You know what sucks as well? Taking too many painkillers against headaches actually causes headaches. Horrible ones at that. Glad to read that you’re feeling better, but that’s a real trap many people out there are stuck in.

Who is going to pull the trigger? Point to the opposition leader willing and able to try and dismantle a party with this many active supporters.

Read the article. It’s already happening.

Which are used to target unpopular fringe groups not regional majorities.

You don’t seem to know a lot about the German constitution. The opposite is true. Unppular fringe groups are not banned because they are not actually a danger to democracy, as long as government positions are not in reach for them. That’s exactly how the german federal constitutional court has argued in the past. Successful bans ever only targeted actually successful parties.

The core mechanism of democracy is to abolish political organizations wholesale?

The core mechanism of democracy is to protect itself, and first and foremost that means protecting itself from facism. A political organisation that’s threatening democracy should obviously not be allowed, so it will be banned.

They won’t, in no small part because the AfD has enough seats to block the attempt.

They cannot block a decision of the federal constitutional court, don’t be ridiculous. Germany has measures in place exactly for this scenario, and they are about to be enforced. They cannot be vetoed away, it’s a legal matter.

Can you ban a party that’s got a plurality of seats in the Parliament? Or will they be the ones banning you?

Of course. And it’s nonsensical to claim we cannot ban them, while worrying they could ban us. We can and we should, based on what you yourself wrote:

If you pass a law but never enforce it, the law does nothing.

We have laws against undemocratic parties, so we should enforce them.

I mean, by all means, feel free to give it a shot. But it seems like you’re asking an elected government to do a thing it isn’t designed to do.

But it is designed to do exactly that. That’s like a core mechanism of our democracy.

The only way to argue we shouldn’t ban the AFD is if you claim that they somehow should be exempt from our mechanisms against fascism. They were enforced before, they will be enforced again. And the AFD fits the bill in every way.

That rather speaks for banning the AfD though. We have a law for banning fascist parties, so we should enforce it, or it truly would mean nothing.

Some of us are convinced this measure does nothing

Nothing? How can it do nothing? You could argue that it doesn’t do enough or not the right things, but if nothing else banning the party would obviously keep them out of the government at least for the next few years.

Killing the head of a terrorist organization won’t help if you don’t fix the underlying issues.

And yet we don’t allow terrorist organizations to campaign for office, officially and supported by tax money, in our societies.

banning it won’t make the people who vote for it and run it any less, well, fascist.

Correct. But it’s no supposed to do that. Banning a fascist party doesn’t solve every problem of a divided society, but it prevents the worst (a fascist party seizing power) and gives us time (and the chance!) to solve some of the others.

There’s basically no other option. Either a society has effective rules against fascism in place or it will stand idly by while being undermined. And if it has these effective rules, it must abide by them. ‘Fascists should not be allowed to rule the country’ seems to be a reasonable lower limit.

Don’t know what’s there to be so smug about. “Oh you would rather ban them in a constitutional process than to wait for them to seize power and fight a bloody civil war, or worse?” Yes please! I hope we all much prefer the first option.

That’s bullshit and you know it, otherwise you would have at least attempted to back up that claim.

A very short internet research attempt shows: Synthetic taurine is considered efficacious for use in cat, dog and carnivorous fish.

we’re already doing that, and it doesn’t work.

We absolutely do, taurine is in basically every commercially available cat food out there. Chances are you are already feeding your cat synthetic taurine.

I feed my cats the food they need to survive, fortunately.

So do I, I’m just really annoyed at the intellectually dishonesty at play here. The position you’re arguing in favor of is almost impossible to verify. Can you prove that is is impossible to create a nutritionally complete vegan cat food? No, obviously you can’t. Even if every single brand currently available would be proven to be insufficient (which I seriously doubt) it’d still be a wild claim that it couldn’t be done. Does that stop you from harshly judging everyone with a different opinion? For some reason, no.

Feel free to correct me if you do have a reliable source that explains why it’s impossible to supplement vegan cat food while being perfectly fine for conventional ones.

Then look for a recent study yourself. I certainly won’t waste my time, since I hardly believe you would chance your mind even with the most robust data available. You’ve made up your mind.

There’s no reason why supplementation shouldn’t be possible. After all we’re already doing that. Obviously we can test for it (since so many people in this comment claimed that vegan brands were tested and found to be insufficient), so nothing stops us from putting taurine into the cat food to the point where it reaches the required amounts. It’s that simple. If you need to stay offended than for all means keep going. Just know that you behave just like the vegans you’re so annoyed about, and it’s showing.

You don’t need to kill a cow or a chicken to get either.

You kinda do though, at least if you’re purchasing those products. Male chickens and calves definitely have to be killed to sustain those industries.

Taurine should be the easiest to supplement, since it’s already widely synthesized to supplement traditional pet food with. Three decades old studies really shouldn’t be the only thing we’re looking at before we’re going at each others necks about something.

It’s this shitting on new ideas because someone feels like a moral superior I’m tired of.

And ironically this is exactly what vegans are often blamed for btw. People turn off their brain, get all emotional, and feel justified on hating someone for muder, abuse, and torture (all claims from this very comment section) without the slightest bit of nuance. I just searched for “vegan cat food nutrition study” and very randomly picked the first search result, which brought me to a study from 2023 showing that cats fed a vegan diet were overall even healthier. So at the very least we have to agree that this isn’t as clear cut as many here claim with utmost confidence.

I’ve seen this exact argument before and it was just as heated. Ironically the same people getting annoyed at vegans for being emotional and judgemental are incredibly fast to scream abuse and murder when it comes to cat food.

What should stop a company from supplementing the right amount of all the nutrients listed? The article simply claims it’s not nutritionally complete, but that would only be an argument against the brands currently available and tested, not against the idea in principle.

So they should simply start producing one that is. Problem solved. No law of nature prevents us from supplementing the right amount of taurine and b12, so there is no reason to be irrational about it.

Wtf is happening in the comments. Why are people getting so insane over this topic over and over again? If there’s cat food out there that’s nutritional complete, cats like it, and it happens to be plant based - so what? The only two reasons to object are if someone is 100% convinced such a product doesn’t and cannot exist or if they’re entirely ideological about it. And if we have to apply the naturalistic fallacy that only the natural way can be morally okay, why of all things argue about pet food? I really, really don’t get it why people get so intensely emotional about it.

Well now I’m wondering if you ever had an actual conversation with a vegan, because they actually have good reasons for this. A vegan diet is simply the most consequential idea if you want to minimize the necessity for animals to die, at the very least (even if we ignore the various ways of exploitation) because male chickens and calves obviously have to be killed in order for these industries to function.

Ha, fair enough. But if you want to save calories, grabbing the non alcoholic alternative is actually a decent choice. (And if you want to get drunk on the least calories possible, pure gin/vodka/schnaps/white rum are your best options. Beer is reeeally energy dense.)