They’re Eating the Dogma
“In Springfield, 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.” Somehow, the guy who said that then laughable line during a presidential debate won that presidential election, with support from many who were still certain his immigration hardline policies would only be aimed at real criminals. A couple years later, no one is laughing, as many of the Haitian immigrants in Springfield are being fitted for ankle monitors. That included Pierre Damas Bel. “He was 20, and had arrived legally in the United States in March 2024 and been granted something called Temporary Protective Status, or TPS, due to dangerous conditions in Haiti. He had joined his family in Springfield, where roughly 15,000 Haitians had settled in recent years. He had just graduated from high school, where he’d been a standout student, soccer player, and member of the Junior ROTC program. He’d enrolled at Wright State University, half an hour from Springfield, and wanted to study neuroscience.” That doesn’t sound like the kind of immigrant we should be targeting. It sounds more like the type of person America has always benefited from welcoming to our shores. But did you expect logic from a president who kept repeating that people like Pierre Damas Bel were eating your pets? Did you expect compassion and decency from a then Vice Presidential candidate who described his own repetition of the pet-eating claims by explaining, “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.” Well, there’s no need to create repulsive stories about Springfield anymore. Wearing his ankle monitor, Pierre Damas Bel recently stepped out in front of a speeding truck. Stephanie McCrummen in The Atlantic (Gift Article): A Reckoning in Springfield. “A truck driver out on his route confronts what the country has become.”
+ WaPo (Gift Article): As Trump rallies his base in Ohio, a Haitian migrant is laid to rest nearby. “Trump brought up Springfield during his remarks and recited a version of ‘The Snake,’ a song by civil rights activist Oscar Brown Jr. in which a woman dies after being bitten by a snake on which she took pity and invited into her home.” It’s too late for Pierre Damas Bel, but more people are finally realizing who the snake is in the current American story.
