Once a month I have lunch with some ladies I used to work with at Walmart. We’re in our 60s and 70s and one lady is over 80. We were sitting in a restaurant yesterday when the FEMA emergency alert test occurred. Phones went off and for a few seconds people looked at their phones. One lady in my group had heard (and bought into) right-wing conspiracy chatter, so she was a a bit jumpy and she had turned off her phone. Another lady hadn’t heard anything about it, because she has a lot of other things going on in her life and doesn’t pay much attention to the news or spend time online. The others were aware of the test, but were not concerned at all. We quickly went to talking about other topics and enjoyed our lunch after the test.
Last night I saw a nice older homesteader lady’s video from yesterday morning – she, like my friend, was turning off her and her husband’s cell phones and unplugging her computer. We all have enough worries, especially with the inflation that’s causing many people, especially many elderly people, to struggle to make ends meet, that we don’t need more worries.
For people on the right, it’s very easy to see the far-left crazy and the extremism, in whatever tangent of their “intersectionality” causes that hits us, from the green crazies chaining themselves to trees or gluing themselves to artwork in museums and pavement, to all the gender insanity, to women raging about #MeToo, or BLM’s defund the police, and the list goes on. However, I don’t think most people on the right are willing to admit that a whole lot of the political stuff right-wing pundits and people on social media get worked up about are increasingly just as crazy as the far-left craziness.
I was irritated that my friend was worried about an emergency alert system test, because emergency alerts are intended to give people advance warning in emergencies and save lives. The lesson from Maui wasn’t the government used space lasers or something to start the fires, which I saw a video of Steve Bannon spreading that craziness. It was a story about some government failures and bad decisions, including not sounding emergency alarms. Getting people alarmed and conditioning them to not listen to FEMA emergency alerts or to try to find ways not to receive them is craziness. If there was a serious emergency – we should want everyone to pay attention to emergency alerts.
A whole lot of the people who spread these conspiracy theories, do it because they get a whole lot of clicks from it and make money off of spreading conspiracy theory garbage, that harms other people. Yes, these conspiracy theories inflict harm and they also fuel more divides in our country. The big name people who spread this stuff know these conspiracy theories are garbage and they deliberately want to get people riled up, in fact, they’re counting on it – because they’re making money and advancing political agendas off of this. If someone always wants you to get angry and upset, that person is not operating in a way that is good for you or good for our country. People who are always fired up and “fighting mad” aren’t really making sound decisions.
The right has always been big on preaching responsibility and accountability, so as this latest right-wing conspiracy theory now gets memory-holed and brushed aside, perhaps the people who race to get online and spread these wild conspiracy theories should own up to that they fell for another conspiracy theory and not only got worked up themselves, but rushed online to get other people worked up too.
If you take the attitude, well this time it wasn’t true, but you know how our government can’t be trusted on anything, well that’s also a refusal to admit you fell for another conspiracy theory. Each time you buy into crazy stuff and refuse to admit it, the next time you’re likely to buy into even crazier stuff.
What probably won’t happen is most people who bought into this conspiracy theory won’t look at who all they listened to online or in-person, that were selling them the FEMA conspiracy theories, and stop listening to those people or at least be more skeptical about the information those people put out.
The wisest thing would be to start treating all these online hysterical hot takes conspiracy theories like you do scammers calling you on your phone or getting scamming emails – don’t buy into any of it and start looking for information. A lot of of the big name people who spread conspiracy theories operate just like scammers – they try to throw you off balance and get you alarmed – like, “You owe the IRS $2,000” or I’ve had several calls telling me there was a very large purchase on my Amazon account and trying to tell me how to take care of it. The first thing I do with scam calls and emails is I start searching for information and I put “scam” in my search description. I usually quickly find search results matching the exact theme of the “scam” call or email I received.
This morning I saw a news story warning residents in a GA county about scam calls claiming to be from the local sheriff’s department. It never ends with the scams.
libertybelle diaries 
Seems to me trying to “activate” nanoparticles viaa telephone signal would be way too complicated for our current crop of DC geniuses. So, I’m with you a hunnerd percent.
Heck why go to all that technology in the first place when, all the gummint would need to do is launch the black helicopters which the gummint as everybody – on both sides of the aisle – is well known to have for each dozen citizens in every zipcode from sea to shining sea an hose us down with that space laser Albert Einstein gave the patent for just that purpose for to FDR.
JK, my friend, who had turned off her phone out of concern, is about as tech savvy as I am. So, after the alert she turned her phone back on and voilà the alert message popped up on her phone, LOL.