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The human body is constantly evolving, but tripling meat consumption in just over a century is a fairly remarkable update.

What we need in conjunction with these perfunctory fact-checks every time a conservative hallucinates someone coming to take their burger is a deeper interrogation of why meats have become such a foundational part of American meals. This was not always the norm, for either the Indigenous communities or for the majority of working people prior to the 1970s. To revert to the anecdotal once again, over the years I have asked my dad and my aunts and uncles, all of whom grew up on a tobacco farm, how often they ate meat growing up from the 1940s to the 1970s. The answer across the board has been that cuts of beef and pork, and even chicken to an extent, were rare dinner table items because of their scarcity and relative cost. And the Public Health Nutrition study backs this up: While Americans, per capita, were already consuming more meat than the rest of the world in the 1960s, the average person was eating roughly 250 grams of meat per day, or 100 grams less per day than they did in 2007. Go back to 1909, and the average American was eating just 150 grams per day.

The human body is constantly evolving, but tripling meat consumption in just over a century is a fairly remarkable update. This sudden uptick has far less to do with personal choice and much more to do with the way that the federal government has decided to act as a crutch for corporations like Tyson, Cargill, and JBS. Were that crutch ever kicked outby cutting some of the $38 billion in subsidies paid to dairy and meat industries and pushing for the increased presence of labor unions in the warehousesa new future might actually be possible. But, again, this is not the tack being pursued by the White House or Congress.

The reason that not even a trace amount of nuance can be added to this conversation on a national scale is because of how devoted Americans are both to meat and to reactionary culture wars. Meat isnt an organic protein to be devoured in moderation so much as it is a representation of American exceptionalism. Likewise, the need to fact-check every claim furthered by conservative grifters, while worthwhile in moderation, isnt so much a useful contribution to the discourse as it is an attempt to game the SEO and soak up as many clicks as possible from the deluge of Meat+Canceled+Biden Google searches. Aunt Joan is not clicking your CNN link, Larry Kudlow still doesnt know where beer comes from, and the White House is not remotely radical in its approach to climate change, meat, or almost anything else. OK? OK.

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There's No Biden War on Meat. There Should Be. - The New Republic

Classical liberal, thought leader, guitar-bothering divorce meme Laurence Fox launched his campaign to be London mayor this week, standing for the Reclaim party. Whats he reclaiming? Probably not his deposit. Remarkably, the actor read his big launch speech off some paper, which is surely the equivalent of not being off-book for opening night. You cant help feeling it would have taken the edge off Laurence Oliviers Henry V if hed had to get a couple of prompt cards out before addressing the troops at Agincourt.

Still, I expect we get the Laurences we deserve. I am here to reclaim your freedom, read Fox. Again, learning his lines for Braveheart allowed Mel Gibson to make a similar promise, at the same time as controlling the skittish horse he was riding and still having a fist free to raise in the air at the end. Not being word-perfect sadly closed off that avenue to Laurence Fox. Any British politician raising a fist full of crumpled A4 looks like theyve just appeased Hitler.

It used to seem unutterably lame, the lengths to which David Camerons Conservatives would go to avoid being outflanked by a man of the calibre of Nigel Farage. That now looks like an era of lofty idealism, given that Boris Johnsons Conservatives look like theyre trying to avoid being outflanked by a man of the calibre of Laurence Fox.

But this is where we are. Every time some cabinet minister rushes eagerly to the frontline of the culture wars, they are espousing a politics indistinguishable from that of a preposterous tit having a midlife crisis. Yet still they rush. It is beginning to feel as if the government wants a culture war more than anything.

This weeks race report appears a case in point, with the manner in which its release was seemingly deliberately designed to produce the least conciliatory or even thoughtful headlines on a hugely sensitive issue. This, it turned out, was also the moment Samuel Kasumu Boris Johnsons senior adviser on ethnic minorities confirmed his resignation to colleagues.

Despite Downing Streets attempts to jolly this news up, there is no way to read it other than unfavourably. Kasumu had previously sought to resign over his belief the government was pursuing a politics steeped in division; and confirming he was doing so just as they were playing their big race report in the divisive way they chose is never going to look like the seal of approval.

Needless to say, housing secretary, Robert Jenrick, was straight out of the traps to explain that racism was something that happens on social media, not in Britains institutions. Perhaps he was thinking of equalities minister Kemi Badenoch instituting a Twitter pile-on against a black journalist, which predictably drew the writer in question huge amounts of racist abuse. As Kasumu had written in his earlier resignation letter: I believe the ministerial code was breached. However, more concerning than the act, was the lack of response internally I waited, and waited, for something from the senior leadership team to even point to an expected standard, but it did not materialise. Clearly it never did.

