The Pulse Of The Nation

We’re nearly all vegan now.

Yes, you guessed, it’s a Guardian headline. For an article in which an oddly confident Barbara Ellen asks,

Who isn’t vegan in some way these days?

Ms Ellen describes herself as a “dairy-dabbling vegetarian.”

Update:

In the comments, Rafi reminds us that, even according to the Vegan Society, vegans make up barely 1% of the UK population.

Which is practically all of us, if you’re using Guardian maths.

Comments

[Alice]

So not *actually* being vegan is being vegan "in some way"?

[David]

So not *actually* being vegan is being vegan “in some way”?

It would appear so. I hadn’t realised veganism was quite so flexible.

[TDK]

I had beans on toast yesterday and muesli this morning. I must be vegan

Logically, everyone apart from Jordan Peterson and his daughter is vegan

[Mike]

The Pulse Of The Nation

I see what you did there.

[Tom]

My niece, lovely girl, went vegan for about six months or so until she realised what an unending arse-ache it was going to be. Now she's vegetarianish, but I did notice at Christmas dinner that the turkey and ham had not died in vain, from her point of view at least.

But then we're in the land of leprechauns where we love a bit of shteak so we probably don't count for Grauniad purposes.

[Joan]

We’re nearly all vegan now.

Today's words are 'echo chamber'.

[David]

Today’s words are ‘echo chamber’.

It does sound rather parochial.

[David]

until she realised what an unending arse-ache it was going to be.

Faddish piety aside, I don’t have strong feelings on the subject. I don’t spend my time fretting about what other people choose to eat. Though it strikes me as a terribly inefficient way of consuming protein, and as likely to be a cause of health problems as a cure for them.

[Trevor]

We’re nearly all vegan now.

Just as we're nearly all 'trans', we nearly all voted Labour, and we nearly all know that Stabbzy is infinitely superior to Bach.

[Squires]

Logically, everyone apart from Jordan Peterson and his daughter is vegan.

Something tells me the writer of that piece is not being entirely honest.

And it isn’t just personal experience.

[Trevor]

I have a mature (60+) acquaintance/friend who is a lovely woman, very kind and generally good fun (and very sound politically, at least from my totally-not-extreme point of view) and has morphed into an increasingly militant uber-vegan over recent years. She's always been inordinately fond of animals but is now a full-blown 'Milk is Murder whackjob. She was due to join us on Boxing Day (not for food, she's impossible to cater for, and I say that as someone who was vegetarian for twenty years) but quizzed another proposed attendee on our plans and told him she couldn't be in the presence of 'murdered cows'. Thankfully I was able to discreetly engineer a disinvitation. Perhaps it's time to revise my characterisation of her as being 'good fun'.

[SumDumGuy]

Turns out I am in some ways gay in that when I have sex with my girlfriend there is a man involved.

Turns out I am in some ways a grilled cheese sandwich in that I am crusty on the outside but also warm and gooey on the inside.

This is fun, I think I'm going to do some more after work.

[David]

We’re nearly all vegan now.

I’m reminded of the Royle Family gag, in which the son’s girlfriend arrives and is offered a ham sandwich. The girlfriend politely explains that she’s a vegetarian. At which point Gran assures her that said ham is “wafer-thin.”

[sH2]

Guardian journalism.

https://twitter.com/TheAliceSmith/status/1214504360916529158

[Sam]

If a man builds a thousand bridges and eats one eggplant they don't call him a bridge-builder...they call him a vegan.

[Pst314]

No, *he* tells everyone that he’s a vegan. :-)

[Governor Squid]

...and eats one eggplant...

Is that code for something?

[Squires]

In other news:
https://dnyuz.com/2020/01/07/a-victims-account-fuels-a-reckoning-over-sex-with-children-in-france/

With the slogan, “It’s forbidden to forbid,” the movement rebelled against authority and fought against imperialism, capitalism, racism, sexism and homophobia. Some also argued for abolishing age-of-consent laws, saying that doing so would liberate children from the domination of their parents and allow them to be full, sexual beings.

Of course.

[Uma Thurmond's Feet]

"Turns out I am in some ways gay in that when I have sex with my girlfriend there is a man involved."

SumDumGuy, that's stand-up comedy quality, which I admit it's a wide range ("Robin Williams" worthy or "George Lopez" worthy?)

