Homer Simpson and Springfield, Ohio

The episode where the Migrants eat cats

I haven’t watched The Simpsons in years, but I feel a new episode coming on.

Homer and the gang live in mythical Springfield. Matt Groening, the creator, based the location on Springfield, Oregon, but for the purposes of this election, Springfield, Ohio is a better choice, if only because the Vice Presidential nominee is from Ohio.

It is hard to separate fact from fiction in this Presidential contest. So much of what Donald Trump says is initially branded as fiction, only to turn up as fact. And similarly, pretty much everything that Kamala lies about is only challenged by fact-checkers in the conservative media universe and ignored by the rest of the main stream media.

I still don’t know if any cats were consumed by Haitian migrants (or dogs for that matter), but the folks who should be most be concerned about feline-feasting would be the childless cat ladies who JD Vance made famous. This demographic is still awfully sore at the Hillbilly Elegy author for calling them a bunch of losers. Never offend an important voting bloc, especially women with resources. That warning should be pasted on every Republican campaign training manual. It may too late for JD, but then again, it may not be. This race is still winnable for the Trump/Vance ticket.

JD is making no apologies for repeating the apocryphal story of migrants eating cats and dogs, which was soon quickly repeated by his boss, Mr. Trump. There does seem to be some evidence that geese have been caught and eaten in Springfield, but the evidence of other pet-eating is a little more scarce.

For Vance, the more exotic claims are perfectly acceptable because it draws attention to the very real issue of how mass migration overwhelms towns big and small. When you lose control of the border, and when a sudden influx of newcomers come to town, it strains city services, crowds local schools, clogs up hospitals and leads to higher crime. This is not just a Springfield, Ohio problem, which is why immigration is a top issue in the campaign. It has also been a problem in Chicago, Washington DC, New York City and Aurora, Colorado.

Illegal immigration is one thing, legal immigration another. The Haitian refugees iris seems to be a design feature of Biden-Harris Administration. They want small town America to be overwhelmed by a bunch of new arrivals, perhaps to save small towns that needs an economic revival, perhaps to change the political makeup of a state that has trended red for too long in the minds of Democrats.

We know that when a wave of refugees comes to a community, it changes the very nature of that community. We know that because what happened in Minnesota, which eventually yielded us Ilan Omar, and Michigan, which got us Rashida Tlaib. Mass migration of refugees changes the politics of towns and cities, and usually in a Democratic direction.

Of course, that is not always the case. Folks who come from Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela and Vietnam hate communism and trend conservative. And Republicans have a chance to garner a fairly high percentage of Hispanic voters, especially in Texas. Hispanics don’t want their local communities to be overwhelmed by criminal gangs and drug runners, and they would like to see more secure border too.

Trump needs to emphasize that legal immigration, properly managed can be good for the American people. He seems to forget that point when he rails on the latest shocking Twitter revelations. The Biden-Harris Administration has failed to manage immigration, failed to secure the border, failed to get rid of criminal gangs who are infesting our big cities and small communities, failed to use the vast tools that it has at its disposal to effectively protect the American people from the worst impacts of out of control immigration crisis. We all know that they have mismanaged things.

Trump would be better off sticking to the facts and letting the crazy shit stay on Twitter. He doesn’t need to become a farcical character on the latest Simpson’s episode to win this election.