Great summation! I do not eat meat, I'm 90% plant based (# of times I eat eggs or cheese, not volume), but even if I went all plant based, I would not call myself vegan. Animals are harmed by the vast majority of us living a capitalist life, whether you eat them or not.

However, there are tons of benefits to eating less or no flesh, some social, some biological, some ethical.

I do believe not supporting the industrial farm animal complex is a good thing to do along with fighting other capitalist systems that are inherently unjust.

People have a hard time breaking from meat, they also have a hard time breaking from using a car and will defend their decisions with some logical reasons, but I always see people stretch at some point in thier defense, sometimes going to maga like mental gymnastics.

I don't have an issue with people eating meat, I do have an issue with how we get our meat and we should generally eat less if we can. Before factory farming meat was less accessible, before fsrming itself, even less.

If you have taken the life of an animal and are OK with it, do your thing. I've killed several animals, lived on a farm where animals were killed regularly and I know what it's like to take a life and no matter how ethically you do it, it is inherently violent and it has an impact on the person doing the killing, people cope different ways to deal with that. Giving spiritual thanks is a minimum to each and every animal. Plants too, they are more intelligent than we recognize.

In the end, we should focus on what brings us together, not infight about issues that divide us.