The Moral Dissonance Between Our Consumption and Political Choices

Supporting liberal democracy is virtuous, but we often fall short morally as consumers.

Photo by Jakob Cotton on Unsplash

Only a bold person would claim that they always do what they believe to be right, no matter the sacrifice.

Peter Singer

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Voters who support Trump yet see themselves as moral Americans exasperate me. However, I concede that many Trump supporters do behave virtuously in their interpersonal relationships. This duality of supporting Trump while being decent towards other individuals was noted on a podcast episode of The Bulwark:

Charlie Sykes: “...You go out into the world, you go to soccer games… you meet people at tailgate parties… at baseball games, and you go to church… And you meet Americans. And you’re reminded, these people are pretty decent. They’re not stupid. They raise their children to be, you know, good men and women. They have strong moral values. And I have a hard time reconciling how… you who are so moral and honorable and smart in other areas of your life, how are you willing to buy into this when it comes to politics? Is there a complete disconnect between our politics?”

Benjamin Wittes: “... There is a difference between personal decency and political decency. And the number of people who are perfectly lovely in their ordinary lives and willing to contemplate at a political level, things that are appalling, things that should be unacceptable, undiscussable.”

At the same time, Trump’s opponents exhibit their own form of moral dissonance. Most of my fellow anti-authoritarians, myself included, engage in unethical personal consumption (just like most Trump supporters do). This consumption causes harm to non-human animals and contributes to climate change, which harms all life.  

It is true that laws meant to improve the welfare of animals in factory farms have been instituted primarily in blue and swing states, and Democrats are more likely to be vegetarians or vegans than Republicans. However, only about one in ten Americans is vegetarian or vegan, so clearly most anti-authoritarians are making unethical dietary choices by consuming animal products. 

The production of meat, dairy, and eggs nearly always causes animal suffering and death. Billions of animals suffer and are killed each year on American factory farms. Most dairy cows experience lives of confinement, are deprived of their calves shortly after birth, and are slaughtered after a few years of life. Their male calves are often confined to stalls to be raised for veal. On egg producing factory farms, hens also live in severe confinement, and millions of male chicks are intentionally killed through suffocation. 

And it’s not as if very few Americans understand the implications of their dietary choices for animals. Peter Singer, who authored Animal Liberation nearly five decades ago, notes in 2023 that 

Even as the ethical arguments for avoiding meat have become better known, meat consumption has risen not only in countries that are emerging out of poverty, but in the U.S. as well… in the United States, per capita consumption of meat and poultry is 24 percent higher than it was in 1975. The average American is eating less beef, but that has been more than offset by higher consumption of chicken and turkey. That’s even worse from an animal-welfare perspective. More birds must be raised and killed to produce the same quantity of meat, and they are raised in more crowded and intensive conditions than cows are.

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Dietary choices also impact climate change. A significant portion of U.S. greenhouse emissions are due to food systems, purchasing animal products leads to much higher emissions that do purchases of plant-based foods, and people in North America consume more red meat, poultry, eggs, and dairy than people from any other world region. Citing an IPCC report, the website CarbonBrief states that switching to diets with less consumption of animal products would reduce greenhouse gas emissions, with veganism having the biggest impact (data is for global emissions):

a switch to veganism could save almost 8bn tonnes of CO2e a year by 2050, when compared to a “business-as-usual” scenario. (By comparison, all food production currently causes around 13.7bn tonnes of CO2e a year.)

Other human activity also leads to greenhouse emissions, and many of our choices are discretionary. For example, across the political spectrum, many Americans purchase large numbers of gifts and travel long distances to go on vacation, including by flying.  

Humans are not angels, myself included. I eat eggs, seafood, and some dairy. I commute alone a significant distance to work. I occasionally take flights to go on vacation. Supporters of liberal democracy are justified in complaining about the immorality of voting for the extinction of democracy, but we also should consider the moral dissonance between our own political and consumption decisions.