Map of life expectancy at birth from Global Education Project.

Tuesday, May 07, 2024

FreeDumb

This essay by Krugthulu is getting a lot of attention. (Gift link.) It seems that Ron DeSantis, having flamed out as a presidential candidate, isn't hanging up his combat boots in the culture wars. He's banned the production or sale of lab grown meat in the libertarian paradise of Florida.

 

To be clear, such a product is a long way from commercial availability. We aren't talking about the plant-based meat substitutes you can buy today, but rather actual animal cells cultured in a laboratory, i.e. real meat without having to raise or kill an animal. That might strike you as weird or gross, but nobody is planning to make you eat it. If and when it becomes available it will likely have much less environmental impact than beef, which is about the least efficient and most destructive way to make edible protein that there is. It might even be cheaper. So many people might want to buy it, but Ron DeSantis is saying that you can't. 


The conservative movement as embodied in the Republican party has long claimed to be the champion of Freedom,™ as brought to you by the Free Market.™ Those Commie Nazi libtards want to take away your freedom by not letting you dump toxic waste in the river or spew it out of your smokestack. In fact, they have always been the champions of freedom for the rich people who fund their campaigns and their think tanks, not for the rest of us. The beef industry is a powerful vested interest that doesn't want competition, and  Kinky Boots DeSantis is doing their bidding by telling you what you can and cannot eat. 

 

Since the entire basis of their appeal is that people don't like being told what to do this would seem to be rather hypocritical, so they obfuscate with inane culture war tropes. Eating meat is manly and patriotic and Godly and Real Americans do it. Vegetarians are effeminate and elitist (whatever that means), and probably French. As Krugthulu reminds us,


You saw this coming years ago if you were following the most trenchant source of social observation in our times: episodes of “The Simpsons.” Way back in 1995, Lisa Simpson, having decided to become a vegetarian, was forced to sit through a classroom video titled “Meat and You: Partners in Freedom.”

 

Anyway, everybody needs to stop listening to them. They're completely full of shit.

1 comment:

Don Quixote said...

"Elite and effeminate" pretty much describes, DeSantis, who, as a Republican, is a master of projection.

Throw in the adjective."sadistic."

I've never seen a more fucked-up motherfucker.