Intellectual dishonesty and false virtue signaling

It amazes me how people can make up such ridiculous arguments as “plants got feelings” or something similar when arguing online when it comes to the morality of animal agriculture or veganism.

I recently posted a systematic review that shows that slaughterhouse workers suffer from mental health issues that can lead to bad and anti-social behavior. The point I was trying to make is that how can we ask people in our community to traumatize themselves and set themselves up for mental health issues and possibly bad and anti-social behavior when there is a better way to live.

Now, making the argument about “plants having feelings” or “plants having lives that they care about” is absolutely ridiculous because it comes from a place of pure intellectual dishonesty and deflection.

First of all, no person on earth gets mental issues and bad anti-social behavior because of the harvesting of plants and/or cutting them up into pieces. I challenge anyone to show conclusive evidence of this and I honestly do not believe the people making the argument actually believes this.
Secondly, the only reason I can think of why this argument comes up is due to a bad attempt to show that vegans are not caring while at the same time portraying themselves as more caring. The problem of course is that these same people couldn’t care less about plants if they were truly honest with themselves. I mean, it’s not like they would get traumatized and possibly become violent because they had to mow the lawn, step on grass or buy flowers for their partner.
Thirdly, anyone with common sense and some basic math can see that more plants are being killed when consuming animals because we would have to feed the chickens, the cows, and the pigs more plants than we would feed ourselves directly. There are numerous studies that highlight this for anyone who truly cares.
Fourthly, this idea that “plants have feelings” relies a lot, if not solely, on the “lie detector” technology, the same technology that has been totally refuted because its results are not consistent where you can easily fool the technology. Nobody seems to be asking the questions: are the interpretations done by Cleve Backster et al. correct?, are the experiments set up properly? Or is it even scientifically possible to determine if plants have feelings with the use of the technology? At this point in time, much of “science” is being questioned because most of what is being published is false, yet people seem to swallow this hypothesis hook, line, and sinker without any critical thought.
Last but not least, the argument made in the context of mental health and bad anti-social behavior as a result of working in slaughterhouses suggests some people, by their false virtue signaling, seem to care more about plants than human lives.

What has become increasingly clear for me throughout the years of seeing this ridiculous argument is that some people are determined to remain ignorant of the observed and documented trauma that we not only inflict upon innocent animals for no good reason, but also ignorant of the trauma that we inflict upon our fellow human beings just to get a piece of flesh on our dinner table. Can we please be more intellectually honest here and stop arguing from a place of ignorance?