Months from now, the only trace of the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be the lingering bad taste of the ABC and Ohio cat memes littered through social media like the broken bits of a shipwreck discarded on the high tide mark.
The American Broadcasting Commission deserves to wear the shame. In a time where mainstream media networks are lecturing the peasant masses about ‘truth’ and ‘facts’, the ABC reminded everyone that these broadcasting giants cannot be trusted.
On this occasion, we saw ‘fact-checking’ unleashed as a weapon to poison the presidential race.
When the hosts interjected ‘corrections’, they were not ensuring that the conversation between politicians remained truthful – they were weighting Donald Trump with the assumption of lies and mistrust while turning a blind eye to the well-rehearsed fiction coming out of Kamala. None of it accidental. She had an air of practice about her responses which impressed upon the public that, if nothing else, Kamala will make the perfect puppet President to replace Joe Biden.
Biden is still out there, wandering about like a bird kicked out of its nest. He was last seen wearing a Donald Trump campaign hat, laughing half-mindedly with a small group of people in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, looking more-or-less unfit to hold the highest office in the land.
During Spectator TV on Friday, my guest, the New South Wales Libertarian President Ross Cameron, made an interesting comment about the Commander in Chief.
‘Joe Biden does have the power to substantially weaken the Kamala story. If he were to become a disgruntled ex, he could become a very disruptive ex.’
"Joe Biden does have the power to substantially weaken the Kamala story. If he were to become a disgruntled ex, he could become a very disruptive ex…" – Ross Cameron (@RossCameron4)
Watch @SpectatorOz on @adhtvaus | https://t.co/fAWVnVa8Av pic.twitter.com/YKh7I902Ji
— Alexandra Marshall (@ellymelly) September 14, 2024
The machine that is the Deep State has already lurched to correct the record regarding the infamous hat and its ‘context’. Keep in mind that ‘context’ is a word that will be doing a lot of heavy lifting in the Age of Propaganda.
Biden was asked to wear the Trump 2024 hat in ‘the spirit of unity’ during the 9/11 commemoration at a fire station. Which he did.
Considering it was a request from a fireman, what else could the President do?
I always thought it was a non-story. The reason it became a story relates to the widespread understanding that Biden was pushed from the Presidential race against his will by the powers behind the Democrat throne who all-but installed Kamala Harris. We assume Biden to be bitter about this. Anything that lends to this assumption catches the public imagination.
This is the ‘context’ that created the baseless assumption that the innocent hat could be a dig at Kamala. The gesture doesn’t need to be true in reality – only in the broader context. It is very similar to the image of Princess Diana alone on the diving board representing the princess abandoned by the Crown. The moment isn’t true – the imagery is.
Although slightly more complex, this is the same mechanism that has created hundreds of AI-generated cat memes.
Some of them are brilliant. Others are exceptional.
These do not exist because one woman in Ohio (who is not a Haitian migrant) was filmed eating a freshly killed cat in a driveway, the story persists because of growing outrage in America concerning 15 million illegal migrants – many of them criminals who have been murdering, raping, thieving, drug-dealing, and stealing children. Innocent American lives are stacking up against the ‘feel-good’ open border politics of the Democrats while Blue States and their capital cities are turning into zombified slums reminiscent of the third-world.
In a more believable post, JD Vance said on Twitter, ‘In Springfield, Ohio (where there is a large Haitian migrant community), there has been a massive rise in communicable diseases, rent prices, car insurance rates, and crime. This is what happens when you drop 20,000 people into a small community. Kamala Harris’ immigration policy aims to do this in every town in our country.’
It has been reported that crime in Springfield is 146 per cent higher than the national average – that is one of the highest total crime rates in America.
During the debate, Donald Trump was referring to a breaking and unconfirmed speculation when he said, ‘In Springfield, they are eating the dogs. The people that came in, they are eating the cats. They’re eating – they are eating the pets of the people that live there.’
Save our pets!!!!! pic.twitter.com/lWkOnkxscv
— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) September 10, 2024
I LOVE THE INTERNET!!!??? pic.twitter.com/6wNGaxLTzL
— il Donaldo Trumpo (@PapiTrumpo) September 10, 2024
https://twitter.com/mattscott4lt/status/1833846364842652019
What people really connected to in that message was not the literal threat of their pets being eaten, but the obvious and undeniable social decline experienced by the average voter under the pressure of mass migration from countries that do not share the same values and levels of acceptable cultural behaviour of Americans.
If we’re going to use the ‘fact-checking’ tool favoured by the ABC, then yes, there are countries that still eat dogs and cats.
The BBC in 2017 ran through a list of pet-eating nations, estimating that 30 million dogs and 10 million cats throughout Asia – including stolen pets – were killed and eaten. China is the worst culprit. These reports did not come from wild social media speculation, they originated from the Humane Society International. Is it really such a stretch to believe that some of these 15 million migrants might continue long-held cultural practices? Probably not. To call people concerned about their pets ‘racist conspiracy rednecks’ is just as crazy as saying there’s a pet buffet in Ohio.
In any case, it’s not about the cats – it’s about the memes. It’s about the cultural shift away from open borders and toward a nostalgic longing for better days when America was the land of hope and dreams instead of the Statue of Liberty lying ruined on the soiled streets of failing States.
When Republicans post a meme featuring Donald Trump carrying kittens in his arms, what they’re really posting is a vision of Trump saving American culture. That’s why the memes will endure long after the debate is forgotten – along with all of Trump’s failings on that platform.
If you ask the average American if it’s more important for a President to hold their nerve under fire from a shooter, or during the assault of an ABC moderator – most consider the former more important.
It will take more than a bad debate to shake Trump, but Kamala Harris is not going to roll over and hand Trump the presidency either. Unlike Biden, Kamala can remember her lines. She has toned down the cackling and learned how to put on a passable performance. That may be all the Democrats need.
Unfortunately for America, the presidential race is being run on memes instead of policy. That’s exactly what they want. The Democrats want Trump supporters distracted by cat memes and arguing about Haitians eating pets. Those conversations are safe.
The last thing the Democrats want is for Trump and the Republican base to turn their attention – and their memes – on the economy, on energy, and on public safety.
Those are topics that have really gone to the dogs.
