Get Government Out of the Kitchen

I nteresting new survey from the Center for Strategic Politics: Fifty-nine percent of Democrats would be happy if Trump was removed by a military coup, because nothing says “Our Democracy” like men in uniform removing a duly elected official. Somehow you don’t think they’d be happy to wake up to see Pete Hegseth gripping the podium Alex Haig–style and saying, “I am in command here, now, at the White House.” It’s as if they think the transgender health official from the Biden years would lead the coup.

Another result: Thirty-nine percent of Democratic voters would approve of the restaurant industry being publicly owned and operated. They want to nationalize meal prep? Seize the means of reduction! You imagine fusty old-style progressives with gray hair sprouting from their ears who say to themselves, “These restaurant prices are too high. We need government ownership to impose some fiscal discipline.”

But of course, they’d be shoved aside in favor of the flavor of the month: the bright young things in the DSA. If they took over all the restaurants and started making the necessary changes to accelerate the arrival of our utopian future, every restaurant would be subject to the Lesbian Bar Mask-Free Covid Nightmare you might have heard about. A nightspot, facing financial ruin, decided it would let patrons show up on one night of the week without facial swaddling, and they were promptly excoriated by their clientele for genociding the vulnerable and doing an Ableism. Never mind that the town has seen zero (0) Covid cases lately — the baleful plague might surge at any moment now and give everyone Long Covid, or worse, a mutation that gave you Covid so long you’d have shuddering chills after you’re dead and the funeral would be marred by the sound of your shivering limbs knocking against the inside of the coffin. You do not want these people running your Chili’s.

More DSA restaurant improvements:

• Every server would read a land acknowledgment before listing the specials.
• Meat on the menu? Goes without saying that’s pro-cruelty and marginalizes the vegan-American community. You can’t just say “Don’t order it, get a salad,” because the mere implication of meat creates an unsafe place for anyone committed to a holistic plant-based ethos. Arby’s slogan, “We Have the Meats,” is deliberately exclusionary of those who want a bean-curd simulacrum of roast beef, inasmuch as it suggests, by omission, that they do not have the roasted zucchini, or, if they do, regard it as a lesser option not worthy of mention. This is literally violence.
• Hooters would have to hire all genders for wait staff, regardless of endowments. In order to combat the male gaze, at least 41 percent of the wait staff would be required to look like bald, bearded Reddit-schlumps in stained Star Wars T-shirts with pale-white hairy legs.
• Taco Bell would not be closed for cultural appropriation, but the menu items would be renamed in Latinx style — Chilx, Burritx, and of course the popular Tacx, which sounds like someone has a tortillx chip stuck in their throat. Likewise, McDonald’s would be reconfigured to align with its Scottish nomenclature, serving McHaggis — but no fries, as these would be a reminder of the abiding generational trauma of the potato famine that afflicted many Scots who moved to Ireland between the 14th and 17th centuries.
• Tips would be taxed at 50 percent to provide benefits for people who would like to be servers but have anxiety about dealing with people and can’t leave home.

Once these changes are made, the restaurants will become truly inclusive spaces for deconstructing the manifestations of the colonial palate, to say nothing of providing an intersectional nexus for revolutionary praxis and maybe getting your bowl of soy gruel out to your table within an hour of ordering.

Good thing we live in a democracy, where the public can react to such changes. After eight years of nationalized restaurants, a Republican ticket would win on a platform of privatizing restaurants and reducing the expected tip from 20 percent to 15 percent. After two years, alas, only half the restaurants are privatized, and the tip bill is altered in committee to lower the rate to 17 percent. This is regarded as a betrayal, and in the midterms, earnest Republican congressmen are voted out en masse. This returns control to the DSA members in Congress. They view the election as a mandate and begin efforts to renationalize restaurants. This would be liberation, you know. As Rousseau said: Man is born free, but everywhere he is in chain restaurants.