Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) confronted Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) on Tuesday for promoting a smear against immigrants and reposting a bizarre AI-generated image of former President Donald Trump.
What in the hell is this?! The chairman tweets, “Protect our ducks and kittens in Ohio” because he goes down some crazy rabbit hole, completely debunked that aliens are eating pets. My God, are you ok, Mr. Chairman? Because last year, for a very long time, you tweeted and promoted Kanye West as he was calling for genocide against the Jews and you kept it up. And now when we have victims coming here, you’re tweeting this nonsense.
I, I don’t know why you would do this. I hope you’re ok. I don’t know if the aliens who are eating your ducks are in the room with us right now. But, Mr. Chairman, this is a serious issue. These people have loved ones who have been lost. And you tweeted this.
I'm not entirely at ease with the characterization of this as them doing it performatively, or as part of a narrative. Everything nowadays is slavishly reduced to "optics" and agendas.
I will equivocate though; Swalwell's reaction here is effective because it mirrors the reaction many of us have had to the dark turns of our friends and loved ones in recent years. This madness has frayed our social fabric, maybe irreparably.
🤔 which is more news worthy:
1 - the chairman of the house judiciary committee tweeted a picture of trump hugging a kitten and a duck.
2 - a member of the committee calling him out and asking if he's okay because he posted the picture.
3 - The claim that "aliens are eating pets".
The origin of the claim that Haitians are eating pets in Ohio appears to stem from right-wing media accounts running with a Fox News story about an Ohio woman named Allexis Telia Ferrell, who was arrested for allegedly killing and eating a cat. The report about the lone woman sparked claims that Haitians are kidnapping people’s pets and eating them.
The thing is, they aren't tortured when they are overfeed, so they become Foie gras. It's pretty well understood that they fuckin love being overfeed. Watch some of the videos, they don't mind at all. Doesn't really make it right but it's not torture anymore than it's torturing that much of the processed food humans eat has the same results when someone has low self control.
I don't eat Foie gras because I think it's grotesque but it's not torture.