I did post about this a little on Facebook, but I want to get into it more.
It's not just about the lies, but the reactions to the lies. There will certainly be more.
You probably know that there were claims of Haitian immigrants eating pets in Springfield, Ohio, and that Trump referenced it during the recent debate.
You may also know that it was a lie.
https://www.newsweek.com/springfield-woman-erika-lee-haitians-eating-pets-rumor-speaks-out-1953851
The Newsweek article details that. It follows the traditional path of urban legends. Someone says it happened to their friend, but when you track that down, no, the friend says it was someone they knew, and descending levels produce no credible source.
What may be less known is that economically depressed Springfield has started recovering. This includes manufacturing jobs, many of which are staffed by Haitian immigrants. Immigration does tend to improve the economy, but increased population also increases rent.
It is not unusual for people to blame immigrants for taking their jobs, but an unlicensed immigrant hit a school bus, killing an 11-year old boy. From that time, there has been more bad feelings about and organization against the immigrants. That was the seedbed for the lies about the pets. The boy's father recently spoke against this:
Then, of course, you get bomb threats and parents keeping their children home from school, and apparently the KKK recruiting in Springfield and calling for mass deportation.
Well, I should clarify the timeline there. The Klan recruiting is older, but appears to coincide with the beginnings of the anti-immigrant furor. The bomb threats are new, associated with the debate and the push back.
I have seen church members swearing that the stories are true, but JD Vance -- who spread the stories -- now admits that they are false. He justifies it as a way to draw attention to human suffering.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/sep/15/jd-vance-lies-haitian-immigrants
Speaking honestly about true suffering might do something good; these lies are actually creating suffering. To that I can only add that I doubt that Vance has any interest in doing good, based on his past record and associates.
(I feel such a strong impulse to use the word "douchebag" here. Weird.)
That is all just prelude anyway. What I really want to write about is this phase in between, when people who knew the lies were lies had fun with the ridiculousness of the lies. They marked their pets safe and shared pictures of Santa's Little Helper from The Simpsons, and showed photos of pets escaping or being hugged.
I kept getting gradually more irritated with it. I understand no harm was meant, but it is on the path to the bomb threats, not that I knew that was specifically what would happen.
People have been referencing all of the anti-Mexican speech during Trump's first run, and the El Paso shooting.
https://x.com/dk_stephan/status/1835063146710503566
No, not everyone lashes out with a gun, but it happens on a regular basis, and it tends to happen against marginalized groups.
Other names may be coming to mind. You may be thinking of Uvalde, or the Tree of Life synagogue or Mother Emanuel AME or Buffalo. If it were getting more publicity, you might be thinking about the Black men who are ending up hung from trees and being ruled suicides, which doesn't seem right.
Is the intent of the jokes to make fun of Trump being stupid? Definitely.
There are also a lot of angry people out there. Some of them might get angrier the more people make it a joke.
Now I am going to give an example of my humor:
Our very exclusive group is Cat Ladies Named Harris for Harris.
That is riffing on something stupid said by Vance.
It relates to marginalization, in that in many ways we are still subject to patriarchy, meaning not only that women earn less, are more objectified, and have their right violated more frequently, but also that there is a stigma against unmarried women left not chosen by a man.
It also comes from a place of privilege. I am a woman, but I am white, we own a home, and we have a larger community that rejects the stigma on being unmarried. (That is not our church community, but there is some crossover.)
I see examples of men hurting and disrespecting women daily, so I am aware of that, but I am largely shielded from it.
Mostly, I applied that label to myself, subverting it. If someone else who truly thought less of me applied it, that could feel different.
There are definitely people out there who don't think I should be able to vote (though more for being a woman than for being unmarried; I just deserve to be unmarried because I am fat).
I may be thinking about this more because I am doing some reading on internet usage by George Takei. While he understood what was harmful about making tsunami jokes in 2011, he will often defend other jokes as just being good fun, focusing on the necessity of free speech and humor.
Things can be important that are not directly connected to you. Perhaps that is because we truly are all connected.
I guess the main thing I want to encourage is viewing the bigger picture.
If people are spreading hate against Haitian people, it doesn't matter whether it is ridiculous, it is still hate and hate still has a hungry audience.
It would be nice if humor could dilute that hate, but I have no reason to believe that it works.
Therefore, the most important thing is to refute it.
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