us!”
The truth is that cows, chickens, and pigs are just like dogs and cats: they think, they feel, they love their children, they are terrified of torture and death, they suffer and experience sadness. Eating them is just as cruel, and no less grotesque, than eating any other animal. And it is easier and easier every day to refrain from animal products completely. You already know that you can eat grains and beans and tubers and tofu and vegetables and fruit, and that you can thrive on plants. You also know that, if you can afford a bit more of a splurge, vegan products look and taste very much like their animal counterparts (pictured: my quick post-swim dinner – Just Egg scramble with vegan frankfurter rounds.) Making jokes on socials is easy; living an examined life is a bit more challenging, but it’s also far more rewarding.
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