Forced into peace

There’s little comfort for vegans in any stories in the media. All we hear about is how conventional food habits are flourishing. Cuisines making the fullest use of animal foods are all the rage. It’s only ever about taste experiences, variety and freshness. The TV cooks are oblivious of the animals whose body parts they use. And their use of abundant quantities of animal products is made to look like the extravagance we all deserve. There’s never a thought to the harm their rich foods do to human health let alone the harm to the animals who produced them. They are agents of indulgence and the animal and allied industries benefit all round.
Our society is careful never to endanger the animal trade. The acceptability of animal produce is always implied, so if there’s no crime in attacking and eating animals then there can be no judgement, punishment, hence there’s no satisfaction for any vegan who wants to punish the whole of society for what they do to innocent animals. It all seems so unfair but the fact is that the vegan’s sack of retribution is empty. We have nothing coercive to fight with.
But that is to our advantage, as a movement. We can’t morally browbeat, we can’t expose, we can’t ridicule, we can do nothing of this sort to help our case, simply because we are in such a vast minority against such a vast majority attitude. And that’s good for our own future development as effective advocates. Frustrating as it may be for us it is nevertheless good training, for not being judgemental even in our most private thoughts. It forced us to take on a fresh attitude of total non-violence. Only by completely rethinking our attitude to those who disagree with us can we make any headway with them.