Sunday Smiles: Win It For Peanut and Fred

David Strom 2:30 PM | November 03, 2024
meme


Some stories take on a life of their own, and Peanut the Squirrel's and Fred the Raccoon's certainly did that. 

I have a very small Twitter account--around 4000 followers--and a typical post I put up gets around 500 or fewer views. Let's just say I am no Ben Shapiro or Elon Musk when it comes to followers. 

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Yet I tweeted about Peanut and this happened. 

As I write this, the tweet has nearly a million views, and I expect it the final total to be at least 50% greater. It has been retweeted eight and a half thousand times, has 37,000 likes, and the views move so fast that I can see them change in real-time. 

Why? It's simple: because big problems are easy to make complicated, and it's difficult to wrap your head around the fate of the country, but we all understand that the government raiding a home to murder a squirrel is WRONG in so many ways. The event is the grain of sand around which the pearl of understanding grows. 

People get this story: a Karen who was jealous that a squirrel had more Instagram followers than she calls the authorities, the authorities use a technicality to raid an animal shelter/home (300 rescue animals are housed on the farm) funded by donations driven by Peanut the Squirrel videos, four judges and countless bureaucrats mobilize to turn a home upside down to kidnap the squirrel, and then they kill it. 

That's government abuse in a nutshell, as it were. For my friends, anything. For my enemies, the law. 

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Peanut and Fred the Raccoon, also killed, were hurting nobody. They were in fact, helping raise money for an animal shelter that protects everything from swans to horses that have been injured, abused, abandoned, or can't live in the wild for some reason. 

Peanut, for instance, lost his mom to a car that ran her over. He was rescued as a baby and raised by this family. He brought joy to them and to millions. He wasn't hurting anybody. He didn't have and never would get rabies. Yet the government officials, prompted by a vile, jealous woman, killed him. 

Why? Because they could. They didn't care that no actual good would be done by their actions. They had a rule on their side, and used it to do real harm. 

MAGA has "pounced" or "seized" on this story, in the words of leftists, who mouth platitudes about "nobody being above the law" as if that makes this right. He was an illegal squirrel! 



Of course, if he had crossed the border and claimed asylum, the government would have given him a phone, an EBT card, a hotel room, and near immunity for any crime he committed. Illegal counts only when they want it to. Compassion for me, not for thee. 

This story is viral--it has taken over Twitter/X in fact--because you either see the evil or you don't. It is about bureaucratic indifference, government overreach, setting priorities, determining what "helps" or hurts society be better. If you think killing a pet squirrel and a pet raccoon whom people love makes things better, then look in the mirror and ask why murderers are set free but squirrels raising money for animal rescue get killed. 

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Anybody who has lived with a pet knows the heartbreak of losing them. The two most emotional moments of my recent life have been the loss of my parrot, Rocky, and my cat, Robin. 

When Robin died--she was an indoor/outdoor cat hit by a car--I literally wailed in the middle of the street when I picked her up. I broke down crying and was inconsolable. A neighbor was with me, and I bawled without embarrassment. I took her for cremation and cried in the vet's office as I filled out paperwork. Everybody around me came to console me because they, too, understood the pain. 

When Rocky died, I spent days crying, and I--two years later--cannot go in his room. I have the door closed and locked. He lived with us for 22 years and spent countless hours on my shoulder. I considered him a friend. 

Peanut was not "just" a squirrel, and Fred was not "just" a raccoon. They were companions. And bureaucrats killed them. 

The outpouring of grief from MAGA is partly for their saviors, but equally it is driven by rage at the faceless of a government that doesn't care about people and instead worships power. Many liberals shrug and say "this is the law" and they killers were just doing their jobs. 

Yes. That is the problem. 

On to the memes:




























Remember Garbage Pail Kids?




























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