(RW crops up because I followed the above twitter link, and two comments down is RW's inspired take on the "71 virgins" nonsense, which today would get him hounded and cancelled).

[WTP]

In other news:

“There was an aristocracy of sexuality, an elite that was united in putting forth new attitudes and behavior toward sex,” Mr. Verdrager said. “And they were also grounded in an extreme prejudice toward ordinary people, whom they regarded as idiots and fools.”

All that bother back in 1789 was just for show, of course. Or perhaps there's something in the water there.

[Runcie Balspune]

When you hear Burger King is putting an "impossible burger" (one without animal products) on the menu, but it wont be suitable for vegans simply because they'll be cooked on the same grill as the regular ones, you know this vegan crap is just really religious ritualistic nonsense, in that sense stating "we are all vegan" is similar to something any god-botherer would say.

[Runcie Balspune]

Just to clarify, the impossible burger is cooked on the grill, not the vegans ...

[Pst314]

“In other news:

Yikes.

“There was an aristocracy of sexuality

It can’t be something in the water because that attitude can be found in the intellectual classes elsewhere including America.

Which reminds me: not long ago I saw a mention of an artist committing suicide after a young victim wrote about what he did. Cannot recall the name but I think the victim was French.

[a different james]

In other news

Thinkers on the left, like Michel Foucault, Roland Barthes, Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, spoke in defense of the practice, or came to the defense of men accused of engaging in sex with people below the age of consent in France... Le Monde, the centrist newspaper, published a weekly column by Mr. Matzneff and articles defending those accused of having sex with underage partners, including one in 1977 that was signed by Sartre, de Beauvoir and Barthes.

What would the above named individuals have to do (or have done) to have their works banished from academia?

[Governor Squid]

What would the above named individuals have to do (or have done) to have their works banished from academia?

Advocate for letting people keep what they earn, and making the shiftless beg for alms as in days of yore? Betting that'd do it.

[Steve E]

Is that code for something?

🍆 Could be.

[SumDumGuy]

RW's inspired take on the "71 virgins" nonsense

I am a huge fan of Robin Williams work.

Funny story, I've never watched Kill Bill and scene at the beginning of the first one which features Uma Thurman's hideous feet are the sole reason.

[NTSOG]

The Guardian: "... ethical veganism is a philosophical belief to be protected by law against discrimination."

So if vegans are now a protected religious group or cult, so such protection at Law should equally apply to those of us who believe that meat-eating is a fundamental part of being Human? In other words what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

Jim

[lotocoti]

A hardcore vegan provided last night's tasty porterhouse.
I'm a proxy vegan.

[Hopp Singg]

How about:

"Who isn’t a virgin in some way these days?"

Which is equally logical.

[JuliaM]

sH2: "Guardian journalism."

I believe there's a Polly Toynbee one of those floating around too. I guess Guardian readers have the memories of goldfish, or they'd call them on it (if it was an open comment article, of course. Which it won't be).

[David]

also argued for abolishing age-of-consent laws, saying that doing so would liberate children from the domination of their parents and allow them to be full, sexual beings.

It’s curious just how often leftist piety turns out to be tissue-thin camouflage for broken, appalling people.

[jones]

@NTSOG

"In other words what's good for the goose is good for the gander".

Oh no, that's different.

[Rafi]

We’re nearly all vegan now.

According to the Vegan Society vegans make up 1.16% of the population.

[David]

According to the Vegan Society vegans make up 1.16% of the population.

Ah, but 1% is practically all of us.

It’s Guardian maths.

[George]

It’s Guardian maths.

It's the maths of "Absolutely everyone's going to Monte Carlo this year", or "Everyone's wearing Givenchy" or "Everyone eats at the Ritz". And, yes, it's Guardian maths too. Which says rather more about the Guardian than most of its writers or readers would care to have revealed quite so obviously...

[David]

It’s the maths of “Absolutely everyone’s going to Monte Carlo this year”

Heh. Yes, pretty much. And said with what appears to be obliviousness.

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

According to the Vegan Society vegans make up 1.16% of the population.

Speaking of tiny segments of the population, please update your anatomy texts accordingly.

Be sure to click the link at the link for a complete update.

