The case against Vegetarianism

Paper presented at the annual convention of Częstochowa Red Meat Lodge, March 2009

'Oh come on! Like there are piles of jobs waiting for us if the beef industry has to close down.'

It is legitimate to nourish even strong antipathy towards certain types of food. It is perfectly healthy to invest carefully accumulated hatred in a particularly detestable dish. I for one find Polish cuisine an affront to my taste buds and spend two hours with my face in the toilet bowl if anyone as much as mentions bigos. The question is: Do I build a weltanschauung on it?

In this in-depth analysis of the irrational but widespread phenomenon of Vegetarianism I intend to show that this is not merely a diet, nor a healthy lifestyle, nor a way of showing compassion with our four-legged friends. No, Dear Lodge Members. Vegetarianism is a pathological obsession that bears all the hallmarks of a religion. And not only is it a religion; the central contention of this paper is that Vegetarianism is a particularly unattractive and pointless religion embraced by anally retentive nuts.

The contrast is obvious in this photo taken on a picnic in the Bavarian countryside in the 1930s. The Vegetarian to the left - short, feeble, trying to make up for his sense of inferiority by growing a ridiculous moustache. The meat-eater in the middle - healthy, virile, excuding strength and masculinity, fresh from shagging Marlene Dietrich

The anally retentive character trait of Vegetarianism manifests itself in a preoccupation with titles. Whenever you pose a Vegetarian an awkward question, he or she will retort that this concerns only Lacto-vegetarians, Ovo-vegetarians, Lacto-Ovo vegetarians, Pescetarians, Vegans etc, ‘while I myself am a Pollo-vegetarian, so there you go’. This is indicative of mental instability for 2 reasons. First, meat-eaters don’t give themselves silly names based on the type of food they eat. You don’t have Porkarians, Beefists or Hotdogarians. Secondly, even if they did, they wouldn’t expect the general public to be familiar with these terms or even be bothered. Vegetarians are different. They are so fascinated with their own universe of hyphenated Latinates that they think the world around them care. Well, time for a reality check, soy-munchers.

So I hereby suggest a new and simplified Vegetarian typology, where we operate with three kinds of Vegetarians: 1. the smelly, greasy-haired Pacifist Hippie type with a horrible taste in music (read: Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Fairport Convention and other monstrosities that sprang out of the 60s folk rock scene) who thinks the world would be a more harmonious place without water closets. 2. The herb-munching tea-sipping health nut whose narcissistic obsession with his own organism (including its digestive capacities) borders on the perverse 3. Adolf Hitler / Morrissey

For simplification I will hereafter refer to members of any of the above groups as Veggists.
Veggists feel deeply inferior to meat-eaters. This coupled with a bizarre and extremely infantile fixation with food shapes has given us the Veggist line of wannabe-meat products. ‘Oh no, don’t think that you primitive carnivores have a monopoly on the sausage shape. My soy sausage can call itself a real sausage with just as much right as any sausage made from pork.’ Thus there will always be a certain asymmetry between Veggists and the mentally healthy. Quite simply because meat-eaters don’t expect their chicken legs to have the shape of broccoli.

'Yes, I know I should go to the barberer's, but not eating pork is my no. 1 priority at the moment.'

One of the many unappealing features that Veggists share with religious people is their demand for special privileges. 'Ok, so I might be the only Veggist here among 500 guests and I know arranging a wedding is stressful enough already, but hey, serve me that veggie burger NOW!' Note how Muslims and Veggists share an obsession with particular types of food. Zealous Muslims have no problems with grotesquely excessive facial hair, but try to serve them pork and they will hijack an aeroplane and crash it into your kitchen.

How to convert a Veggist

Some of you might – and I speak from personal experience – suffer the misfortune of having colleagues, family members, friends or even (gulp) sex partners who for whatever depraved reason succumbed to the doctrine of Veggism. The healthy contempt you instinctively feel for such pathetic individuals is overpowered by an irrational sense of loyalty and compassion with them. You see not a self-important moralist but a fellow human being in need. Your carnivorous nobleness compels you to come to their rescue. How to save a Veggist? Here are 5 strategies:

Veggism - no recipe for happiness, as demonstrated by these two miserably-looking German veggists from the 1930s

