Cats and Dogs

It is a challenge to keep up with all the lies Donald Trump and his sidekick J.D. Vance have been promoting. Some of them especially stand out - both for their absurdity and for their potential for danger to real innocent people. One such is the bizarre claim that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH, are eating people's pets. On its face, of course, the claim is absurd, almost comic - except for the fact that it is so dangerous. It is, in a sense, a contemporary American version of the classic anti-semitic "Blood Libel." 

The so-called "Blood Libel" was an antisemitic canard, which falsely accused Jews of murdering Christians (typically Christian children) in order to use their blood in the supposed performance of certain religious rituals. In modern America, where pets are often treated as children, the lie that Haitian immigrants, who are here in the U.S. completely legally and have settled in Springfield because there were jobs there, have been stealing and eating people's pets, performs an analogously perverse and dangerous function of dehumanizing and "othering" a group of people, whose only actual distinction is being originally from a different country.

The immediately primary problem associated with such lies is the danger its victims may find themselves in, as a result of inflamed public opinion at the most fanatic extremes. Obviously the safety of innocent Haitian immigrants in Springfield needs to be prioritized. Above and beyond all that, however, there is the broader and longer term problem of the complete coarsening of our culture. We have become a nation of enemies to one another, motivated more by hatred and grievance than anything else. Whatever else happens, however this election ends, we will long be struggling as a nation with the damage we have done to ourselves as a viable human community.