Column By John Young
It’ll be one year this week. One year ago. Sept. 10, 2024.
I know you haven’t been reminded about the anniversary, and that’s not right. I’m here to remind you.
If ours were an enlightened society, an exceptional society as anti-woke patriots claim, we’d remark on the anniversary with ceremonies, with discussion panels, with classroom lessons. I’ve not heard of any.
The events of the date in question revolve around four words uttered by a presidential candidate.
Years from now, if duly remembered, people will wonder how those words went in America’s ear holes and didn’t trigger civil defense sirens.
Four words. Four destructive words:
“They’re eating the cats.”
Sept. 10, 2024.
It was the dumbest lie in American campaign history, and among the most brazen and evil.
But because enough voters are OK with brazen stupidity and take their evil in prescribed doses, the lie-teller was not penalized, not ostracized, barely criticized. Indeed, he was awarded the office he sought.
Today, from the White House, he continues to spout his craven lies, assuming that if it worked before, it will work forever.
“They’re eating the cats.”
It was a masterclass in fabrication – masterful in time-honored ingredients of demagoguery – racism, elitism, symbolism – all in the cause of fear mongering.
Dark-skinned people. Haitians! They don’t look or talk like us. They’re taking over! Aren’t those the ones promoting Shariah law? Doesn’t matter. What do they eat?
“They’re eating the pets.” The GOP nominee repeated for emphasis from the presidential debate stage.
Where did this hateful, racist claim come from? From social media, of course.
Officials in Springfield, Ohio, were frantic to debunk it, as it engendered threats against peaceable, hard-working immigrants.
Didn’t matter. JD Vance, the shape-shifter angling to be our next Spiro Agnew, took the lie and ran with it. When reporters pointed out its bogusity, he said the mere fact that fearful white people were talking about it called for its amplification. That’s what leaders do.
This was not a “misspoke,” not a tongue slip, not an “Ah, he was just telling a joke.” This was calculated evil.
And we should never forget it.
The morning after “eating the cats” trundled out the GOP nominee’s lie hole, I said people would be remarking about that statement for generations. They’ll wonder how anyone could have made such a stupid, evil lie unto itself and not been tossed by voters into history’s scrap heap.
I’m not so sure now. With how he has normalized fiction as fact, he may have altered the American brain forever.
Suffice it to say that some federal judges are determined not to take his lies as truth. More than one has cited his stretching terms like “national emergency,” “invasion,” and more to mangle the law.
He used “rebellion” – his word for protests in Los Angeles against an ICE crackdown – to use the Posse Comitatus Act to send the National Guard there.
Federal Judge Charles Breyer ruled that the claim was ridiculous, a naked pretext for an overreaching president who wants to play police commissioner in a blue state.
In quick succession, other judges have tossed out his lie-filled pretexts for tariffs (“national emergency”) without congressional consent, a merciless crackdown on Harvard (“anti-semitism”), and his use of the Alien Sedition Act (“invasion”) to deport immigrants without due process.
Since it’s highly likely that a stacked Supreme Court will continue to enable his reign of deceit, we need something to make it not so profitable for presidents to lie.
That’s why I’m proposing that Sept. 10 become a national day to reflect on this problem.
We have Presidents’ Day, which is generally meaningless. After all, it honors not only great presidents but the felon we have today. Scrub that. Sub it out for something meaningful: Sept. 10 — Presidents Who Lie Day.
It’s a day for future generations to contemplate how their predecessors were hornswoggled.
They could have seminars, re-enactments, and class assignments about great moments in lying – about the Gulf of Tonkin “incident” used to authorize war in Vietnam; about the weapons of mass destruction not found in an Iraq we decimated; about how Dick Nixon’s claim to be “not a crook” was not so.
And they could learn of the man who returned to the presidency in 2025, having demonstrated himself the most skilled and unrepentant liar of all time.
And they’ll demand better, much better, of those they elect.
Longtime newspaperman John Young lives in Colorado. Email: jyoungcolumn@gmail.com.
The opinions expressed in this editorial are those of the author.
