Before getting to the nub of today’s essay, let’s recall together some past CNN post-debate polling. Remember Biden’s 60-28 win in his first 2020 debate against Trump? Trump went on to win 75 million votes, the largest number of votes by presidential aspirant (I don’t believe Biden won 81 million votes). How about Clinton’s 62-27 win over Trump in the first debate of 2016? Clinton lost to Trump. Or Mitt Romney’s 67-25 win over then-President Barack Obama in the first debate of 2012? Romney lost to Obama. The CNN poll showed Harris winning the debate 63 percent to 37 percent among debate-watchers.
The media is attempting to demoralize Trump voters by pushing the recent poll, but history tells us that winning a debate is not winning an election. The Washington Post reports that, despite her win, debate-watchers still preferred Trump by 20 points on the economy (55-35) and 23 points on immigration (56-33). “Those are actually bigger margins than he usually racks up on these issues,” the Post noted, “so it seems possible Trump’s attacks on the Biden administration’s record on these issues landed with some effect.” So Trump supporters should not let the media blitz get them down.
Now, about this “rumor” of Haitians eating cats in Springfield, Ohio (which triggered an avalanche of hilarious cat memes, for which I am grateful), the media is being disingenuous by declaring the matter “debunked.” (So what’s new?) Animal sacrifice is core a part of Haitian Vodou tradition and plays a significant role in its rituals. In Vodou, animal sacrifice is not merely about offering animals to the spirits; it is a sacred act that reflects the deep relationship between humans, the natural order, and the spirit world. The practice is rooted in the belief that blood contains life force or spiritual energy, which helps to feed and strengthen the loa (spirits) during ceremonies.
One purpose of animal sacrifices is to honor the loa and seek their assistance, there are also practices within Vodou that involve curses or protective magic. These are typically done with the intent of defending oneself or the community. Various indigenous or traditional African religions involve animal sacrifice in their rituals; the origins of Vodou lie in the fusion of West and Central African spiritual traditions with the Catholicism imposed by French colonial rulers, forming a syncretic belief system that allows for a complex relationship between the divine, humanity, and the natural world. In this respect (and others) it’s similar to Santería, another AfroCaribbean syncretic religion that has found its way into the United States.
I shared the above tweet on Facebook and was asked about what I knew about animals in Ohio. I presume the question concerned Springfield, and I confessed that I haven’t been there. I suggested he ask Shaun MaQuire about it since it is his post. However, I know that dozens of citizens in Springfield are reporting that animals are missing and that the police know about it. I also know a bit about animals in South Florida. I know that Haitians eat them there and use them to put curses on people. At least they did this back in the 1980s. They put a curse on me and my business partner in Coral Cables. Twice. It was some sort of foul (I presume a chicken). Beheaded, drained of blood, hanging upside down from a tree. (I am not ruling out practitioners of Santería here.)
On August 12, NPR ran an exercise in prebunking on its All Things Considered program, “How Springfield, Ohio, took center stage in the election immigration debate.” The opportunity was a speech JD Vance had given on July 10 at the National Conservativism Conference, in which the Vice Presidential candidate had urged the audience to “go to Springfield, Ohio.” “I could not believe it when I first heard about it,” Vance said. “Ask the people there, whether they have been enriched by 20,000 newcomers in four years.” (For more on prebunking, see The Russia Fake News Narrative.)
The media hasn’t bothered to ask the people there—at least not the ones who are complaining—about it. Instead they have sought out the statements of city officials. “I think it’s sad that some people are using this as an opportunity to spread hate or spread fear,” says Officer Jason Via, Deputy Director of Public Safety and Operations, Springfield. “We get these reports ’the Haitians are killing ducks in a lot of our parks’ or ’the Haitians are eating vegetables right out of the aisle at the grocery store.’ And we haven’t really seen any of that. It’s really frustrating. As a community, it’s not helpful as we try to move forward,” Via says.
People are culture-bearers. They bring their culture with them. Animal sacrifice is a part of Vodou tradition and plays a significant role in its rituals. This is not a conspiracy. It’s anthropology. It would be surprising that the people who are reporting the killing and eating of various animals in Springfield were wrong. Their descriptions are accurate with what I know about Haitian gustatory and religious practices. I presume these residents aren’t experts. The association of Haitians and the killing of cats goes back decades, so maybe the retelling of history has come to substitute for direct observation. We’ll see. But the claims are plausible, and I won’t dismiss them out of hand. And I certainly won’t believe the media. After all, Hunter Biden’s laptop was a hoax.
I understand why the government would lie—they have a mass immigration project they need to keep going. I understand why the corporate media isn’t doing any investigatory journalism to find out what’s happening (instead giving the city manager Bryan Heck a call and taking his word for it—the same city manager who shills for the military-industrial complex in the video above)—they don’t want to know. They also can’t answer the question because they have framed the premise of the question as racist (as if culture is race). Since the truth can’t be racist, it’s better to just take the word of an official. What I don’t understand is why the ordinary citizen in Springfield would make up something like this. “Because they’re racist” won’t work. That’s a smear to delegitimize the burden imposed upon them.
I confess that I am not an elitist, nor do I toe the woke progressive line; the testimony of ordinary working people rings more true to me that functionaries who have a political interest in (a) hiding the truth of mass immigration to keep it going and (b) delegitimizing Donald Trump, who has promised to put a stop to it.
I think it is remarkably naive to believe this couldn’t be happening—or that you can trust the media to tell you it is. It’s wrong to chalk the concern up to racism and xenophobia. These are cultures incompatible with ours and we are well beyond the ethic of assimilation. The citizens of Springfield, which number 60,000, are being saddled with the burden of 20,000 Haitian migrants, migrants they did not vote to allow into their community—a burden the government imposed on the residents there without their consent.
This is why it is sad to see Springfield resident Nathan Clark, rather than blame the policies that led to his son’s death because of the actions of a Haitian migrant, say, “I wish that my son, Aiden Clark, was killed by a 60-year-old white man.” Expressions of collective self-loathing driven by identity politics is why people believe the corporate media and official sources over the testimony of ordinary Americans; it’s self-loathing that causes people to not even bother to find out what’s going on in Springfield and in cities across the nation, to wax incredulous at stories that those who have had experience with Haitian culture knows are not only plausible, but very likely, because white people are bad.
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The lies and misrepresentations coming from Kamala Harris night before last were many (I cover many of them here Harris Lies and Distortions). But the way she dismissed thousands of death on the eve of 9/11 anniversary was despicable.
Approximately 2,977 people were killed in the attacks on September 11, 2001. This number includes passengers on the planes, workers in the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, firefighters, police officers, and emergency responders. Above are the faces of those killed on 9/11. Not quite the horror of January 6, 2021, Kamala Harris tells us. Nor does Pearl Harbor compare. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, resulted in the deaths of 2,403 Americans. No, we have to go all the way back to the Civil War to find a tragedy comparable to January 6. An estimated 620,000 to 750,000 people died during the American Civil War, making it the deadliest conflict in US history. We know this because Kamala Harris told us. And since the media adores her, you can take this fact to the bank.
freedom and reason 