will cats decide the presidential election?

kick the internet's cats and the cats kick back

owing to some longstanding and oppressive laws and traditions, cats are not allowed to vote in US elections. but might we wind up deciding one anyway?

people are starting to wonder.

(and i’m here to tell you, they might be right)

thanks for noticing!

since the rise of the “haitians in ohio are eating people’s cats” meme the internet has been absolutely awash in cats. it’s past “viral” and well into “ubiquitous” and both sides are up in arms about it. trump mentioned it specifically in the debates.

predictably, the left was enraged by this and is out claiming “nuh-uh” and some media outlets contacted a few city administrators who declaim “no, it didn’t happen” and the popular video of a woman who was caught eating a neighbor’s cat (after stomping on its head) looks like it was probably not an immigrant. but then lots of reporters and bloggers and twitterers descended on springfield ohio, a town of 60k that had 20,000 haitian immigrants dropped on its doorstep and found 911 calls about haitians killing and eating geese in parks, stories about cats and dogs being grabbed, eaten, or used in voodoo (yes, really, this is apparently a significant practice) and 200 other outrages.

how much is true or false? it’s hard to say. but some of it looks true and while the drip feed water torture of “let’s find out” is devastating, but the truly interesting issue is that from a political standpoint, it doesn’t matter if it’s true.

this issue is a horrible fork for the DNC and they have no way to win. the simple fact is that the internet is made of cats. always was. we are the internet’s native species and having now awakened us and our legions, there’s going to be frackas.

oh yes indeedy.

a movement has been born.

and the memes are fire.

and the memes are all on one side.

the vagaries of the “post truth” media world have made this issue a pure lose/lose for the swamp donkeys that have been pushing such surges of immigration with such unworkable adverse selection built into it as “free stuff, come on in!” of course, brings a very different kind of immigrant in far vaster numbers than “it’s hard here, but if you’re smart and hardworking you can make it.”

and such immigrants in such myriads are causing such problems as america has never before seen.

the grift, graft, lawlessness, crime, kickbacks, and electoral meddling are as unprecedented as they are out of control. schools are struggling, cities are reeling, budgets are breaking, and still they come. countries are literally emptying their prisons into the US and then when gangs take over housing complexes, the US politicians who get free stuff and maybe a bit of beak wetting from the skim deny it’s happening.

and belief in them is at all time lows.

it’s an ugly state of affairs and the discrediting of the aurora, CO denialists was striking both in its blatancy and in how rapidly it was swept from national news.

but this cat is not going back into the bag.

it’s too funny, too provocative, too on point.

it’s just everywhere because it captured somehting A LOT of people wanted to say but could not. and what are the dems supposed to do?

if they ignore it, it thrives and they look scared, but if they try to refute it, they just add fuel to the fire and keep the conversation on a topic on which they cannot win.

and once started, the discourse all flows one way.

apparently, the guy who made this remix from the debate is now having a melt down because it was intended to malign trump and instead has been adopted as a MAGA and immigration reform rallying cry.

sorry amigo, but the internet decides what things are for, not you.

it was meant as critique.

it turns out this is "meowsländer raus.”

and every time someone says “no, they did not eat a cat!” not only is it likely not true, but the obvious pivot is to “perhaps, but they did kill my auntie in a home invasion” or “OK, but they have overwhelmed schools, are beating on local kids, and have displaced low income americans in housing because the feds are paying top dollar for landlords to kick you out and put them up.” oh, and let’s not forget “voter fraud.”

once you have engaged with the immigration issue, the whole of the issue is on the table. and it’s not a great look for the politicos.

this wild level of unprecedented immigration in the west is causing strains all over the world as systems and culture come under fire. this is no longer melting pot so much as paying for your own conquest and calling it diversity.

but no one feels like they are allowed to speak up. governments call it hate speech. virtue signaling karens assault you over it then they kick these people the hell off of martha’s vineyard (who could certainly spare a few dimes if they wanted to) because “these are not our sort of people.”

citizens have been hectored into silence, but this does not change hearts of minds: it hardens them.

and cats are the release valve.

there’s an interesting truth here.

we are so inured to human misery and violence that it fails to register.

you can watch a movie and 200 people get machine gunned and body slammed and no one's pulse rises but kick one animal and the audience goes wild.

a bum on the sidewalk in a pile of his own needles and excrement elicits nothing but an injured animal in the same space drives sympathy and response.

you're not desensitized to it.

it's still real.

and this issue is just as real. it’s a vector to channel what many have wanted to say and felt they cannot. it’s a simple, pure symbol that can be adopted while not looking self serving.

the left is going to keep coming for it like a tar baby because they just cannot lay off this kind of emotional provocation.

and deep down, a lot of the people who were indignant about being called “cat ladies” are even more indignant about immigration. they just cannot say so in public. (and god help you if you actually do touch one of their cats)

every time this issue is raised, even as refutation, it just foregrounds the problem further, puts it more on the agenda.

the simple fact is immigration, of which i have been a longstanding fan and believe has played a pivotal role in american success, has been hideously broken and weaponized in the US and if they have lost me on this topic, i have to believe that most of the center is gone too.

and frankly, this chart is political dynamite. i’m astonished at how little currency it’s being given.

native born workers have not recovered to pre lockdown employment levels. over 100% of all US job growth has been to foreign born workers.

so have cats become the low energy avatar to speak a truth too many have for too long been afraid to utter?

is this the release valve for what has been pent up?

it seems to me like this is a no-win wave for kammy whammy. it will center in this election immigration and the nasty, corrupt big business cum electoral fraud it has become and the harm that is being imported with folks unable or unwilling to integrate.

it’s memelord entrapment.

and the comic may say what the pundit may not.

pets will be the socially acceptable cause celebré to say what people really wanted to say about themselves and their children.

and maybe, just maybe, cats will indeed decide this election.

crazier things have happened.