Psst… it’s mostly white people making jokes about eating pets.
I know you’re not some irredeemable bigot but ask yourself if you’d be laughing about this debate deceit the same way if the accused immigrants were Irish or Italian. Be honest, I’m woke enough to realize prejudices can be found in every race, sex, and dogma.
This hoser from a mining town has and will continue to dig the comedy in mistakes, oddities, foolishness, and surprise of others because I’m able to see myself in these misadventures. I too can be an incredible idiot but ain’t dumb enough to be duped by a confidently growing humour punching down, targeting society’s outcasts to deliver laughter that’s AT people instead of WITH folks. This helps fabricate a convenient foe, making every fault in life about them instead of us; absolving any personal responsibility in a crooked game that often rewards cruelty. Divide and control is a well worn page from the owners’ playbook.
Dehumanization, a very real and nefarious part of the system we live under that’s threatening to go über. In recent right-wing circles, photos and videos are circulating of a black man skinning a small animal on a city street that’s being classified as an immigrant preparing to eat a cat in Europe.
It could be true. Cats and dogs are eaten by humans as if they were any other beast which is a very sad reality on this planet.
I find it sick and disturbing but still eat meat.
Like it or not, we’ve all consumed plenty of insect parts including their eggs and larvae in modern farm/food manufacturing. We’re definitely dining better than our early ancestors who scooped up and chewed creepy crawlers in a desire to see another sunrise. Lobsters are bugs of the sea crawling on the ocean floor yet are considered a high class meal unless you’re an old timer from Newfoundland or Abraham Jah Rasta.
Many of us boast about pigging out on bacon or touring ribfests while digesting intelligent, sentient mammals who have human-like eyes and complexion; innocent beings given life sentences in a sunless industrial nightmare. It’s likely you have relatives who caught, skinned, cooked, and ate wild rodents during the Great Depression and I’m not just talking about cute bunny rabbits. There are numerous international stories where lost and isolated survivors of disaster resort to cannibalism instead of starving to death.
Desperate people do desperate things. It’s not due to their ethnicity or creed. It’s about having the means while being struck by misfortunes. Opportunities and choices get harder the less there are. It can get ugly.
You can get ugly.
I can get ugly.
Any stark behavioural differences between refugees from violent lands and landowners in the Hamptons is not from the colour of their skin, DNA, or Creator. It’s the war economy, stupid. Blessing profits while damning souls.
Like all of Earth’s creatures we have to inhale to survive as an invented system is making it increasingly difficult to eat well and breathe. Neoliberalism was unleashed in the Global South during the 70’s and is now starting to bite down hard on the struggling classes of the West.
It is simply not true that immigrants from Haiti are stealing and eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Zero evidence. A wicked ruse that will echo in schoolyards for generations. A fairy tale like Jews stealing and drinking the blood of babies in 1930’s Berlin. (Hrm… fascist fable could have sprung from an understandable aversion to infant circumcisions before being manipulated and magnified by a seething far-right minority who became rich and powerful dictators eliminating mouthy Socialists like me along with other Undesirables).
“The lack of public opposition to the persecution of certain German citizens allowed the Nazis to continually escalate their attacks on these groups.”
-Steve Hochstadt
The Nazi Attack on Jews and Other Undesirables in the Third Reich, 1933–1938
“The Holocaust did not begin immediately when the Nazis took power in Germany in 1933. During its first five years, the Nazi government disposed of all political rivals, militarized the state and economy, prepared for wars of aggression, and employed a variety of strategies to eliminate Jews from German life. Jews were only one target of the Nazis in power. Socialists and Jehovah’s Witnesses were persecuted, arrested, and killed as political challengers; homosexuals, Gypsies, and the handicapped were attacked as racial inferiors and threats to the purity of Aryan blood. The documents in this section show some of these strategies and trace the rapid isolation of various social groups from their German neighbors. The lack of public opposition to the persecution of certain German citizens allowed the Nazis to continually escalate their attacks on these groups.”
History hiccups. Globalists, immigrants, transexuals, gays, liberals, unpatriotic artists, lying press, pure bloods. Remember, remember on the Fifth of November the Pope believes evil is the only choice voters have in the States according to his understanding of the Bible. Francis, in his holiness, basically declared USA’s election decision is between saving an unborn baby or aiding a desperate stranger to the land. Oh Lord, please help me choose between new & full of promise or old & full of problems.
No matter what the voters say the politicians, lobbyists, and corporations will have their day until the Sixth Mass Extinction wave catches us all, wiping out empires.
Despite 400 or so years of cold-hearted bloodshed and bigotry down south, this Canadian loves and respects a great deal about the dreams and achievements of America. A mosquito infested bush colony that was saved by the Indigenous to grow into an extraordinary nation leading the world in liberties and possibilities for the individual as well as groups working together. The human race has benefitted on many levels from the ingenuity and spirit of the United States people. It could be far worse. And will be.
After the Third Reich fell American Imperialism rose. Democrats and Republicans have been pushing neoliberalism since Nixon got the murderball rolling. Carter’s noble faith eased the trajectory a little while Reagan cocained it. Every Prez since has kept their nose to the money-making meatgrinder. Countless lives have been aborted worldwide by yankee weaponry and trickery for the sake of freedom to reap. I pray to never ignore or empower further devilry when it comes knocking.
Kamala and company promise to stay the course on a dead-end destination. Capitalism and petroleum power are both running out of juice. Finite forces bound to collapse, disappearing from a fragile, fierce biosphere and civilization. The math don’t lie.
The Make Up Man + Stephen Miller + Laura Loomer + Proud Boys + Tucker and the Mainstreamers + QAnon × Project 2025 = God knows what
As do you.
Mark Kirkwood Callingham is a semi-retired dad with Haitian family and works full-time for a faith-based homeless shelter in downtown Ottawa. He’s also the founder of Money With Morals offering a challenging but practical blueprint for the Democratically Intelligent co-creation of a publicly owned global currency system with a code of ethics that could help improve everything that’s monetary in nature.
