No, I mean “Impossible Sausage”, a product that was intended & designed as a product to replace meat. Obviously people didn’t lose their shit over salads and collards. Ask yourself why. If you don’t get how a meat replacement product has a distinct cultural significance from the meat-and-three that’s they’ve served forever, you’re not following the plot.
You are of course welcome to argue from the perspective “these people are stupid.” While I don’t contest that fact, as an explanatory narrative it doesn’t really illuminate what’s going on here.
I would also suggest that timing is also part of this. Had CB added Impossible Sausage in, say, 2007… I don’t think they’d have seen the blowback they’re seeing now. Polarization is of course nothing new, but I don’t sense that conservatives had yet fully lost their minds at that point.
Conservatives hate it if people have a choice to get something that they themselves don’t want. They don’t want an abortion, therefore nobody should have that choice. They don’t want plant-based meat, therefore nobody should have that choice. Dontcha see? Once fake meats are available the slippery slope demands that real meats will soon be banned.
I think you are onto something. As soon as they figured out some people wanted to be left alone to celebrate things other than Christmas, there was a “War on Christmas.”
There are people who perceive “not-me” as “against-me.” That’s at the bottom of “White Power,” and every other “reverse discrimination,” “wounded majority” movement.
I know men who have had the simple biological fact that they are not the default human (in humans, “female” is the default, and fetal development has to take a detour to make a male) shake them to the core.
I forgot to mention their irrational hatred of electric cars. If it’s new or something they don’t want, then it is by definition something evil to be banned.
Impossible sausages cause abortions not just to someone eating them, all her friends too. Depopulating the rural communities. Part ot the Deep State plan to install Hilary as queen of America. The soybean oil makes country men infertile and less masculine. I heard it on Tucker. Pass it on.
What I’m saying is that there are already vegetarian/health conscious main dishes and sides on the menu. Why is a meat substitute all that different? It’s aimed at EXACTLY the same customers that the “Country Vegetable Plate” or the egg whites are.
The issue is that these clowns have decided that meat substitutes are somehow “woke”, for reasons that are beyond me- nobody’s replacing anything with them, they’re just another option for people. But they’ve decided that the very existence of these products is a casus belli in their culture wars, and are making Cracker Barrel the battlefield.
You’re on to something there- I’d add to it to say that it’s “not me” = “against me” and “doesn’t agree with me” = “against me”, as if the world is binary like that.
And the biggest problem is that when you do view the world like that, there’s no middle ground or room for compromise- it’s either my side or the other side, and it becomes a fight/resistance, rather than a search for common ground/negotiations for compromises.
So apparently meat substitutes are “woke”, and that’s not them/doesn’t agree with them, and needs to be fought/resisted, even though anyone with two brain cells to rub together would realize that this isn’t a slippery slope, nobody’s being forced to eat Impossible Sausage, etc… But since it’s a binary worldview to them, it’s all or nothing and must be resisted. Same with electric cars, and anything else that’s not within their worldview.
The first Cracker Barrel was located in Tennessee, and Dan Evins modeled it after the country stores he remembered as a child. I humbly submit that you cannot appropriate your own culture. Interestingly enough, this was a bid by Evins to sell more gasoline, but when the restaurant/store did so well he just decided to stopp selling fuel.
Indeed. Their worldview is, you don’t want meat, fine, eat vegetables… as vegetables. You want the taste and feel of meat? Eat MEAT! Can’t because of health reasons? Won’t because of ethical reasons? Then do without!
Meat substitutes are a way to allow people who can’t or won’t eat actual meat to enjoy some of the experience, and that wounds the rightwinger’s sense of the order of the world. So, “Woke” because it somehow implies that the preferences of different people are worth satisfying.
And I would not be surprised if some were thinking, “the Lord made meat, and vegetables. “Incredible Meats” are the transexuals of the food world.”
Hmmm, people respond totally differently to Impossible Sausage than existing vegetable items. Why?
OR
Those people are obviously too stupid to know Cracker Barrel has served collards and okra forever. Perhaps they’re a bunch of dumb stupid dummies who never looked at the menu. That must be it.
Sure, but why would they care, unless it’s actually replacing something else on the menu?
I’m failing to see how a restaurant adding an option to the menu, whatever it may be, is a cultural threat to anyone, except for people who have decided that anything that isn’t what they like is literally against what they like, instead of just being another option. There are lots of other options at Cracker Barrel, and other than that binary thinking, I’m not seeing any difference whatsoever.
The problem is with the people, not with the menu.
Conservative people have a need for everything to be neat, orderly, and in its proper place. They have an instinctual hatred of anything which doesn’t fit into their predetermined boxes.
Vegetables are fine, but vegetables pretending to be meat is an abomination. It is the same reaction they have to drag performers, transfolx, or education.
Conservatives also tend to be not awesome at embracing change, even if it’s obviously for the better, unless it’s fixing something that’s obviously affecting them, or going back to the way things were but the libs broke it all.
Obviously there’s nothing wrong with the menu. The question is what’s wrong with the people, and I’m not satisfied that “obviously they’re dummies” is a complete or satisfying answer. Perhaps that’s adequate for you, and that’s fine. But if that’s your position, there’s not much else for you to say about the topic. Conservatives are dummies. The end. Enjoy the rest of your day.
How else do you explain that binary thinking? It’s a lack of critical thinking, or even consideration that there might be another way?
Maybe they’re not stupid, but they’re absolutely willfully ignorant, and unwilling to even consider that there might be another way that doesn’t line up exactly with their worldview that isn’t also against their world view.