An old lie makes a new comeback on Tuesday night

And I thought we had hit a new low with the fabrication about J.D. Vance feeling lustfully about a couch.

So earlier this week as discredited and disgusting rumors, which turn out to be equally untrue, about Haitian immigrants eating pets — dogs and cats — cropped up, I thought it reeked of desperation so badly that not even the baron of bluster, Donald Trump, would dare introduce something so outrageously false into a debate where he could be instantly fact-checked and debunked.

But, there it was.

“In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said.

Let’s step back for a moment and recognize this for what it really is: A time-honored tactic for increasing xenophobia. Without mixing metaphor, it is a dog whistle.

Historically, Americans looking to undercut and disparage immigrants focus on the customs of those they fear, often turning to something as familiar as food to plant suspicion and distrust.

It’s not the first time we’ve heard rumors of eating pets or foods that most white Americans would think unclean. Remember that China was cast under a pall of suspicion by Trump when he intimated that COVID-19 may have also been the result of peculiar and suspect foreign culinary habits.

Yet most people, if they’re being honest, have heard jokes about immigrants and food. You know, the tropes about what’s in food at Asian restaurants. Or that certain foods smell or seem funny, even though yesterday’s joke often becomes the next food craze, like sushi, boba tea or curry.

My own German-Russian heritage, now almost exactly a century ago right here in Montana, was under suspicion as a wave of anti-German sentiment swept over the state as World War I and the threat of “kaiserism” approached. The German language was actually banned by law from being spoken in public, and the food was also targeted because it smelled different and tasted different.

Having my feet planted in both worlds, that of my family’s cultural identity and that of my contemporary world, I didn’t realize how deeply both were engrained in me. On one hand, there was something equally familiar and yet foreign to me when I stepped in my great-grandmother’s house — an exotic smell of drying herbs, cooking cabbage and fish. Her basement, with rows and rows of canned food, looked scary. You could still almost smell the garlic sandwiches my great-grandfather loved, even though he’d been dead for years.

I was squarely in the hamburger, pizza and tacos camp.

But more than the odd mix of foreign plants, herbs and jars of pickled things that looked like they belonged in some knock-off carnival attraction, there was a different reason for those items — one that helps illustrate the point that most people are missing when it comes to the overheated pet-eating conversation.

That same great-grandmother, whose house was filled with different food and smells, was also witness to unimaginable tragedy. At least two of her siblings died from starvation and disease before making it to America. In that same house, she’d tell me about coming over to America. First, the endlessly long trip across the ocean, then a dusty, jostling trip on rail to this dusty, dry land of America’s interior. They were literally starving, only briefly interrupted by the generosity of strangers who gave them a few leftover scraps.

I don’t know what they ate to survive on their trip across the sea, or what kind of food they found when they got here. But I remember her going out to dinner with us, wrapping any morsel of food left on a plate in a napkin and tucking it inside her purse. That’s how precious and uncertain the next meal was, and those moments that I witnessed were decades later.

As much as talk of eating the neighbor’s pets is a disservice to the truth and an insult to those who are newer to our country, it also misses a much larger point: Some immigrants come to this country with nothing — no possessions and nothing to eat.

I know people in Montana who have survived on things like squirrels and possum — and that’s not because they had a hankerin’ for varmints. It’s because they were hungry, and humans will do whatever they need to do in order to survive.

As much as I am disturbed by the thought of household pets disappearing for dinner, as much as that is verifiably untrue, if there are people so hungry that they would resort to stealing animals just to eat, there’s a larger problem, and my concern is that we’re missing it.

One of the things that Montanans don’t want to talk about is food insecurity because we’re deeply uncomfortable with the idea that our neighbors may be going to bed on empty stomachs, while many of us, myself included, are lucky enough to have food in the pantry. We’d like to think that in Montana, we have plenty and take care of our own.

However, when the state opted out of a summer supplemental food program for kids, leaders reported a corresponding uptick in demand at places like food banks. And let’s not forget, our state’s food security safety net continues to be stretched thin because of grocery prices that have seemed to outpace other inflation.

As shocking and sensational as the mere idea of eating kittens and puppies is, I’d argue that the reality of hunger, starvation and poverty paint a reality that, if possible, is even worse.