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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    2 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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      2 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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        2 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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          2 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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            2 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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              2 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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            2 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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            2 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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      2 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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      2 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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        2 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.