As distractions from their empty cupboard of plans or ideas, Republican politicians and their hacks in the right-wing media hot house have been coming up with "culture war" nonsense exemplified by the Dr. Seuss and Mr. Potato Head stories. It's helped to distract some in our broken media from the existential threat posed by the Big Lie and those that promote it.
Last week, the story going around in right-wing circles was the President Biden's climate change policies would result in severe meat quotas, a lie that was fairly quickly debunked but still manages to reverberate among the Trumpist faithful, to wit:
"Republican politicians in recent months have increasingly used food — especially beef — as a cudgel in a culture war, accusing climate-minded Democrats of trying to change Americans’ diets and, therefore, their lives.
'That is a direct attack on our way of life here in Nebraska,' Gov. Pete Ricketts, a Republican, said recently.
The pitched rhetoric is likely a sign of the future. As more Americans acknowledge the link between food production and climate change, food choices are likely to become increasingly political. Already, in farm states, meat eating has joined abortion, gun control and transgender rights as an issue that quickly sends partisans to their corners." (our emphasis)
While the Biden Beef Ban story was patently false, it's interesting that the Environmental Protection Agency issued a report in 2019 under the "former guy's" regime that agriculture accounted for about 10% of greenhouse gas emissions, with livestock "emitting" about a quarter of that amount. The problem for the food culture warriors is that the public is moving away from meat consumption, per the AP article:
"About a quarter of Americans reported eating less meat than they had a year earlier, according to a 2019 Gallup poll, chiefly for health reasons but also out of environmental concerns. About 30% of Democrats polled said they were eating less meat, compared to 12% of Republicans."
At this point, it's arguable that the greenhouse gas emitted by Republicans and their wingnut Wurlitzer over the culture wars may be equal or greater than that put out by cows and pigs, and far more noxious.
(photo: Trumpist Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (Sedition - CA) holding the Republican playbook)
