I have had my share of fun laughing at the Republican presidential nominee’s assertion that immigrants from Haiti are stealing and consuming pets from residents in Springfield, Ohio.
“In Springfield, they’re eating dogs,” the Republican presidential nominee said, referring to an Ohio city dealing with an influx of Haitian immigrants. “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating … the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
The claim has been widely debunked from Ohio’s Republican Governor, Mike DeWine to Springfield’s city manager and its mayor.
I laughed when I heard the Republican presidential nominee say it during the debate. I have garnered additional humor from innovative minds creating social media memes. I found his comments funny based on the sheer absurdity. Not being a Haitian immigrant living in Springfield, I had the privilege to repeatedly find the Republican presidential nominees ridiculous and racist claims tragically amusing.
Sequestered in a diverse melting pot, I don’t spend much time worrying about some demented soul hearing the Republican presidential nominee’s words not as ludicrous fodder but as an existential threat that warrants immediate attention. But Haitians in Springfield are not afforded the luxury of laughing. The Republican presidential nominee’s words placed them on acute self-preservation alert.
Two days after the Republican presidential nominee made his false and racist declarations, bomb threats forced two Springfield elementary public schools with significant Haitian enrollment to evacuate. Additionally, several city commissioners were the target of an emailed bomb threat.
Springfield Mayor, Rob Rue went on national television to disabuse any legitimacy of the Republican presidential nominee’s words. Rue acknowledged the difficulty adjusting to new residents, but Springfield was not on the brink of implosion and the Republican presidential nominee’s remarks were a hyperbolic claptrap.
This was straight out of “Fascism for Dummies.” The Republican presidential nominee made a statement with no basis in fact, stirring the toxins of hatred. Regardless of what ensued, he claims plausible deniability because he didn’t directly threaten the school. There’s ample evidence from recent history demonstrating how this could have turned out tragically.
Remember “Pizzagate”? That was a fake news story that barely missed tragedy. In 2016, an erroneous news story went viral, alleging a child pornography ring led by Democratic Party nominee Hillary Clinton at a pizza establishment in Washington DC. Though the story had been widely debunked, on December 4, 2016, Edgar Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina walked into the pizza establishment targeted by the fake story and fired three shots from his AR-15-style assault rifle before being subdued. Fortunately, no one was hurt.
In 2012, Wade Michael Page, a 40-year-old Army veteran, with reported links to the white supremacist movement, and the inability to distinguish Muslims from Sikhs, killed six people at a Sikh temple south of Milwaukee, critically wounded three others, including a police officer. Whipped into a vitriolic frenzy, Muslims were the original object of Page’s wrath, but hatred told him Sikhs were close enough.
There is a direct link between the Republican presidential nominee’s words of dehumanization and bomb threats at elementary schools. Every presumed Haitian, not just in Springfield, lives with the dark cloud of absurdity hovering over their shoulders. Anyone who “looks” Haitian could find themselves in hatred’s crosshairs.
The 2024 election is unique because specific issues are secondary to a larger question: What type of nation do we want to be? Do we want to return to the hackneyed ethos of the white male landowner or do we want to move forward with the possibility and discomfort associated with pluralism?
Choosing the former would delay the inevitable for a few years at best. It would likely ensure difference would be more strident and entrenched. The likely outcome would secure the preservation of power for those who champion this nefarious charge. The drones, like those who made the bomb threats, are unlikely to derive any direct benefit. They will be pacified only by their animosity toward the other.
Is it so important to win an election that innocent lives can become collateral damage? How many ways must the Republican presidential nominee demonstrate he lacks the moral integrity to return to the Oval Office?
As Georgia Senator, Rev. Dr., Raphael Warnock often says, “A vote is a kind of prayer for the world we desire for ourselves and our children.”
Are bomb threats at elementary schools, based on false and racist claims, what we desire? Do we want a demagogue who inspires vigilante justice? One can have no public policy they favor so crucial that violence against innocent people spurred by the leadership is tolerable.
It is time to suspend the willful ignorance of grading the Republican presidential nominee on a curve. Either he possesses the temperament, character, and judgment to be president or he doesn’t. There’s no middle ground on which to stand.
The methodology in Springfield bears a January 6 likeness. If nothing was funny about January 6, we probably shouldn’t be laughing now.
I know, but still the "best yet!"