The NY Times is Whining About Memes Again. That's a Good Sign. The Last Time the Drearily Pious Atheists Were This Exercised About Memes Was 2016.

By the time the Arizona Republican Party's digital billboards urging Phoenix residents to "EAT LESS KITTENS" and "Vote Republican!" went up on Tuesday, the story they referred to had already been widely debunked.

The Marxist Media claiming something has been "debunked" does not mean it's been debunked. They've lied so many times, and always in the same ways, that people take their claims of "debunking" as confirmation of the claim.

And that's on them.

The previous week, claims that Haitian immigrants were stealing and eating pet cats in Springfield, Ohio, had begun circulating on social media. None of the reports had been substantiated, and local officials in Springfield -- a small city where, in recent years, public services have been strained by a large influx of Haitian migrants -- said they had seen no evidence that any of them were true.

1, governments which are instrumental in allowing this invasion are always lying to protect themselves from criticism of their open-borders, pro-invasion policies, and

2, there are citizen claims this is happening. The citizens claim they've seen this. This is "contested," not "debunked."

Major conservative media outlets had given them only fleeting attention.

But while the story has so far not proved credible, it has proved meme-able -- and that has given it a life far beyond the right-wing internet.

For days, images and videos of former President Donald J. Trump and cats have proliferated online, delivered with a knowing wink and an understood endorsement of Mr. Trump's hard-line immigration message. Their over-the-top imagery gives them the feel of an inside joke. A "just kidding" is implied, allowing political figures who might otherwise have hesitated to circulate debunked material to get in on it. The reality is beside the point.

Memes have been a regular, if enigmatic, feature of American politics since the primordial days of social media. But the early months of the Trump-Harris race have offered a twist on this familiar phenomenon: More than once, memes that are mostly or completely detached from actual events have spilled off the internet into the three-dimensional reality of the campaign itself.

They are now on the billboards in Arizona and were, more significantly, on the debate stage Tuesday night, where Mr. Trump exclaimed: "The people on television say their dog was eaten by the people that went there!"

Mr. Trump's debate remarks have themselves become a meme on the left since Tuesday, as musical remixes of his comments have ping-ponged around Instagram, TikTok and other social platforms, mocking the pet-eating claims while also prolonging their stay in the news cycle.

The attention has been unwelcome in Springfield, where tensions over immigration have flared since an 11-year-old boy was killed last year when a Haitian immigrant driving without a valid license crashed his minivan into a school bus.

"They're killing 11-year-old boys, not cats" is not the winning message you think it is, New York Times.

I denounce the following memes with every ounce of my non-existent atheist soul:

posted by Ace at 02:00 PM

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