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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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Haitians in Springfield eating cats appears to be at least a little more than just a wild rumor. A woman filed a police report on August 28th after her cat went missing and she found meat/gore in her Haitian neighbors' yard that she believed to be her cat's:

https://x.com/nicksortor/status/1836159326861562275

No information on if the police ever investigated further to confirm or deny this report.

For those of you who didn't believe the story, does this new evidence change your view, and in what direction? I was already leaning towards it being likely due to my prior knowledge of Haitian cuisine including cats, and the police call recording from Springfield about Haitians stealing geese from the park.

Is it gauche to refer to my own post https://www.themotte.org/post/1160/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/249419?context=8#context

Where I specifically said that there would be a race between 'HAH THEY ARE EATING CATS' and 'can we please stop talking about cats' conservatives?

JD Vance folded, said that he was making things up to get the conversation going. Trump hasn't mentioned it once more. Any unearthing of proximate evidence is burning sacrifices to a dead god. The point was fumbled, and memory holing is the best strategy. Repeatedly digging up this corpse to pretend it can still tapdance is not really helping advance the cause.

JD Vance folded, said that he was making things up to get the conversation going.

This is a gross misrepresentation of what JD Vance said. Yes, his exact words were "If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that's what I'm going to do". IMHO though, in the full context of the back and forth he said that, "stories" is analogous to "headline" not "fiction". If some journalist, and he's arguing with a journalist, was having a conversation where they said they created or wrote a story, you wouldn't not assume they meant they were passing off their own fiction as news. "News story" is a colloquial phrase. Almost every news outlet brags about having "top stories". Vance is clearly talking about creating a news cycle, not making shit up.

Very stupid way for a seasoned political operative to put it then.

Yeah, it was so stupid of JD Vance to use the exact same language his opponents use, ignorant to the fact that they can redefine language at their whim. Just so stupid. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

The game isn't fair and the points are made up. When you have to be twice as good to get half as far, a lot hinges on that "twice as good" bit.