Abby Zimet: OMG Now They’re Coming For Our Cats and Chairs and Ducks

Sheesh. The Crazy Train just keeps clattering on. After a week of the mad Blowhard-In-Chief blithering he’ll put everyone he doesn’t like in jail forever and there will be conquest of the “aliens” and child care is child care plus tariffs and Leon aka Elmo aka Elon will solve it, we’ve evidently reached the demented part of the campaign where we accuse dark-skinned immigrants of  killing and eating our pets. Mary mother of God, save us (and our pets).

It should have been clear how daft things were getting when Dick Darth Cheney, long the greatest threat to our republic, declared Trump the greatest threat to our republic, though Sarah Palin is still voting for him. Still, he seems ever more untethered from reality, with his supporters going right down the rabbit hole with him. See Sen. Ron Johnson rave about a Depression “well-planned” by the fat cats of the world – “It’s just in my bones” – and who knows how many coups from Nixon on orchestrated by the feds: “There’s a reason you call it the deep state. It’s very deep.” Trump, having lost what was left of his mind, spent last week threatening to punish Dems who did all that “rampant cheating and skullduggery” in the election with “long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” also – again! – “at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”

He also told economists he’d get NATO countries to pay for our child care – “child care is child care” – which isn’t really as expensive as everyone who needs it says it is “compared to the kind of numbers we’ll be taking in…Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody – we had Sen. Marco Rubio – and my daughter Ivanka”……And besides don’t forget about “illegal allll…iens pouring in from countries that nobody ever heard the name of that country, those countries….numbers (again!) that we’ve never seen before, and they’re giving them chairs.” Then he went to a hearing about his $90 million rape of Jean Carroll who he’s never met, and spent an hour raging against the over two dozen women who’ve also accused him of sexual assault, especially the one on the plane he was making out with but c’mon, for Mr. Art of the Deal she definitely “would not have been the chosen one.”

Moving on to his beloved “American carnage,” the small man who often imagined siccing death squads on his enemies vowed swift vengeance on them all, especially the swarthy ones. Foreseeing “a bloody story,” he promised, “As soon as I’m back in the White House, the conquest will and the great liberation of America will begin…We will take back every single square inch of territory that has been invaded by these migrant gangs.” Especially in Springfield, Ohio, population 58,000, which has become a “giant cesspool of voodoo and animal carcasses” being devoured by some – good people on both sides – of up to 20,000 Haitian immigrants who’ve surged there to work, pay taxes and eat people’s cats and other pets. Howls Georgia Rep. Mike Collins, too upset to tend to the school shooting in his district, “They’re in the park. Grabbing up ducks. By they (sic) neck. And eatin ’em.” 

To backtrack: The story of Springfield residents “left in terror as migrants overtake the once-quiet city,” kill their cats, cook ’em with fava beans, go into parks and kill ducks, “eating them right in front of people” came from….Homer Simpson? And, just as reliably, a Facebook post by someone who claimed “their neighbor’s daughter’s friend” lost her cat and found it hanging from a tree branch at a Haitian neighbor’s home being prepped to be carved up to be eaten. (Echoes of The Crucible.) In response to this spreading-like-rabid-wildfire tale, the Springfield Police issued a statement that plainly said they have “received no reports related to pets being stolen and eaten.” The now-viral post, they added, “did not cite any first-hand knowledge of any incident.” Still, who needs facts? Not the dotty bigots inhaling an alternative reality obsessed with guns, commies, dark skin, women’s reproductive organs and cats.

And not “racist piece of shit” J.D. Vance. Having solved child-care – grandparents should step up – and unearthed the big scandal of Tim Walz‘ life – his brothers say as a kid he got car sick – he picked up the tawdry cat-eating tale and ran with it. Months ago, he bragged, “I warned about Haitian illegal immigrants causing chaos,” though many are legal. “You’re having these types of crimes where people can’t even live a normal life,” he said, citing “pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn’t be in this country” – the cat, “dogs, ducks, geese. Please keep a close eye on these animals.” He presumably meant four-footed, but shady bipeds chimed in. Charlie Kirk called a duck pond “picked clean” another “Biden gift.” Elon, aka Leon to Trump: “Apparently people’s pet cats are being eaten.” When Trump was president, blared Gym Jordan, “The border was secure (and) illegal aliens weren’t eating your pets.” 

Then of course the grifter, smelling screamingly racist grift, stepped in. With the value of his media company plummeting almost 75%, an apocalyptic, cat-kabob-themed fundraising letter quickly went out from the narcissistic loser who – wanna bet? – never had a pet in his life. “Kamala Migrants Ravage Ohio City – And It’s Coming to Your City Next,” it screeched. The influx of 20,000 migrants “dumped in the city unvetted via one of the Harris-Biden administration’s unilateral mass relocation schemes” drained social services and sparked a housing crisis, it said. “Residents have become guests in their own homes. A 45-year resident and her elderly husband have been driven from their home by migrants squatting on their property: “I have men that cannot speak English in my front yard screaming at me, throwing mattresses … I weigh 95 pounds. I couldn’t defend myself if I had to.” 

“Now, Migrants have reportedly been caught ‘decapitating ducks’ and hunting geese and other livestock in public parks – and even kidnapping residents’ pets — then eating them,” it raved. “It’s all coming to your city if Kamala Harris is elected in November.” Fear, hate, division, lunatic dreams of carnage – it’s so relentlessly, risibly-except-for-the-racism all they’ve got. And it keeps getting weirder, moving from Hannibal Lecter, sinister cannibal eating white people, to (presumably brown) migrants eating (white?) pets. Savagery on all sides. Ron Filipkowski suggests a sensible way forward these next few fraught weeks, democracy in the balance. “If you had a migrant eat your pet, vote for Trump,” he wrote. “Everyone else vote for Harris.” Also hide your goldfish.

Abby Zimet has written CD’s Further column since 2008. A longtime, award-winning journalist, she moved to the Maine woods in the early 70s, where she spent a dozen years building a house, hauling water and writing before moving to Portland. Having come of political age during the Vietnam War, she has long been involved in women’s, labor, anti-war, social justice and refugee rights issues. 

First published in Common Dreams. Licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.