The Debate Link

Last night, I saw a mouse in my house.

It was around 3 AM, and I was finishing up my overnight parenting shift (I cover bedtime to 3 AM; Jill wakes up to pump from 3 - 3:30 or so, and then she covers through the rest of the morning). I only saw the mouse for an instant as it scampered under a kitchen cabinet. I yelped in surprise, but then finished my various tasks before going to wake Jill up (though the yelp probably already accomplished that).

And then I just melted down.

I don't know what came over me. I didn't want the mouse in the house. But I also didn't want to hurt it, nor did I want the responsibility for getting rid of it (a responsibility which, in my eyes, ran an intolerable risk that I'd hurt it). I was terrified that I was going to injure or harm it in the course of trying to catch and remove it; or that if I didn't succeed in catching and removing it the mouse would never be out of the house. And the entire thought process just made me come entirely unglued. I was crying in the bathroom in a state of complete panic; I actually wanted to flee to a hotel. It was ridiculous.

Now I'm trying to work out what background neurosis is actually operating here. I've always been a sensitive sort -- one of my major childhood trauma stories centered on a caterpillar I accidentally ran over with a garbage can I was pulling inside. And I've always found mice to be inordinately cute (my second-grade play was "Of Mice and Mozart", though I actually did not play the role of a narrator-mouse).

But I think what's mostly going on relates, of course, to my own baby. On the one hand, it is extra important not to have a mouse running around the floor when one has a baby who's main daily activity is lying on a playmat on the floor. What if the mouse scratches the baby? But on the other hand, small, cute, and adorable are the main characteristics of my baby, so the idea of harming (or being responsible for harming) something small, cute, and adorable is one easily liable to psychological projection. I suspect that there's a deeper layer of stress about parental responsibility and keeping our baby safe and protected in an unpredictable world, but I don't think I need to dig any deeper on that.

Anyway, I researched humane traps, which helped (though the descriptions were often juxtaposed against nightmarish accounts of glue traps, which very much did not help). And Jill -- who after seeing me fall to pieces last night agreed to take point on this project -- contacted a pest control service to stop by (we need it anyway, as we've long had an ant problem). I also found the hole it came through in the kitchen and stuffed some steel wool into it, so hopefully that serves as a stopgap. 

It's going to work out. But man, that was an unexpected emotional rapids ride I went through.

(Also, Jamelle Bouie followed me on BlueSky right as I was working through all those emotions. It was a lot).

Try explaining that headline in 2019!

Despite it featuring in Donald Trump's disastrous debate performance on Tuesday, Republicans appear to be committing to "immigrants are eating your pets!" as a central part of their campaign message. What a wild time to live in.

One thing I've heard in response to this is that "cat eating" is just the GOP version of the "J.D. Vance fucks couches" meme that bounced around the liberal blogosphere a few weeks ago. In either case, the argument went, it was a "humorous" falsehood that speaks to an overall decay in our informational climate, and so if you're uncomfortable with the one, you have no grounds to justify the other.

This comparison seems too cute. For starters, as others have noted, one extremely important difference between the two memes is that nobody is worried about extremists deciding to go out and terrorize Ikea shoppers based on misinformation about sofa sex acts occurring therein. That alone is enough to work as a distinction.

But also, the more fundamental difference is that nobody -- left, right, or center -- ever purported to believe J.D. Vance actually had sex with couches. It was self-conscious absurdism from the get-go. If there was a progressive out there who earnestly, genuinely believed J.D. Vance copulated with a couch, that person would be viewed with contempt by everyone else sharing the meme -- it was not meant to be believed, and there was no effort to make it something that would be believed.

By contrast, conservatives can't quite decide whether they believe the "cat eating" stories are real or not. The neo-Nazis who initially promulgated the claim certainly hoped and expected people would believe it. And Vance himself described the potential truth of the claim in deliberately waffling fashion "It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false" -- a formulation which indicates a comparably strong possibility that these "rumors" are in fact true. Comparing the two "stories" is like saying an Onion article and 2024 election trutherism are both examples of "misinformation".

What we're seeing from the right here isn't self-conscious absurdism but rather a sort of empirical edgelording -- dancing around the edge of "do I believe it/am I joking" to try and get the best of all worlds. If the listener is shocked, then they're just messing around; if the listener buys in, well, then they're being totally serious. People often cite Sartre's remarks on the way Nazis like to "play" with words, but the comparison that immediately jumped to my mind is Nelly suggesting to a female friend that he has a "pole in the basement". The shocked "what?" from said friend is met with "I'm just kiddin' ... Unless you're gon' do it." It's not a serious statement, except for those who take it seriously. 

The irony, though, is that precisely because Republicans can't fully commit to "cat eating" being obviously made up, it can't serve the function they want from it -- which is to be the counter to the "Republicans are weird" narrative Democrats have been so effectively impressing upon them (and of which couch fucking was a satirical encapsulation of). They're hoping for "you think we're weird -- well you eat cats!" The problem, though, is that the sort of person who actually thinks (or even is unsure) whether gangs of immigrants are abducting and devouring household pets in Ohio is ... a weird person! That is a weird thing to think, and it comes off as a weird thing to think. When Donald Trump publicly promotes cat-eating conspiracies in a debate, the response isn't "ooh, what a great zinger", it's "what on earth is he babbling about?" If you're not already in the fever swamp, it's a line that just reinforces that Trump is profoundly abnormal. He actually seems to believe too many things that regular Americans, at a gut-level, view as ridiculous.

