https://quadrant.org.au/features/america/the-cats-of-springfield/
What shocks most about Springfield, Ohio, is that there’s nothing shocking about the place at all. This is not as promised, for all the way here, over the Appalachians and down into the rolling corn carpets of the plains, the radio brought word of chaos and strife, of Klansmen on the way and neo-Nazis too, locked-down schools, bombs, missing cats and Haitians cowering in their basements. And of course there was much hissing at Donald Trump, who started it all by doing Springfield the disservice of painting the town as the Meowschwitz of the Midwest.
“They’re eating the cats! They’re eating the dogs!” he fairly yelled during the second debate, prompting an immediate fact-check and subsequent blitz of denials that any such thing was happening or had ever happened. From the BBC to the Hindustan Times, that Trump had bared his vile, lying, racist soul was affirmed in report after report. How could he say such a terrible thing! Legacy Media and the left generally were so offended, the spirit of noisy outrage once again upon them, they seemed almost jubilant, for it must surely be the moment when Orange Man, finally and once and for all, made himself unelectable. Impeachments, confected scandals, bent New York judges and 34 criminal convictions, none of that has put him in the longed-for orange jumpsuit. Instead social media’s cat-themed AI memes were positive – Trump grabbing pussies of another kind — and in the polls he either lost no ground or gained a point of two. Ten days after the debate, according to the New York Times’ latest survey, he was four to five points up in three key Sun Belt states whose Electoral College votes would almost seal the deal on November 5.
Trump’s supporters weren’t fussed, and neither at a glance are the good citizens of Springfield. Speaking as an eye witness this past week, let me say you couldn’t find a nicer, more polite, or seemingly pacific town, or in the cycles of its history and fortunes a more typical Rust Belt city. Apart from the incidence of homicidal driving that is, which in a further testament to local civility doesn’t prompt the same volume of horns and curses you would hear just about anywhere else were someone to shoot a red light and execute a weaving right-angle turn through four lanes of oncoming traffic. Quadrant’s mobile office survived that particular close encounter, just, which happened no more than a mile to two past the sign that says ‘Welcome to Springfield’. An increasingly and quietly qualified welcome, as it happens.
In Springfield, to describe a neighbour as ‘rude’ is to utter a damning appraisal, so take ingrained good manners as a given and then mull a recent poll conducted in nearby Dayton. Less than three years ago 70 per cent of residents said they would have no objection were a migrant family to move in next door. Today, officially, it is 57 per cent, but likely lower if you consider those respondents who preferred not confirming to a stranger that they have had their fill of foreigners. In Dayton it is the Congolese. Back in Springfield, half an hour away, Haitians. And in many other midsize towns and other small cities where similar demographic upheavals are playing out there is an undeniable disquiet, which helps to explain the allegations of kittynapping, dog-eating and dusky poachers praying on ducks and geese in municipal parks.