[Sam]

It's the maths of "Absolutely everyone's going to Monte Carlo this year" ... said with what appears to be obliviousness

Disagree slightly. It's said by someone wishing to appear obliviously wealthy, an extremely self-aware pretender who finds their own meager salary and accomplishments desperately wanting. That and they know such an attitude will irk the kind of people who frequent this blog. Who's worse, the tosser* or the tosser-wannabe?

*Is tosser correct? Had to run google's Texan-to-British translator for it.

[David]

*Is tosser correct?

It’s not inapt.

[Darleen]

Excellent use of the pronoun "they".

[Squires]

It's the maths of "Absolutely everyone's going to Monte Carlo this year", or "Everyone's wearing Givenchy" or "Everyone eats at the Ritz".

Are we not all dead and frozen beneath a man-caused ice age? Are we not all dead from the nuclear fires of a Raegan re-election? Are we not all dead of Thatcherism? Are we not all dead of a man-caused desert world? Are we not all dead from Bushitlerism? Are we not all dead of unstoppable anthropogenic hurricanes? Are we not all dead killed by the Hand of Drumpf? Are not all the glaciers gone? Are we not on this day all all Qasem Soleimani?

[Adam]

May a non-vegan be offended and deeply hurt if served a meal which contains no animal protein?

[Farnsworth M Muldoon]

Are not all the glaciers gone?

Sounds like a folk song, but unfortunately for the US Park Service, No.

[David]

It’s the maths of “Absolutely everyone’s going to Monte Carlo this year”

Not entirely unrelated. It’s the “cashmere of the resistance.”

Via Rafi.

[Hal]

It’s the “cashmere of the resistance.”

No, child, it's not a good idea to try to stage your own version of A Bar On The Piccola Marina . . .

[[+]]

It’s the “cashmere of the resistance.”

HONK!

[David]

HONK!

I suppose that’s the thing about leftism, especially middle-class leftism. It’s largely… what’s the word, oh yes - performative. And if your politics, on which your in-group status depends, is to a large extent role-play, which is to say, pretentious, then it must be quite hard to judge when the pretensions go too far and get too ludicrous. I mean, if reality is at best incidental and often actively avoided, where’s the obvious cut-off point? And so, once you start referring to yourself unironically as “the resistance,” sooner or later the cashmere of the resistance is going to materialise.

[pst314]

I suppose that’s the thing about leftism, especially middle-class leftism.

Also upper-class leftism?

I have read that the British upper class willingly embraced leftism when it figured out that it could do so and retain all its privileges--it would simply be (and aspire to be ever more so in the future) a more wealthy nomenklatura than the Soviet Union's. And thus a significant segment of the Conservatives made its peace with the State and the end of liberty. Something similar seems to be operating in America.

Have I got that aspect of Britain right, David?

[David]

Have I got that aspect of Britain right, David?

Not sure I’m the person to ask, but you can certainly find lords and barons mouthing nakedly communist bollocks.

[Governor Squid]

It's surprising to me, how many people there are out there who feel their success in life is unearned and therefore assume everybody else's success is as well. Why pretend that hard work or talent or risk-taking are worth rewarding when "everybody knows" that it's all just accidents of birth or blind luck? And since the winners don't really deserve their wealth, it's perfectly okay to take it away and trade it to the losers in exchange for their votes.

Not surprising that they should feel that way, mind you -- just that there are so many of them.

[Lancastrian Oik]

Lords and barons mouthing nakedly communist bollocks.

Neither a lord nor a baron, and to be honest I'm not exactly clear what "friend of Jeremy Corbyn" Andrew Murray's social standing is other than "something vaguely aristocratic in Scotland", but he seems to fit the bill.

Elsewhere, this seems like good news.

[Darleen]

It’s the “cashmere of the resistance.”

… and the comments on that thread!!! Hruska MacPherson is a preening twit deserving of all mockery, but it looks like she just presents a target for the WhiteWomenBad crowd including one comment asserting that MacPherson and her rich cohort all voted for Trump.

[David]

Elsewhere, this seems like good news.

More of that.

[Daniel Ream]

And if your politics, on which your in-group status depends, is to a large extent role-play, which is to say, pretentious

Thirty years. And now, finally, we guys sitting in the basement wearing rubber elf ears are no longer the most ridiculous LARPers.

[Hal]

. . . are no longer the most ridiculous LARPers.

Historic chart.