This is a response to a question asked on Quora.com in the summer of 2017. Quora is an expansive and engrossing information-sharing website with some really high caliber writers and content-makers. It’s like Yahoo Answers, except that instead of cave-dwelling troglodytes smashing their fists on combinations of the six working buttons on their keyboard, the community is encouraged to write coherent, creative, and occasionally beautiful answers. The question was What would be a good food analogy for Liberals vs. Conservatives? and can be found in its original form, along with other people’s responses here. My answer seemed to strike a few chords with people, so I figured posting it here would extend it’s digital lifespan a bit further.
The answer came to me immediately. But as I thought about the leaders, followers, and policies of both parties, the response became more complex. I moved past clichés and stereotypes and started seeing metaphors everywhere. The piece quickly outgrew itself as a simple meme and gained a whole universe of subtext. The best memes are like that, I suppose. I took an almost academic approach, qualifying each sentence with real-life examples. I chose not to muddy up the writing with excessive hyperlinks — essentially asking readers to ‘just roll with me’ and assume that the statements made had real-world parallels. Most people didn’t seem to have a hard time drawing their own comparisons to the descriptions of each food stand, but if any of these statements seem inaccurate or confusing, please let me know so I can follow up with the analog I had in mind, or edit for clarity.
Now, I hope you’re hungry.
Imagine two food stands. Each serves one item.
The Liberal food stand serves a black bean quinoa burger.
After many years of serving the usual beef-style patty with a leaf of limp iceberg lettuce and a splat of ketchup, this stand has decided to make a conscious change. When the people behind the stand could no longer ignore the disturbing and egregious realities of global monocultures and factory-farmed meat, they did the research to make a shift towards something that could be less environmentally and socially harmful. So they’ve come up with a dish comprised of a number of different ingredients that form to make something nutritious, ethical and progressive. Each ingredient is intentionally sourced and thoughtfully prepared to add a diverse, dynamic flavor profile.
They’ve sought out partners who pay their workers well, don’t poison the environment, and care about the repercussions of shipping their product to distant markets. Most of the ingredients are produced locally, so as to reduce carbon footprints and strengthen smaller farms. Not only are the burgers rich in flavor, but they also have comparable protein and nutrient indexes to the old beef patties, without the dubious “probable carcinogen” status that red meat now has.
Because the observations they’ve used to evaluate the black bean option are based on many layers and areas of study, (history, health, ecology, ethical codes, environmental conservation, economics) the explanation for choosing it is therefore somewhat complex. Though the reasons that brought them to this stand may be valid, some patrons have a difficult time explaining everything to non-patrons. These reasons have to do with massive, systemic problems in the supply chain that most people never see or have personal experience with, so explaining the black bean choice may sound abstract, and perhaps even pretentious. Sometimes, consumers of this food get things mixed up and then accused of not knowing what they’re talking about (some actually don’t know what they’re talking about, but simply prefer the crowd and aesthetics at this stand).
Sometimes they get caught up trying to outdo each other in their quest for ultimate awareness, and engage in unproductive combat amongst themselves (for instance, one group may say that holistically-raised cattle may be better for repairing grassland ecosystems than farming beans, while another says that the explosion of urban interest in quinoa is starving the indigenous populations of Peru. One group advocates for a gluten-free bun, while yet another says that 100% vegan is the only way forward). When observed by outsiders, these issues seem minor and uninteresting, but what these groups all have fundamentally in common is that they are trying to do better. They’re trying to aim for a dish and a business model that doesn’t wreak havoc on humans, watersheds, soil — but instead empowers workers, creative chefs and culinary enthusiasts. It turns out that this is harder than it sounds.
But as much as these patrons care about making a difference, it also bears mentioning that it’s easy for most of them to acutely craft their desires to ‘identify’ with certain products — because their social environment grants them access to do so. They have the opportunity to pick from a variety of food stands, all within walking distance from their (mostly) urban homes. They have a hard time confronting the fact that much of the world doesn’t have the privileged access to the ‘designer foods’ that they do. Try as they might to sound noble and caring, they can come off as preachy and out-of-touch to many rural folks, whose communities face a very different set of challenges. They are consistently discredited on these grounds alone — even though a wider acceptance of this model would positively affect working-class conservatives.
