Viewing a single comment thread. View all comments

artful_todger_502 t1_j7nj99w wrote

How can you chronologically be an "adult," and think something like this is real? This species has made totally rethink my views on evolution. That noise you hear when you enter Palmerton are Fish in the Lehigh River laughing at these these deviant freaks. Republicans will never miss an opportunity to live down to the cliche.

27

69FunnyNumberGuy420 t1_j7q1zjj wrote

I don't think they actually literally think it's real, I just think it's an excuse to oppress people they hate.
 
Same thing happened with the Satanic Panic in the 1980s; groundbreaking research in the 1970s on child sex abuse found that the perpetrators, contrary to popular opinion, were pillars of society - church officials, business owners, suburban football coaches. The Satanic Panic was a backlash against that and an excuse to victimize marginalized people.

7

mjgood91 t1_j7po3mc wrote

Honestly, ever since Trump won the GOP presidential nomination in '16, so much everything on the news I've heard has been kind of a "Oh... Well, I guess that's a thing now" that I just don't question the craziest stories the same way I might have otherwise.

When this first circulated back a little while ago, my first thought was "Sheez guys... We have, what, a very, very small handful of schools that are putting in litterboxes, and as we haven't heard anything from the students or teachers themselves, I guess folks in those classrooms are for whatever reason fine with this kinda thing... Can we like move on to something a little more relevant now?". Didn't even think to fact-check if it was actually happening or not with the way everyone was going on about it until like ...just now, I think.

I'm both quite relieved it was a hoax, while being even more disappointed with conservatives (sadly, they have quite the track record of disappoints) that so many of them let such a farce go this far. If you're going to open your mouth and say something, and you're going to say it loudly to a lot of people, you really should know what the heck you're talking about.

6