by Pa Rock
Citizen Journalist
Springfield, Ohio, is a small urban center with a population of around sixty thousand individuals, of whom a quarter-to-a-third are fairly recent legal immigrants from Haiti. By most accounts this recent influx of Haitians has been largely without incident, and they have been a positive influence on the community. The Haitians work, pay taxes, attend local churches, support local businesses, and send their kids to the local schools.
Things had been going well in the small Ohio city, but then a few weeks ago someone posted a meme on social media suggesting that some of these new Black arrivals in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the domestic pets of their neighbors - cats, and dogs, and ducks, oh my! City officials, including the city commissioner and members of the police department, tried to get out in front of the rumor and denied it, but the story was just too good for Republican Party to ignore. Yes, the immigrant population of Springfield was by-and-large legal, but they were Black, and, as such, they could be used to whip-up fear among the ignorant masses.
JD Vance, an opportunistic Republican Senator from Ohio who also happeens to be the GOP vice-presidential candidate, reposted the baseless allegation saying essentially that it must be true because it had been on the internet, and then at last Tuesday night's presidential debate Donald Trump, a man who has built his political career by using immigration to scare people, decided to trot out the immigrants-eating-pets hoax and peddle it to the entire nation.
It wasn't true, but Trump, a politician who has never been bashful about lying, said it anyway. The moderators at the debate tried to correct him, but he pushed on with his shocking lie saying that he had seen people on television talking about it, so again, it must be true. A day or two later he doubled-down on his false narrative and said that the immigrants in Springfield would be among the first that he would deport when he became President again - completely disregarding the fact that most of the Haitians in Springfield are there legally and they are good, responsible citizens of the community.
Then others decided that they, too, needed to be in on the action of "helping" Springfield, Ohio, deal with its problems. People began calling in bomb threats aimed at the city government and local schools. Meetings had to be canceled or moved, and several schools had to shut down - all over an internet rumor that was ginned up and being spread by a few self-serving politicians who get their political strength through dividing people.
Now the stories about Haitians eating family pets have spread on down the road to Dayton, Ohio, and it is not true there either. When garbage is plopped down on the internet it tends to grow legs and run wild.
Trump is boasting at this rallies that "when" he gets back in the White House he is going to order the biggest mass deportation in US history and that it will begin with Aurora, Colorado, a community he says is overrun with immigrant gangs, and Springfield, Ohio, the place where the savages are eating their neighbors dogs and cats. Yesterday, speaking from his golf course overlooking the Pacific Ocean in California, Trump said:
"We are going to do large deportations from Springfield, Ohio, large deportations. We're going to get these people out. We're bringing them back to Venezuela."
Yes, Mr Trump by all means rip those legal Haitian immigrants out of their homes and lives in Ohio and send them back to Venezuela. Prove to the world that you are almost as smart as Greg Abbott. Whether you are impaired by a low IQ, the effects of a private school education, or senility, you need to get control of yourself and quit terrorizing the most vulnerable among us.
Quit being a bully and pick on somebody your own size - like me! Deport me back to Fiji, or Bora Bora, or Marrakesh. I double-dog dare you! But leave the Haitians alone. They came here to escape the murderous gangs in the small homeland of Haiti (not Venezuela), and to build better lives for themselves and their families - just like your own mother did when she immigrated to the US to build a better life here as a maid, or like two of your three wives did when they also immigrated to America to better themselves.
And believing that Haitians are from Venezuela, well . . . that's just weird! Buy a geography book, Donald, and pay somebody to read it to you - or enroll in a night class a a community college.
Education is the most reliable path out of the morass of fear and ignorance.
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