Here we go again...

One of my favorite UF professors, Robert Lawless, passed away in 2012. He had written a book titled Haiti's Bad Press, which covered many of the ways the US has mistreated Haiti since the people there won their independence in 1804. So many ways. And now, a new one. US right-wing racist dipshits have spread a "rumor" that Haitian "illegal" immigrants in Springfield, Ohio are seizing pet cats and dogs and eating them.

First, these immigrants are not "illegal." Second, I know a little about Haiti, much of it from Prof Lawless, and I've never heard of any tradition of people there eating cats or dogs.* This is just another wave of bad press, much of which originated in the wave of sensationalist and inaccurate horror films featuring "voodoo" and "witchcraft" starting in the early 20th century.

The real problem and danger is that Trump and his allies like Vance and Loomer keep doubling down on the story and are setting up a scenario where people are going to get hurt. Like Jan 6. Already schools have had to close and Haitians are being threatened by Trump's witless followers.

It makes me sick.

(*Dr. Lawless did tell us about his being invited to a dog cookout in the forest by men of a tribe of former headhunters in the Philippines, but that was not this.  Link to Picnic)