Expected standards have never bothered Robert Jenrick either. The first rule of the governments culture war is that it has to be fought by the ones who look like their earliest relationship with the flag was being given a wedgie with it at school. Jenrick, Oliver Dowden, Gavin Williamson, Milhouse Van Houten this is the pool from which your generals are drawn.

These are chaps intensely relaxed about giving the appearance they care more about statues than women bringing in new laws to make the penalty for defacing the former worse than the average sentence for raping the latter. Reminder: precisely one statue in the country, itself long contentious, has been toppled in the past year. Those accused of felling it are already due to stand trial under existing law. So when the furlough ends in the autumn, and the scale of the UKs road to recovery becomes clear, let the record show that the actual secretary of state for communities chose to spend on such total nonsense. Let the record show that the actual culture secretary turned his thoughts away from a collapsing arts sector to pick some fantastically babyish and irrelevant fight with the National Trust. Dowden even went on the telly to demand that TV drama The Crown carry a disclaimer saying it is fiction. Is the culture secretary honestly saying that it isnt the real Princess Diana up there in my tellybox? Like every other viewer he apparently regards as a complete imbecile, I refuse to believe it.

The trouble with culture wars is that the entry requirements are so low but the stakes are so high. For a government supposedly big on the past, this one fails to understand even recent American history. To simplify, for their benefit: turning everything into an insanely polarised binary ends badly. Whether you play with this box of matches because its cheaper than real policies, or because it energises your base, or for some other reason, it always ends badly. Do you remember the orange man? It ended badly. It remains a mystery quite why Britains politicians should be stoking culture wars mere months after just one of their logical conclusions was laid bare for the world to see. Absolutely no good comes of this stuff, and governments should be bigger and better than it.

If they arent, then perhaps a disclaimer ought to preface every ministers increasingly unhelpful and incendiary forays into the culture wars: The following scenes do not contain public service.

Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist

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The culture war is a box of matches the UK government can't help playing with - The Guardian

Next in the culture wars: Vaccine passports

As the ranks of the inoculated in the U.S. grow, businesses, schools and politicians are considering vaccine passports digital proof of vaccination against the coronavirus as a path to reviving the economy and postpandemic life.

But the idea is raising knotty moral and legal questions about whether businesses and schools can require them and whether the government can mandate vaccinations or stop organizations from demanding proof.

The answer to these questions is mostly yes, but the issue is fast becoming a political one. Vaccine passports are shaping up to be the next big clash in the American culture wars.

Today, the Republican governor of Texas barred many organizations from requiring proof of vaccination, following a similar move in Florida. Lawmakers in Pennsylvania, Arkansas and elsewhere have begun drafting legislation that would ban or limit vaccine passports. Some Republicans say the passports are Democratic overreach, socialism or an intrusion on personal liberty and private health choices.

Many organizations and businesses, however, see the passports as a way to keep employees, customers and others safe and are pushing forward. A number of universities have already said they will require proof of vaccination from students this fall, and airlines are trying out apps showing the vaccination status of pilots and crews.

Some countries have moved to institute national vaccine passports. In Israel, the Green Pass system has allowed a return to something similar to prepandemic life, as vaccinated individuals are free to go to concerts and restaurants and gather in groups. Prime Minister Boris Johnson announced yesterday that Britain would create Covid certificates that would give holders access to public areas like nightclubs and to sporting events.

In the U.S., the Supreme Court has declared, in two separate cases, that government entities can largely require vaccinations for entry, service and travel. Private companies can also largely refuse to employ or do business with anyone they want, although states can probably override that by enacting a law barring discrimination based on vaccination status.

President Biden appears reluctant to wade into the fray, after signing an executive order to assess the feasibility of producing digital vaccination documents. The White House has said that it will not be pushing to pass a federal mandate and would leave vaccine passports up to the private sector, mystifying some local and state heath officials who want the federal government more involved.

In China, which has largely contained the coronavirus outbreak and made big strides in returning to normal life, many people just dont feel the urgency to line up for a vaccine. Others are wary of Chinas history of vaccine-related scandals, a fear that the lack of transparency around Chinese-made Covid-19 vaccines has done little to assuage.

Thats where the ice cream comes in. In Beijing, vaccinated people get buy-one-get-one-free cones. Elsewhere, local governments have published poems and warned parents that if they refuse a shot, their childrens schooling, future employment and housing were all at risk.

They say its voluntary, but if you dont get the vaccine, theyll just keep calling you, said Annie Chen, a university student in Beijing, who relented after she received two vaccine entreaties from a school counselor in about a week.

The all-out blitz appears to be working. Over the past week, China has administered an average of about 4.8 million doses a day, up from about one million a day for much of last month. The authorities hope that 560 million people will be vaccinated by the end of June about 40 percent of Chinas population.

