The Pet-Eating Is The Point
What MAGA really thinks about immigrants, and why they have to lie about it so much
It’s too soon to tell, but I hope the story of tonight’s presidential debate is how many times Trump said weird, batshit crazy things — not just lies (we’re used to them, after all) but bizarre, unhinged, raving-lunatic nonsense.
Like immigrants eating our pets.
If you didn’t catch that moment, it was when Trump, speaking of the many evils wrought by illegal immigrants, said
They're eating the dogs, the people that came in, 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.
I want to suggest, for real, that this claim is the essence of the MAGA-GOP’s real position on immigration: that these people aren’t fully human. That’s the dark truth, behind all the lies about immigrant criminality and terrorism that exist to cover it up.
And Trump said the quiet part out loud.
1.
To get this out of the way: No, undocumented/illegal immigrants (call them what you will) are not eating pets. Rumors that migrants from Haiti were kidnapping pets in Springfield, Ohio, have percolated up through right-wing social media over the last couple of weeks to the point where JD Vance himself made the claim earlier this week. However, Springfield’s police have investigated, and have found no evidence of this happening at all.
Vance, to his credit, at least hedged, saying on Tuesday that “It’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.” But at the debate, Trump went full PetAnon, even after ABC News anchor David Muir interjected that the Springfield city government has found no evidence to support the rumor.
The pet-eating was only one of many lies Trump told about immigration. He repeated the mantra that immigrants are committing crimes, despite ample data that crime rates among migrant communities are lower than among people born in the US. He inflated the number of “illegal aliens” from 15 million to 22 million, a made-up number backed up by absolutely nothing. Trump lied about the bipartisan immigration reform bill that he himself torpedoed, throwing his own party members under the bus. And he repeatedly described migrants as criminals, terrorists, fentanyl-couriers, and worse, whereas, obviously, the vast majority of migrants are looking for economic opportunity, fleeing violence, hoping for a better life for their kids, or all of the above.
None of this is new, of course. Even in 2015, Trump was lying about immigration and demonizing immigrants. I remember how controversial it was, at the time, when Trump said at the launch event of his campaign that
When Mexico sends its people, they're not sending their best. They're not sending you. They're not sending you. They're sending people that have lots of problems, and they're bringing those problems with us. They're bringing drugs. They're bringing crime. They're rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
At the time, this statement was headline news. Most people were aghast, though many dismissed the comments as proof that Trump wasn’t a serious candidate. Now, of course, these comments read as relatively moderate.
2.
There’s something weird about these lies, which is how unnecessary they are.
One could, after all, make a more moderate case against illegal immigration. For example, it is true that immigrants are often willing to work for less money than citizens – this has been true since my grandparents came here as immigrants a hundred years ago, and well before that. No, immigrants aren’t “stealing our jobs” – actually they’re propping up capitalism by providing a source of cheap labor, often in agriculture, construction, and other critical industries. For better or for worse, this enables the economy as we know it to exist, but, sure, cheap labor causes overall wages to be lower than they might otherwise be. Plenty of people have complained about this, but Trump, not so much.
Or one might make the claim, as more moderate Republicans have done, that the problem isn’t immigration but illegal immigration. Some people play by the rules, but these people are breaking the rules. This argument doesn’t really hold water – the “rules” are broken to the point where lawfully migrating is extremely difficult – but it is based in some reality, after all, as well as some pretty fundamental American values like fair play and not rewarding cheaters.
But Trump doesn’t say these things. Rather, like demagogues since time immemorial, he denigrates immigrants, saying they’re scum, criminals, rapists, barely human. They eat our pets.
This, I think, is closer to the truth about what the MAGA base really thinks and feels, which is why no more moderate version of Trump seems to resonate with them. Yes, they’re upset about job loss and people breaking laws. But they’re really upset because a lot of brown people who don’t speak English are taking over our country. They’re upset that they have to Press 1 for English instead of Oprima Numero Dós for Spanish. They’re upset that popular culture is dominated by Latin celebrities, Latin food, Latin music. They want to make America great again, like it was in the 1980s, or 1950s, when white men dominated everything.
Lest I ride on too high a horse here, I do sort of get it. America really is different now, compared to when I was growing up in the Eighties — and I grew up in Tampa, which already had a lot of people from Cuban and Puerto Rican backgrounds. It is definitely true that white, Christian men, while still dominant in many ways, are not as dominant as they used to be.
I just happen to think this isn’t a bad thing. In fact, I think it’s a good thing. But of course, I never was a white, straight Christian man. I was a closeted gay Jewish nerd who thought that football games were stupid (I only went to one in all of high school) and mainstream culture was dumb. I rooted for the antiheroes in Heathers. I was already in an outsider position. (Still white, of course, with plenty of privilege as a result.)
So I do get it. America is less white, and less white-dominated, than it used to be. There’s more Spanish, too, and more people from non-European cultures. Good or bad (and again, I think good), the change is pretty dramatic.