1. Appeal to his/her general desire to be happy
Veggism offers nothing: Islam gives you sex with 72 virgins after death. The Christian afterlife consists of something more diffuse involving angels and harps and probably boring as hell but at least peaceful. Nazism offers racial purity and blonde hair that doesn’t fall of when you’re 33. Communism offers the dictatorship of the proletariat and the chance to rape and loot the bourgeoisie for all they are worth. What does Veggism offer? Dying from boredom at 56! It is a creed completely deprived of attractions. Its main attraction is in fact its unattractiveness. The budding veggist reads about the complete humourless Veggist lifestyle and thinks to himself: This looks so bleak and life-negating that there’s got to be some hidden reward somewhere; Some Veggistan-heaven where a permanently nude Scarlet Johansson shares a soy enchilada with a peace loving lion.

2. Appeal to his/her empathy
Tell your Veggist friend that the soy bean has a rich and fascinating emotional life. Veggists already have inflated opinions of non-humans’ mental capacities, so they just might buy it. Without soy the whole foundations of veggist cuisine will be pulled away under their feet and Veggists will have to face a choice between starvation or a return to sanity. (Some might chose the first option, you might argue – all the better. This shows that Darwinism still works.)
Alternatively you can try the inverse tactic. Convince them that cows are plants.

3. Appeal to his/her sense of guilt
Invite a veggist for a dinner. When she has just licked her fork clean, tell her that what she just devoured so enthusiastically was not a soy beef but raw Panda meat. Veggists like most religious nuts react with panic to the mere suspicion that they have committed a sin. Being a veggist has lost its raison d’etre once and for all and the tormented veggist-sinner will be sent sliding down the slippery (especially greased with animal fat for the occasion) slope to a healthy colesterol-filled diet.
Yes, that's YOU 15 years ago, and that is no soy sausage!

If you don’t feel like wasting good meat, you can produce (Photoshop offers unlimited possibilities) a photo from your friend’s childhood showing the future Veggist engrossed in the consumption of a hot dog on the annual Constitution Day celebrations, her snotty face all smeared with ketchup and mustard. If necessary (most Veggist have probably repressed all memories from their pre-Veggist existence), make use of Freudian techniques like hypnosis to recreate the meat-eating experience in its full sensual dimension.

4. Appeal to his/her ability to over-generalize
Dress up as a cow (or another animal prone to appear on your plate in the company of french fries) and subject a veggist to a violent assault. The victimized veggist’s ability to identify with the suffering of the cow will suffer a severe blow and the next time he sees a group of cattle heading for the slaughterhouse, he will cheer them on enthusiastically. However, keep in mind that this might prove counterproductive. Being notoriously irrational individuals, Veggists may easily fall victim to the Stockholm syndrome and start treating cows with even more reverence than before. A safer but more time-consuming approach is to dress up as a cow and start stalking a Veggist by sending her love letters, putting up a tent outside her apartment, start fan sites on the internet etc. This will cure your Veggist friend of her fondness for cows once and for all.

5. Appeal to his/her sense of aesthetics
Loved by everyone in Poland, and not only for her artistic genius.

Veggists are firmly convinced that their lifestyle is more in harmony with nature. (Their spirits are somehow not dampened by the fact that none of the carnivores actually living in nature would ever renounce meat-eating for ideological reasons.) Show the Veggist a soy cotlet and tell him or her that this is nothing more and nothing less than the culinary equivalent of a silicone breast. Hardly natural.

6. Appeal to his/her dislike of Adolf Hitler (The ‘Reductio ad Hitlerum’ approach)

If, Dear Lodge Members, your Veggist friend stubbornly resists all your attempts to nurse him back to sanity; even if he or she is stupefyingly immune to reason; there is a last resort, an argument to which there is no riposte: Adolf Hitler was a Veggist. ‘Oh, but that is irrelevant. His vegetarianism had nothing to do with him killing millions of people and stuff.’ Wrong. It had everything to do with it. If you value purity (be it racial or nutritional) above everything else including human well-being there is but a small step to dabbling in mass murder. The only difference between Der Führer and your average Veggist is that Adolf was the dictator of Germany while your Veggist-misfit friend is still the odd one out on the annual Thanksgiving dinner, sitting by himself with his miserable soy pancakes while his cousins are bonding happily over a juicy turkey.

Real, calorie-packed meat - brings the family together.