When we visit the Conservative stand, we find that it’s the only food for miles, and most people have to drive long distances to reach it. It’s certainly not in an area you’d call “bike-friendly”, and the only other restaurants in this zip code sell essentially the same thing. Even if one was curious about exploring different diets, they would have a difficult time finding any examples of it in their community.
Here, they serve A classic beef hot dog. An old favorite. So simple, so humble, so satisfying. It’s hard to imagine how to improve on something this tried and true… So they haven’t tried.
In fact, even in the presence of shifting consumer tastes and alarming evidence of the unfortunate truths about hot dogs, they have done practically nothing to change their antiquated approach to running a restaurant. They choose not to recognize that hot dogs are unhealthy by basically every measure, and must continue to reject each and every study on health, nutrition, food safety, and animal welfare — in many cases flat-out ignoring the results entirely. To them, progress made in nutrition and other realms of medical science over the last half-century is irrelevant, and should not be used to restrict their dietary preferences. This is not to say that they are stupid, but instead speaks to their firm, uncompromising spirit and distrust in what ‘authorities’ tell them they need to do (they actually share this last trait with many folks at the liberal stand).
They also have an immense willingness to put family before almost everything else. To get a clearer picture of why this stand still shows loyal attendance week after week, it should be understood that nearly everyone who eats here started coming with their families, often right after church. They have a long history of strong, positive associations with this food, so when some outsider comes in and smugly tells them why they shouldn’t be there, it feels like an attack on their very identity; their whole way of life.
Where the other stand is proud of its use of international flavors and acknowledges its influences, this stand believes that their iconic menu item is purely American, disregarding even the most basic facts of origin (like how all histories generally reveal the product emerging from Vienna, Poland or Germany. Or how “Frankfurter” is actually a German word/invention… Or the unsettling, yet very plausible theory that the term “hot dog” literally came from manufacturers using dog meat). They mask the negative aspects of this food’s historical narrative, and re-frame ugly truths as “heritage”.
Since these proponents value hard work and no-nonsense economics, they often justify their choice by saying it is the cheaper option. Though this may appear true, one has to overlook the colossal externalities that must exist for this product to remain cheap. So while communities around the world have to face the many negative externalities forced upon them by hot dog production, the only real beneficiaries of this restaurant’s model are the few people at the very top of the corporations who distribute to it. The consumers diagnosed with cancer, the tormented farm animals, the low-paid and often undocumented slaughterhouse workers, the loss of biodiversity, the pesticide-soaked farmers supplying the corn feed, the millions of people living in the vicinity of these operations, and the many millions more who face a changing climate from this single product’s high carbon emissions and resultant acidifying ocean dead zones all must suffer for the sake of an alleged “cheap cost” to the consumer. Once again, the only people reaping immediate rewards from this system are the ones who own multinational meatpacking companies.
Innocuous as the hot dog may seem, it struggles to hold up against much scrutiny. But it does tell us quite a bit about human nature. No matter the odds stacked against hot dogs, this stand continues to gain new customers every year. Because people seek to belong. And adhering to tradition is one of the best ways to feel kinship with those around you. Or to put it another way; most people don’t need ‘logic’ to agree with the views of their father, they usually agree simply on the grounds that they love their father, and they trust him. They don’t associate any of the negative effects of hot dogs with him, and they trust that he wouldn’t knowingly feed them food that is somehow “bad” either.
It turns out that Trust is far more valuable capital than nearly any other type of persuasion. In the case of these two food stands, people have made their decisions to trust that their restaurant of choice will operate in the ways they say they will. After that, many of them will stop asking questions. Ultimately, it is up to each restaurant to respect the bond of trust they’ve built. But since the food industry is so full of deceptive campaigns and weird dieting trends and broken promises, people are understandably fed up. They’re disillusioned by the volatility of it all. So they pick a place to eat. It may not be perfect. It may even be contributing to their poor health. But they stick with what they know, because sometimes that’s a whole lot easier than eating something outside their comfort zone.
