“I heard they like, totally eat dogs over there.”

“Yeah dude, they totally do.”

Me and the Dalai Lama – we know people are more alike than they are different. Meanwhile, billions of unrepentant yokels gather scraps of foreign trivia, the makings for their shabby little flags. The flags’ mottos are variations on a theme – “The sports-team of my hometown is superior to yours, because it is my hometown.” “My country rules, otherwise why would I have been born here?” “Your culture is bizarre, because I am used to mine.”

Dogs are loyal, frequently cute, and delicious when prepared properly. And while a growing Chinese upper class takes to pure-bred doggy ownership, endless millions are lucky to eat meat more than once a month, if at all.

But that doesn’t stop the well-meaning relativists. No rational argument does, although I’ll give it a brief shot. If and when a dog-meat-abstainer stops being flabbergasted long enough to speak coherently, she says something like, “Dogs are intelligent.” Compared to cheerleaders and certain American presidents, perhaps. But if intelligence is the criteria by which you pick your protein intake, put down that pork chop. Pigs come in a close fourth, right after dolphins, on the scale of animal intelligence.

“Killing dogs for food is cruel.” No argument there. The free dictionary defines cruel as “disposed to inflict pain and/or suffering”. By that definition, America’s unspeakably vast pig, cow, and chicken gulags eclipse the dog-as-food industry, to say nothing of China’s, and the rest of the world’s. Go ahead and click here if you doubt it, but you don’t need to, do you? You know of the abattoirs, the billions of death squeals and squawks uttered after a brief living hell. But you choose not to dwell on it. It might interfere with your enjoyment of that hormone and antibiotic-soaked abomination burger.

“Doggies are so cute,” as we get closer to the heart of the self-delusion. We can’t blame the identification with Fido on Hollywood. For every Lassie there’s a Wilbur. Cows are only cute when they’re stuffed animals. But I bet Momma Cow thinks her future veal piccata is the cutest thing she’s ever seen. And I don’t think even the blondest zoology major at UC San Diego would admit that she thinks animals that aren’t cute by human standards deserve to die miserable deaths, while pandas and puppies don’t.

Am I a vegetarian? Hardly. Not saying it’s a bad idea, ideally. But ideally we wouldn’t have to pay for health care, either. Meat-eating’s a cruel fact of life, one of thousands, like the fact that I’m going to have doggie hotpot tomorrow night. Hey, it helps thicken my blood for winter.

Got a problem with my hotpot? That’s cool. My problem’s with hypocrisy, because it’s the enemy of reason, and reason is responsible for everything that makes life as a human more worthwhile than life as a dog. So until PETA protesters stop showing up to rallies wearing leather jackets, and cute-connoisseurs subsist on pulse and locusts, I’ll be here making e-noise. And eating dogs. Here Rover! Here boy! Who’s a delicious doggy? You are! Yes you are!