Views from the Abyss #18: Soy Jerky vs Pork Scratchings

A man goes to his local store to buy a bag of beef jerky. 

They don’t have any. 

What they do have is 7 or 8 different varieties of soy jerky, and some pork scratchings.

Now, while the soy jerky has been texturised and seasoned to try to get as close to the flavour and experience of eating real beef jerky as it’s reasonably plausible to get, the pork scratchings are just plain old pork scratchings.

Ten minutes later, he’s back at home enjoying a nice bag of pork scratchings with a beer, entirely satisfied with his decision.

Now some might argue that the product he settled on was actually the one that was the least like what he’d intended to purchase, but you can’ t intellectualise taste. Beef jerky and pork scratchings are both real products with unique properties. Soy jerky can only ever be a poor imitation of a superior product, and the harder it tries, the more obvious its failure. 

And this, arguably, is one of the reasons that Donald Trump is so popular. People have in mind certain ideas about what an ideal president should be, and none of the candidates are even close to what that is. And while most of them try to pretend that they are, Donald Trump stands alone in… just being Donald Trump. He’s not the product they ideally want, but he’s not a poor imitation either.

In the fruitless search for real beef jerky, pork scratchings trump soy jerky every time.