I haven't seen any citizen accounts of a Haitian having killed a person's cat, though, just an account of an account of an account. A screenshot of a private Facebook post about a report from a neighbor about what a daughter's friend saw ... is technically evidence, but it's approximately the same quality of evidence as a typical urban legend, the sort of "Fw: Fw: Re: Fw: Watch Out!" material that used to spread virally back when the only way we had to spread things virally was email. Today you can read a hundred of them en masse if you prefer.
Recorded evidence would be nice, too, now that we live in a country where 90+% of the population habitually carry video cameras in our pockets. How does someone see something shocking, something ongoing (like a hanging cat corpse) rather than instant, and not be on the ball enough to get photo and video evidence? Even if you're just going to call the police, and you don't anticipate the need to get independent evidence in case the conspiracy goes all the way to the top, wouldn't it be a good idea to get evidence to give to the police in case the criminals mess with the crime scene while you're waiting for a cop to arrive?
Obviously nobody will care about this at all since it's happening in Shelbyville Dayton instead of Springfield, and appears to be a Congolese guy rather than a Haitian!
I mean, sure, we haven't seen them eating cats. We have photos of them carrying waterfowl and at least one police recording reporting 4 poached waterfowl. We have some citizen reports of missing cats. We know cat is a Hatian dish.
There is a reason there is a full court press in the media to try to discredit the accusation. Its shocking. Its highly plausible, 20k poor people who are seemingly not being policed by local authorities (who seem both partisan and overwhelmed, the latter seemingly intentionally by higher levels of government) are going to get up to messed up shit.
This is also happening with the migrants in big cities, including the one in which I work. There are huge sex crimes issues in the shelters, and mostly the people running them are overwhelmed, and there is no reports coming from the migrants. So nearly every prosecution is stemming from a 12-16 year old girl getting an abortion or giving birth.
it'll be interesting to see if this story sticks around and gets more attention, leading to more investigation, or if the media can just quietly sweep it away. Trump might have accidentally stumbled upon a winning move in that debate by bringing it up, even as clumsily as he did.
It's honestly a classic Trump move. He starts off by making a ridiculous claim "they're in here eating cats!" but then when you try to debunk that claim, it ends up looking almost as bad. "OK, they do eat cats in Haiti, but not here." "Oh, they're just eating waterfowl." "All 20k of them are peaceful, lawabiding folks who have perfectly adapted to American culture." "Yeah btw we dumped 20k migrants in this one random town in the midwest, but it'll be fine."
At least with most 90's hearsay there wasn't any obvious reason beyond shock value for someone to make it up to spread, yet it got made up and spread anyway. With the Springfield, OH hearsay it's quite likely that people like "Nate Higgers" (videoed at an earlier town meeting) are inventing more than just awful aliases, in which case we need higher epistemic standards than a game of telephone.
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
I haven't seen any citizen accounts of a Haitian having killed a person's cat, though, just an account of an account of an account. A screenshot of a private Facebook post about a report from a neighbor about what a daughter's friend saw ... is technically evidence, but it's approximately the same quality of evidence as a typical urban legend, the sort of "Fw: Fw: Re: Fw: Watch Out!" material that used to spread virally back when the only way we had to spread things virally was email. Today you can read a hundred of them en masse if you prefer.
I wouldn't consider this debunked, but we're going to need to trace the gossip chain back a few more links before I'd consider it confirmed either.
Recorded evidence would be nice, too, now that we live in a country where 90+% of the population habitually carry video cameras in our pockets. How does someone see something shocking, something ongoing (like a hanging cat corpse) rather than instant, and not be on the ball enough to get photo and video evidence? Even if you're just going to call the police, and you don't anticipate the need to get independent evidence in case the conspiracy goes all the way to the top, wouldn't it be a good idea to get evidence to give to the police in case the criminals mess with the crime scene while you're waiting for a cop to arrive?
Looks like Rufo has found a pretty well validated case of cats on the grill:
https://x.com/realchrisrufo/status/1834926318883852543
Obviously nobody will care about this at all since it's happening in
ShelbyvilleDayton instead of Springfield, and appears to be a Congolese guy rather than a Haitian!More options
Context Copy link
I mean, sure, we haven't seen them eating cats. We have photos of them carrying waterfowl and at least one police recording reporting 4 poached waterfowl. We have some citizen reports of missing cats. We know cat is a Hatian dish.
There is a reason there is a full court press in the media to try to discredit the accusation. Its shocking. Its highly plausible, 20k poor people who are seemingly not being policed by local authorities (who seem both partisan and overwhelmed, the latter seemingly intentionally by higher levels of government) are going to get up to messed up shit.
This is also happening with the migrants in big cities, including the one in which I work. There are huge sex crimes issues in the shelters, and mostly the people running them are overwhelmed, and there is no reports coming from the migrants. So nearly every prosecution is stemming from a 12-16 year old girl getting an abortion or giving birth.
it'll be interesting to see if this story sticks around and gets more attention, leading to more investigation, or if the media can just quietly sweep it away. Trump might have accidentally stumbled upon a winning move in that debate by bringing it up, even as clumsily as he did.
It's honestly a classic Trump move. He starts off by making a ridiculous claim "they're in here eating cats!" but then when you try to debunk that claim, it ends up looking almost as bad. "OK, they do eat cats in Haiti, but not here." "Oh, they're just eating waterfowl." "All 20k of them are peaceful, lawabiding folks who have perfectly adapted to American culture." "Yeah btw we dumped 20k migrants in this one random town in the midwest, but it'll be fine."
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
At least with most 90's hearsay there wasn't any obvious reason beyond shock value for someone to make it up to spread, yet it got made up and spread anyway. With the Springfield, OH hearsay it's quite likely that people like "Nate Higgers" (videoed at an earlier town meeting) are inventing more than just awful aliases, in which case we need higher epistemic standards than a game of telephone.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link