Today's Republicans may be alarmingly good at stoking hate and fear and xenophobia. But they are very bad at avoiding being weird. Their commitment to spreading absurd nonsense about immigrants eating pets, more than anything else, just accentuates that weirdness.

“Introduced species can disturb the ecosystem of an area,” Seyyed Jafar Mousavi[], the Deputy Head of Intelligence and Operation Department at the Biological Headquarters of Civil Defence Organization, said in an interview with Mehr News Agency, as translated by IFP. 

Some species can do more harm than good to an ecosystem, he noted. 

He noted that Caspian seal, Kilka and Sevruga fish belong to the Caspian Sea; however, comb jellies are alien species that have come from the Atlantic Ocean. 

“We firmly believe that the Zionist regime [Israel] is behind the conspiracy of nuisance species as they had sworn to do so,” Mousavi added.

Good catch (get it? "Catch"? Because fish)! The goyim will fall to their knees if the Zionist cabal can deprive their leaders of their precious caviar!

It's not that I can see an interpretation of today's Non Sequitur that's really filthy and inappropriate. It's that I can't see any other conceivable punchline.

In my roundup yesterday, I noted comments by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer which compared poor people to stray animals (both apparently will breed if you feed them). Today, he issued an apology ... of sorts:

"I never intended to tie people to animals," he said, before opting for a kinder animal metaphor: "If you have a cat, if you take it in your house and feed it and love it, what happens when you go out of town?"

Noting that he has raised money for a group that protects animals, Bauer also said he is "not against animals."

Okay, what? First, note that he apologizes for an animal comparison by proceeding to make the comparison again, with stray cats. But then, in the coup de grace, he makes it clear that he has nothing against animals. And you have to feel bad for the poor animals -- subjected to the indignity of being compared to poor people! It's rather horrible. And rather sociopathic of Lt. Gov. Bauer.*

* Okay, that was out of line. I'd like to apologize to the sociopath community; they don't deserve to be grouped with Bauer (see what I did there?).

Gaza City's zoo lost its only two zebras to hunger during the Gaza war. The animals were extremely popular with area children, but were too expensive to replace. So the zookeepers got novel: they hired a painter to paint black and white stripes on two donkeys, making them approximate the real thing.

The article reports that many Gaza children, having never seen a real zebra, enjoy their local "variant". Nonetheless, this strikes me as a worthy fundraising endeavor. Whatever thoughts one has about Cast Lead generally, one thing we can agree on is that the zebras didn't do anything wrong -- nor did the children who attend the zoo. While not minimizing by any means the importance of either of staples, or of structural and systematic change (in this case, the creation of a Palestinian state living in peace side-by-side with Israel), I think that, in conflict arenas particularly, it is also especially important to preserve the little pleasures and quirks of life: insuring that children have access to zoos, parks, playgrounds, and the like. It is these small things that often can serve as surprisingly effective bulwarks against radicalism and despair.

Somebody more knowledgeable about the workings of these things should set up an account to get the Gaza zoo two zebras. I can't imagine it is that expensive, and it's the least we all can do.

Greatest headline ever: Mice suspected in deadly cat fire.

Via That Somber City, who calls it "mouse terrorism". And indeed, authorities say it was likely a suicide mission. But what a way to go.

Your daily dose of civil rights and related news

A Federal judge has ordered the release of several Chinese Muslim detainees from Guantanamo who have been cleared of links to terrorism for several years. The judge demanded that the men be admitted to the United States immediately, and ordered that immigration services not interfere with them in any way. The US filed an emergency appeal to stay the order, with White House spokeswoman Dana Perino saying that allowing admittedly innocent men wrongfully detained for years in a lawless prison might make us vulnerable to terrorism (I wish I was kidding).

Low income residents of DC are being deprived of legal services, and many don't know where to turn for help.

The anti-gay marriage Proposition 8 has made a comeback and is now shown to be leading in the polls.

As a result, gay couples are flocking to the altar ahead of the November vote on their rights.

President Bush signed into law a bill which would establish a task force to try and crack cold civil rights era cases.

The Supreme Court has a few cases being argued this term that have big implications for the future of the Exclusionary Rule (illegally obtained evidence cannot be admitted into court).

The AP has gotten its hands on documents showing that American officials knew that their detention policies had driven some detainees "nearly insane".

Gay and lesbian candidates for political office are looking at a banner year.

A Rabbi has notified police after receiving thousands of threatening emails from a campaign sponsored by PETA, protesting a ritual by which he sacrifices a chicken in order to atone for his sins.

The NAACP is criticizing hiring practices in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania.

The link from the Washington Post website to this article by Sally Jenkins boldly proclaims that the "[a]ctions the NFL quarterback agreed to plead guilty to are crimes against humanity." Well, no, they're not. Look, I actually hate dogs, and even I recognize that Vick's actions were deplorable (and criminal). But crimes against humanity, they're not.

Similarly, Jenkins concludes her article by writing "Commit those crimes against people, and the words we'd use for it are fascism, and genocide." I suppose so, but that's equally true of the chicken fingers I ate for dinner last night (don't comment, vegetarian friends). The position of humans and animals aren't completely transposable--its hyperbole bordering on hysteria the way in which Vick's crime has been magnified into this massive example of all that is evil and wrong in the world. Reading articles like this makes Rick Morrissey and Barry Rozner's call for perspective all the more powerful (via Feministing).

See also, this great comic.