But only the hardcore white nationalists say this stuff out loud, right? In polite society, even conservatives give lip service to America as a melting pot, or land of opportunity, or whatever. Ironically, it was JD Vance who recently broke this taboo, arguing, in his RNC speech, that even though everyone was welcome, immigrants (like his wife) should know their place in our society, that ‘American’ culture is and ought to remain dominant.
But Vance didn’t go full-on racist; he just talked about American culture, as if American nationalism isn’t white nationalism (and of course, let’s not have any of that “woke” stuff about the original sin of slavery), and is just some non-racialized nationalism that, of course, has never actually existed.
3.
Trump, though, finds ways to say the quiet part out loud, without ever exactly saying it. While insisting that he’s actually not racist at all, he demeans entire nationalities by calling them “dirty.” He even calls some countries “shithole countries,” as Trump did in January, 2018, referring to Haiti, unnamed African nations, and El Salvador. Not to be misunderstood, at the same meeting, Trump contrasted these shithole countries with Norway. If only we had more immigrants from Norway, Trump said, instead of these shithole countries like Africa and Haiti. (Trump sort of denied saying these exact words, but did admit that he used “tough” language.)
But none of this is actual racism, right? I mean, it’s just coincidence that Norwegians are the whitest humans on the planet, right? Right?
Yes, the pets thing is funny and weird, but it’s not only funny and weird. It’s also a slip of the tongue that reveals the truth of what the speaker really believes, and that is dark. (Don’t worry, you can still laugh — take this advice from Jenny Holzer:
After all, what other choice do we have.)
I don’t know if Donald Trump really thinks that migrants are criminals, rapists, terrorists, drug dealers, and dog-eaters. But I don’t think he’s simply lying to get votes either. I think he believes these things on a gut level, because all these false accusations point to a deeper truth: that MAGA nationalism really is racist AF.
Now I’m going to go find some more pet-eating memes.
Alright, it’s after midnight, but I had some debate thoughts, which is rare for me, since normally I don’t watch debates.
I’ve been busy this week, writing about TwitterX for MSNBC and, for the Forward, about Tucker Carlson embracing holocaust denial. And now, off to talk about psychedelics, law, and religion for the next couple of days.
Post your favorite pet memes in the comments!
Loved the kitty meme.
It's true that MAGA people don't talk that much about the fact that unregulated immigration depresses wages for people who are already here. But Democrats don't talk about it either. I lived in Houston in the early aughties, in the aftermath of a huge wave of immigration from Mexico. People who had grown up in Houston said that it used to be a medium-sized city until three million people moved there. Some of these native Houstonians, Hispanic and Anglo, could no longer work as sheet-rock hangers, for example, because Mexican workers underbid them. (Mexican workers were also very skilled and hard-working, let's not forget. It's not just that they work for less; they do really good work.) Because they could no longer make a good living as working class people, they had to move from more centrally located, traditionally working class neighborhoods to more remote suburbs and commute further to work. While I was living there, the same thing happened to me and my partner: we could no longer afford the rent in our centrally located house, so we had to move further out.
Not only did unlimited immigration depress wages in Houston; it also made working conditions worse for people. I worked at a plant nursery as a sales person and laborer for a while. Legally, we were supposed to have two fifteen minute breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon, in addition to lunch. But nobody took these breaks even though the work was often physically demanding. I asked the owner if I could take these breaks, and she said yes, but nobody else did, and they resented the fact that I did. Why? Because about half the workers were undocumented and felt insecure as a result. They weren't going to demand any rights. The general atmosphere of work in Houston was that workers were scared and didn't ask for much. This extended even to professional jobs like teaching, which I also did in Houston. The pay was low even for teachers, and you weren't supposed to expect good working conditions or benefits.
In the 1990s, Democrats used to talk about this problem: that unlimited immigration was depressing working class wages and working conditions. But for some reason they stopped talking about this sometime in the aughties, perhaps because they hoped these immigrants would become Democrats if naturalized. I'm not really sure why. When I talk to other left-wing people about this problem, they dismiss me as racist and xenophobic. Even if I bring up the Marxist idea of the "reserve army of labor"--what Marx called the enormous number of under- and unemployed people-- and the ways in which this army depresses wages for the employed, Democrats these days are not buying it.
But there is no reason to assume that immigrants will vote Democratic if they become citizens. Many Hispanic immigrants are quite conservative socially. One immigrant whom I tutored became a close friend. She married an American, became a citizen...and voted for Trump.
The Left really made a mistake when it stopped talking about the ways in which unlimited immigration harms American citizens economically. It may be the case that overall, immigration improves our economy by staffing jobs that Americans supposedly don't want, such as nursing home jobs, child care jobs, etc. But maybe Americans of whatever ethnicity would want those jobs more if they paid better. The real off-limits topic in this country is that wages are just too low for many, many people. And immigration is part of that. That's one reason Republicans have never really wanted to address the problem even though they like to yell about it: capital loves cheap labor.