Despite the surge in vaccinations, China still lags far behind dozens of other countries. Though the country has approved five homegrown vaccines, it has administered 10 shots for every 100 residents. Britain has administered 56 for every 100; the United States, 50.

Heres a roundup of restrictions in all 50 states.

U.S. coronavirus cases have increased again after hitting a low late last month, and some of the states driving the upward trend have also been hit hardest by variants.

A new study found that many children who never had Covid-19 symptoms later developed a mysterious inflammatory syndrome.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the risk of infection from contaminated surfaces, while not impossible, was very low, generally less than 1 in 10,000.

In The Atlantic, a writer explored memory, storytelling and how we will define the experience of living through the pandemic for future generations.

Swedens initial approach to the pandemic was unique, largely avoiding virus restrictions and mask requirements. The New Yorker looks at how the country has fared one year on.

Playing without capacity restrictions for their home opener, the Texas Rangers hosted the largest American sports crowd of the pandemic.

Researchers found that fan attendance at N.F.L. games led to episodic spikes in the number of Covid-19 cases in the surrounding community.

As some people start to shake off coronavirus precautions, those who are waiting their turn for a vaccine say the FOMO is real. Its like when every friend is getting engaged before you.

My uncle died from Covid complications in December, so for my family and so many others, we will grieve long after the pandemic is over. There is a sadness in my moms voice that was never there before. He was her younger brother and weve been unable to have a service for him. People are so excited to go out and get back to normal, but for so many of us, there is no normal, we will forever be a statistic. Its been difficult seeing so many people who dont take Covid seriously or wont get the vaccine. That has been something Ive really struggled with. Ive learned during the pandemic the only thing that really matters in life is holding close to your loved ones.

Sunnie Haeger, Denver

Let us know how youre dealing with the pandemic. Send us a response here, and we may feature it in an upcoming newsletter.

Sign up here to get the briefing by email.

Amelia Nierenberg contributed to todays newsletter.

Email your thoughts to briefing@nytimes.com.

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Coronavirus Briefing: What Happened Today - The New York Times

You know what you get for spending trillions of dollars you dont have? More fights over Dr. Seuss, cancel culture, and identity politics.

By any measure, the federal government has been on a spending spree for decades. Without getting bogged down in the green eyeshade stuff, suffice it to say Uncle Sam has been spending more than he takes in from tax revenues since the 1990s. Weve made up those shortfalls by borrowing money. The national debt ($28 trillion) is now considerably larger than the GDP (about $21 trillion).

Reasonable people can differ on how much value we got for all that credit card debt. But thats not relevant here.

Whats relevant is that when both parties reach a de facto bipartisan consensus that deficit spending is fineat least when their party is doing the spendingit makes it difficult to argue about overspending or overborrowing in a credible way.

For instance, during what was supposed to be the debate period for President Bidens $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package, which spent plenty on non-pandemic Democratic priorities, the Republican National Committee was silent on it. The RNC did release two statements about itbut only after the bill passed. Yet plenty of Republicans found time to decry the cancellation of Dr. Seuss.

For the record, Seuss wasnt actually canceled. His estate announced that it wouldnt continue to publish a handful of his least popular and allegedly racially insensitive works. In what he thought was an act of defiance to cancel culture, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy staged a reading of Green Eggs and Hama book that wasnt actually canceled. That showed those profligate Democrats!

We tend to define bipartisanship as both parties openly agreeing with each other in a gauzy spirit of civic cooperation. But theres another kind of bipartisanshipwhen each party cynically and tacitly agrees to take turns doing things they denounce when the other party does them. Thats what the parties do on spending and debt (and Supreme Court nominations, gerrymandering, and a host of other issues). The cumulative effect is a political culture that says you can do whatever you can get away with. Why should voters care about deficits when most politicians only claim to care about them when its the other party increasing them?

But heres the catch. Political parties need to differentiate themselves from their competitors. Neither Republicans nor Democrats can run on the vow, Theres not a dimes worth of difference between us and the other party. So what does that leave? Culture-war stuff.

This is not to say that cultural issues arent legitimate or important points of disagreement in a democracy. They often are. But if thats all youve got to work with, youre going to make as big a deal of that stuff as you can.

As Shadi Hamid of the Brookings Institution recently noted on my podcast, The Remnant, this is precisely whats happened in Western Europe. Theres a broad consensus among European political parties on spending and a generous welfare state. This doesnt mean economic issues arent important to European voters. But the partisan fights are often over which state-dependent interestgovernment workers, unions, farmers, big businessshould get more subsidies or protections. Meanwhile, cultural issues like European identity vs. national identity and, especially, immigration become major sources of brand differentiation.

