When Trump brought the cat and dog thing up at the debate, I thought he was cooked and that nobody in the right frame of mind, not even the average chud, would believe it, but the next day people at my work were talking about how true it is and that it needs to be stopped. It’s amazing and scary how easily people are quick to believe something without a shred of evidence.

Even my mom texted me a mugshot of a woman who was arrested for killing and trying to eat a cat. But when I replied that it happened in a completely different city and the suspect was a US born citizen with mental issues, she said that the suspect was actually Haitian, it happened in Springfield and the police are pretending it happened somewhere else to make their town look good.

I don’t even know how to respond to a take like that. Just a year or so ago she was happy to see Alex Jones getting canceled for threatening families of the kids who died at Sandy Hook. Now she’s believing and forwarding Jones-grade conspiracy shit, and she couldn’t care less about school shootings anymore. It’s depressing as fuck.

  • foxontherocks [undecided, undecided]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    Foreigners eating cats and dogs is one of the biggest and most widely believed conspiracies in like every western country and has been for the last hundreds of years. What did your grandmother think was in wanton soup?

    Nothing Trump says should surprise you. In a culture like America’s, a man like Trump is not an aberration but an over conformist. The chuds are all able to instantly able to believe Trumpian nonsense because it isn’t just Trump telling them the lie, it is their entire culture.

    • beef_curds [she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Absolutely. This hooked into preexisting urban legends. I heard this stuff over and over growing up. A pet never just runs away in the suburbs, it’s always poisoned by dark forces, captured for food, or stolen for fights.

      It’s a continuation of the maga strategy has been hooking into these types of conspiratorial trends that were previously not tapped as voting blocks. They’re called “fringe groups” or “fringe ideas” a lot but they’re not really fringe, just unorganized and untapped.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        I’m old enough to remember when no one would eat sushi because it was gross. Also distinctly remember going to a generic meditteranian place when I was a young child and having to be coaxed to try anything. The food situation in America was dire forty years back.

        • BelieveRevolt [he/him]@hexbear.net
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          3 months ago

          In one of the first episodes of the original TMNT, April O’Neil goes ”ew, gross” when Splinter offers her sushi. That’s probably even more dated than the turtles’ surfer lingo.

          (back when everyone thought sushi automatically meant raw fish too)

          • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Lol, there really was a period of a few years where the hollywood line on asian )mostly japanese) stuff went from “this character is eating sushi because they are sinister and foreign” to " this character owns a bansai tree because they are cultured and well-travelled and not afraid of the sinister foreigners, one or two of whom might even be his friends."

            • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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              3 months ago

              I’ve noticed that too. Specifically with how westerners addressed anime and also pokemon in the 90s/2000s. It was usually hit or miss but way too many times anime/video games from Japan had some weird orientalism strapped onto it when discussed….like because it was Asian there just had to be something malevolent going on.

              I even remember as a kid in kindergarten wearing my favorite Pokemon t-shirt at the time and one kid did the meme and told me “you’re so lucky, my mommy doesn’t let me watch those Chinese cartoons.”

          • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Holy shit, seeing how everyone and their mother in Hollywood at the time needed to address sushi was hilarious.

            So many sitcoms had to have an episode where the suburbanite white middle-class family spent half the episode afraid of sushi, eventually tried it, and had a lesson of “hey, maybe some of these weird brown people aren’t so scary after all!”

            I mentioned it before but one thing I think has improved tremendously in the US is the food scene. For the most part this attitude on stuff like sushi has stayed in the past. thank God.

          • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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            3 months ago

            Take it from someone who is older Gen Z. One of the few things I can say that has genuinely improved in the US, even in middle america, is the food scene. Surprisingly too in such a relatively short amount of time.

            As a kid, even risotto got me a few weird looks from other kids who just had lunchables and goldfish, but now that I’m the substitute teacher sometimes I see grilled veggies that look like someone seasoned them….and I’m stuck in some podunk suburb in a RED state.

            As recent as 2018, I’d get boomers in line in the grocery store look at my almond milk funny and actually quiz me on why I don’t like dairy. Before I knew it those questions died real fast.

            It’s a small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

    • Hexboare [they/them]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Straight up projection

      The first thing the brits did getting to North America was roast some local dogs

      Researchers uncovered the remains of six dogs of indigenous ancestry, and found that they were eaten by the settlers of the Virginia Company in Jamestown – the first permanent English settlement in North America.

    • Procapra [comrade/them, she/her]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      But there are cultures where eating dogs or cats is more socially acceptable right? Like there are plenty of videos on youtube of people going to certain areas of vietnam and eating dog. I don’t have a negative reaction to the idea or anything, if you eat animals at all, I don’t see why dogs are something special to be protected. I just want to know if this is real or some kind of propaganda.

      • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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        3 months ago

        There were, but afaik most cultures that did have gradually adopted the view that cats and dogs are not food animals. I think it’s partially due to the spread of western cultural norms around pets and partially due to folks having more disposable income for pets.

        Plus, euros have traditionally eaten cat and dog among the impoverished. Cat was euphemistically called “roof rabbit” as a dressed cat carcass wasn’t much different from a rabbit carcass. The big give away was rabbit doesn’t taste like rancid piss from the ammonia.

      • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.ml
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        3 months ago

        They do. I think some people in this thread are swinging too far the other way - yes, some cultures normalize eating cats and dogs. It is what it is, I’m not a vegan and I don’t believe there’s anything intrinsically wrong with it. A Burmese family in a trailer park near where I live got the cops called on them by the local Crazy Cat Karen for catching and eating strays a few years back.

        The problem is not one of “barbaric” foreigners needing to be kept out; it’s a failure to educate new immigrants on American customs beyond their ability to parrot jingoistic slogans, remember the names of presidents and holidays, and denounce Communism.

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    3 months ago

    Man, fuck the “Haitians eating pets” bullshit, how are we still okay as a nation with cosigning a genocide? Was I trying to reform a populace of Yankee Hitlers this whole time? Is no one thinking that the biggest perpetrators of collaboration should see the gallows before time can claim them?

    This election cycle has honestly taken me to a point of genuine hatred for Amerikans. Like… I’m talking separatist hatred. I might not have agreed with a lot of Grandmaster Jay’s nonsense, but I think I’ve finally understood the root of why he did what he did. I don’t even want to be tarred with the steadily-putrefying cracker brush anymore. My skin is Black, and my aim is self-determination for my people. White Amerikan liberals cannot be trusted to be stewards of our destinies, nor can the misleaders who worship at their low-quarters.

      • the lead thing is so real. my parents are boomers and the cognitive/emotional decay is exponential. the decline in the last 10, 5, and 1 year is remarkable.

        luckily they aren’t chuddy, but they do not seem to understand complex things anymore. meanwhile, they feel their mental faculties and critical analysis skills are at their peak and that they should absolutely be in charge of things and still be allowed to drive.

        when it’s pointed out, with evidence, that they don’t seem to have that capacity anymore and that they’re just repeating things they saw on their favorite TV shows as facts, emotional disregulation quickly manifests.

        personally, I’ve been planning my sunset years since I was 30, around the central organizing concepts that I will have a very meager fixed income, increasingly limited mobility beyond shuffling around, and be kind of slow upstairs. none of those things precludes happiness and satisfaction.

        but so many boomers are on some other kind of shit where they gotta stunt on their cohort, travel all over, drive nice new cars, and have big homes (that they can’t maintain). it looks exhausting and so expensive.

  • SorosFootSoldier [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    My rebuttal to the fucking nerds that think literally everything is ruZZian disinformation is, look at the americans willing to eat that shit up. They love it! Who gives a fuck if Putin himself dreamed up the propaganda, there’s a huge audience of racist boomers in america willing to spread it around. It says more about us than it does about fucking Russia.

    Yes I know this conspiracy came from Trump but I still had this on my mind.

  • nothx [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    The school shootings are perpetrated by whites. Meanwhile the immigrants being targeted by this rhetoric are not white.

    It’s that simple.

  • ChairmanSpongebob [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    I watched the incredulous dipshit go to Springfield to interview people- and I think his purpose was to encourage the cat-eating story. In doing so, every Haitian he interviewed was reasonable “I’m only hear to work hard and build a good life” and they ALL laughed when asked about the cat thing- “never heard of this, that’s ridiculous”.

    ALL of the white people he interviewed (that he showcased anyway) were basically protagonists from the Turner Diaries. ALL of them reinforcing the cat-eating narrative. Some of the most repellent examples of the Ohio man on display there. ALL of them saying “yeah we had more cats around until the Haitians got here- then they started disappearing”.

    Since, given an undeserving degree of generosity, it’s at the very least anecdotal bullshit- I choose to believe that IF cats are disappearing from the streets, I’m thinking maybe Haitians are taking cats off the streets as pets and giving them good homes instead. Which is a much more sane explanation.

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    School shootings are normalized. No one really cares anymore. It’s quite literally old news - the media has been mining it for fear and outrage for 25 years with nothing changing.

    The anti-Haitian racism thing is tied to current ongoing political drama, there’s novelty, there’s silliness to it (“oh i don’t really believe that i’m just owning the libs” shit). It gives lmayo an excuse to be turbo racist, an " adult" with authority said it.

    Idk, americans are fucking bizarre.

  • anarchoilluminati [comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    Have you never met a White USian?

    There’s nothing in the world they love more than their pets, certainly love their dogs more than other humans. They provide a better living standard for their pets than they would ever permit States to provide for workers. And there’s nothing they fear and hate more than Black people. But make them Black people who also happen to be immigrants, another choice group to hate, with ambiguous connections to voodoo, accuse them of eating beloved pets, and you got yourself some predictable White suburbanite outrage.

  • DragonBallZinn [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    CHUDs are good minions. They’re able to suspend their disbelief in something to simply go along with it if it is convenient to believe and believing it is no different to them than a soldier just following orders.

    EDIT: disregard what I said about calling chuds “sheeple”.

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]@hexbear.net
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      3 months ago

      Nah, I was around for the original release of sheeple. Never caught on, always made you sound like a cospiracy dork and a huge asshole.

      Chud works because it’s an absurd insult - you live underground and eat people. Sheeple is too grounded and there’s an actual potential action people could take to beat the allegation.

  • FunkyStuff [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    3 months ago

    The real has become so utterly hopeless that conjuring up narratives of good against evil is the only way for many people to cope.