One of these weeks, I’m going to make a plan for what I’m going to talk about and then carry it out. Ever since the conventions ended, I’ve been planning to write a state-of-the-race article. But something else always comes up: Trump desecrates Arlington National Cemetery, or Georgia election officials lay the groundwork for another January 6, or something.
This week, an apparent Trump assassination attempt broke too late for me to say anything substantive about it, but the eating-dogs-and-cats thing was just impossible to ignore. So I’ll just have to double up: the state-of-the-race post will come out later this morning, maybe around 11 EDT.
But I also found an interesting slant on the Springfield dogs-and-cats story: The Bug-Eyed and Shameless blog draws a parallel to the Irish Fright of 1688, when tens of thousands of Englishmen became convinced that rogue Irish troops from the British army were marauding through England, destroying everything in their path. Spontaneous militias barricaded bridges and crossroads, waiting for rampaging Irishmen who only existed in their imaginations.
It turns out that disinformation can spread and start a panic even without the internet.
Anyway, I think there’s a lot to be learned from Americans’ propensity to believe bizarre and scary things about non-White immigrants. I’ll collect some in “Lessons from the Haitian Fright”. I’ll try to get it out soon. The state-of-the-race article will follow, and then the weekly summary, which will review the Harris-Trump debate, what little we know about the shots fired in Trump’s vicinity, the Laura Loomer thing, and a few other notes. I’m aiming to have that out by noon, but it may run later.