Indeed, immigration is a perfect example of what Im getting at. Its an important issue regardless of where you come down on the specifics of immigration policy. But theres a reason that Republicans and Democrats often invest so much more in the issue than it warrants. It taps into, among other things, questions of race, national identity, and the relationship between wealthy elites and average workers. Democrats love the issue because it lets them demonize Republicansoften but not always unfairlyas rank nativists and bigots. It lets Republicans rail about Democratic animosity toward the working class and indifferencereal or allegedto American culture.

Again, immigration is a legitimate issue to debate. But a lot of the culture-war trollingand much of the immigration hysteriathat takes up so much of our energy and attention amounts to a convenient distraction from the fact that both parties have spent this country into a hole it will take decades to climb out of, if either of them ever bothers to try.

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The Culture Wars as Distraction - The Dispatch

In the year since Gov. Bill Lee issued his stay-at-home order, weve seen the pro-life and pro-choice tribes largely swap values. Pro-lifers are now claiming a right to choose to defend their decisions and pro-choicers argue for restrictions in the name of preserving life.

Separated from the issue of abortion, what do these terms mean? To me, pro-choice emphasizes the liberty part of our inalienable rights. Obviously, you cant actively kill someone as that would infringe upon their right to life, but even an actively dangerous lifestyle is acceptable if others can distance themselves from your danger.

Even though smoking is detrimental to your own health and those near you, people can still see the light and plumes of your cigarette and choose to avoid you. They are informed and capable of avoiding you, so it is your choice.

Pro-life, it then would stand to reason, promotes the right to life more heavily than liberty. If it means protecting life and that certain choices should be taken away.

Some people will hang out with you regardless of your habits. Therefore, you should not be allowed to light that cigarette since second-hand smoke can be lethal.

Obviously, this doesnt just apply to smoking. Indeed, I want to focus on that C word weve already heard too much of: COVID-19.

Here in Tennessee, Lees stay-at-home order expired within a month and he declined to issue a mask mandate, instead encouraging personal responsibility to curb the pandemic. Many who consider themselves pro-choice were irritated, believing the lockdown should have been longer and that a mask mandate would have been prudent.

But if you are actually pro-choice, why would you want a mask mandate? If your chiropractor chooses not to wear a mask, you can choose another chiropractor.

Its possible, however, that no chiropractor in your area wears a mask at work, meaning you have to decide between risking COVID-19 exposure and severe back pain. If you additionally had a weakened immune system, that would be an especially cruel choice.

The other side has its share of hypocrisy, too, and its probably worse.

There are good odds (around 40%) that you will be unaware if you have COVID, and if you do have COVID, the chances also are such that infecting just seven customers while working at the caf will kill one person between those customers, their friends and their families.

Masks may not eliminate coronavirus transmission, but science agrees that they reduce it (by 40% to 70%). Nevertheless, it doesnt take long in Blount County to find a pro-life business owner who doesnt require masks.

Naturally, this is a generalization, but it is certainly ironic that those labeled pro-life on the abortion issue are more likely to defend their actions on a principle of personal choice while those labeled pro-choice tend to favor mandating what individuals wear.

The logical question remaining is why? A pro-choice pro-masker may point to the aforementioned cruel choice dilemma or assert the pandemic is different since the life being protected is already realized. A pro-life anti-masker might cite natural selection or skepticism of mask efficacy.

In truth, this role reversal mostly comes down to a perceived culture war especially for anti-maskers. The pandemic has become an extension of the broader political divide, with the pro-life and pro-choice camps largely defaulting to their conservative and progressive identities, respectively.

YouTuber CGP Grey summarized it well, noting how the pandemic quickly went from a humanity-uniting event to fracturing in the usual tiresome ways with two groups each creating a totem, they can yell about how the other side is not just dumb but maliciously evil.

That attitude has always destroyed civic trust, but in the past year it has destroyed lives. There is no cost to wearing a mask, yet many pro-lifers are happy to take an arbitrary stand against the progressives at the cost of their health and that of their loved ones.

As conservative columnist David Brooks said on the PBS NewsHour, The mask issue has become not a scientific issue, not a public policy issue, just a symbolic issue. And we seem to take every practical issue and turn it into a culture war issue.

In the long-term, our country would be better off not making every issue about the culture war. Rather, we each should identify our values and consistently use them as guidelines for personal, political and policy decisions.

But in the short term, I encourage us to remember that we humans ultimately value both choice and life. In these final months of the pandemic, we all have some choice. Lets choose life. Until we are fully vaccinated, lets wear a mask, watch our distance and wash our hands. Lets all do our part and care for the good of our neighbors.

Francisco A.J. Camacho of Friendsville is an undergraduate student at the George Washington University, writes for The GW Hatchet, and has contributed to The Tennessean in Nashville and The Daily Times. He welcomes responses, comments and questions relating to his pieces at P.O. Box 363, Friendsville, TN 37737.

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Coronavirus, conservatives and the culture wars | Opinion | thedailytimes.com - Maryville Daily Times