I reworked this blog post from yesterday.
We’re now three weeks past Hurricane Helene and this story is off the national news radar almost completely. The rumors flying on social media, still swirl about among the right-wing echo-chamber. With a presidential election just a couple weeks away, most of our national news will be focused on this race. Many people in western NC and eastern TN still face extreme hardship from Helene, but by and large the national news and most of the American people have moved on. I urge everyone, if it’s within your means, to donate to a charity aiding victims of this storm. I’ve lost trust in many big national charities and look for small charity efforts to support – especially local efforts.
I’ve seen several social media people, who were in the area, and their accounts about what happened vary a bit, but there are some common threads. I wrote about this topic of rumors, especially in a crisis, a few years ago, About rumor control. I experienced a crazy rumor environment during Desert Storm, living in Germany. Our husbands deployed to the Gulf and families were left in Germany, in a heightened terrorist threat environment and scared about the war. As wives called each other, rumors frequently grew into wild tales, that unfortunately many wives believed. In the 1992 we returned to the states and then I began following the Clinton spin information war.
Rumors and spin are almost always false stories being spread, although motives differ. In a crisis often people spread rumors out of fear. The right-wing echo-chamber, even the part that is openly religious, dwells in a community where rumors and fear take hold. Often sentiments of feeling that they and their beliefs are under attack and being threatened by the dominant liberal culture are voiced frequently. It’s hard to stay calm in a crisis or when you feel threatened and it’s easy to link all sorts of happenings, especially unexplained ones, together in overly simplistic ways- “they” – the evil people, are responsible for all of these terrible things.
One Helene grand conspiracy theory asserts some nefarious “they” manipulated the storm clouds and directed the path of the storm. This conspiracy theory gets linked to the evil federal government & Blackrock are going to take the land, where major lithium and other valuable minerals are located, so they can mine them. A very similar grand conspiracy theory spread during the wildfire disaster in Maui. Lithium is a vital resource for the green transformation and another mineral resource was mentioned too that is needed for the AI revolution.
My problem with all of these theories is I’ve watched our government and particularly this administration operate for 4 years – they aren’t grand strategists, in fact, they operate like what we saw in the first few days of this disaster. Private citizens showed up with helicopters to rescue people and get supplies to stranded victims, and they spent the weekend after the storm pleading for the government to send air assets. The NG was sent in, but it wasn’t until near the end of the first week when the 82nd Airborne and 101st were deployed.
Aside from the issue of whether or not technology exists that can steer a hurricane for hundreds of miles, I’m just speaking about how this administration operates – from the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle to the fires in Maui a couple years ago – it’s always a crisis blows up, they drag their feet on responding and spend more effort on trying to spin it away in the media and covering up their ineptitude than actually dealing effectively with the crisis at hand. THEN, they try to spin away their failures and criticism, claim they did a great job and point fingers at the evil right-wing, as the cause all the problems. This was the same operational model of the Obama administration and that’s because the Biden administration is filled with the same Obama people. Heck, look back to the Benghazi crisis and it’s the same response model. The Obama administration initially tried to blame an obscure filmmaker for sparking riots in the attack on the US diplomatic compound in Benghazi. The administration also dragged their feet on launching a rescue effort, then lied and created more narratives to cover up their failures.
The entire Dem/liberal media COVID response effort was more of the same – lies, cover-ups, blaming Trump for all the problems. Throughout that crisis, the Dem experts kept hyping dangers and rolling out one ill-conceived social mitigation effort after another. They lied consistently and even recruited Hollywood to fuel fears and push their social mitigations – one-after-another that were never presented with real evidence that they worked or were actually based on science. It was a long-rolling example of how they just kept making stuff up to fit their agenda to control the American people, justify government waste of trillions of dollars on policies and even vaccines that don’t work, but most of all they consistently blamed evil right-wingers for daring to question or criticize their policies. When BLM launched the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, all of a sudden all those COVID rules no longer applied and it was safe for large protests and even doctors and nurses in large city hospitals poured into the streets to join the crowds.
Even globally, as the elites driving the COVID policies tried to use the pandemic as cover to launch these policies they envisioned as setting the stage for their green revolution (Klaus Schwab wrote a book called “The Great Reset” in the beginning of the pandemic). None of these “grand ideas” were carried out like some ingenious plan – it was all ill-thought out strategies, poorly executed and lots of revising to cover-up missteps. These weren’t grand strategists, but more like out-of-touch kooks.
That’s not to diminish the real harm they caused with their policies, it’s just to say it wasn’t rolled out as some ingenious plan, but as a piecemeal effort where Dr. Fauci or one of the big name policy people would churn out one stupid policy after another, in a rather ad hoc fashion and then ramp up some lame spin effort in the media to sell it, as resistance grew or people were pointing out how stupid the policies were or that they weren’t practical. So, even in this case there were elites with an actual “grand vision,” but they weren’t very good at turning their vision into some coherent plan. What we got was a big media spin show to try to con us into submitting.
This is why I’m very skeptical of some grand conspiracy theory with Hurricane Helene, involving some evil genius “they’ who plotted all of this. I think mother nature can wreck havoc and bizarre events of all sorts that we never envisioned. Growing up in the mountains, well, massive geological upheavals created those very mountains without any human hands involved and strange weather events, climatic events, and even geological upheavals can happen again.
There very likely are big business interests in lithium deposits in Appalachia and sure they might swoop in to try to buy out victims in this crisis, but that’s a far cry from some grand plan that caused all of this so the evil globalists could get their hands on these lithium deposits. It’s more that big vultures watch victims struggle, then swoop in to plunder the wreckage. I saw one video by someone there helping , who asserted that since we left Afghanistan and lost access to those huge mineral reserves, we need new lithium reserves. Well, since I criticized US policy since GWB ordered our invasion of Afghanistan and allowed the Chinese to buy all rights to those mineral reserves – we never had access to Afghanistan’s vast mineral reserves – I remembered we let China buy all the rights to those. There’s some issue of those contracts were up for renegotiation and I don’t remember all the details, but that led to some of the political turmoil that led to the Taliban seizing control of the government in Kabul, but my point is the US never had rights to the mineral reserves in Afghanistan – we let the Chinese buy those… while we put blood and treasure into trying to stand up the Afghan government and provide security for the country all those years. That’s how stupid our foreign policy was.
Of more immediate concern to me is the reports of highly toxic waste in the flood sludge. I don’t know what all industrial and other toxic waste might have washed into those flood waters. but that should be a an urgent health issue to identify and inform people in those areas. Yet, all the Biden administration wants to hype is right-wing misinformation and how that’s hurting FEMA’s response efforts.
Sure, the US needs lithium and other mineral reserves for the green transformation, but what I’m getting at is this conspiracy theory, as presented, about Helene, has a lot of holes. The administration trying to cover-up their response failures seems much more likely. This administration wants this disaster off the front pages, especially this close to a presidential election. Imagine headlines if there really is highly toxic waste present in the floodwaters and mud and the federal government knows about it, but is trying to downplay it (I think this is likely true). I know how much effort has gone into Dems covering up other big scandals and this often fuels more wild right-wing conspiracy theories, that often get in the way of exposing the real Dem cover-ups and corruption.
From what I’ve seen in this sequence of events – the governor of NC & WH were slow to respond in the first days after the disaster. And I believe there’s likely some effort at covering up that slow response and perhaps there’s a serious health hazard the federal government might be downplaying. I’ve seen no evidence of some grand plan of some “they,” including controlling the weather.
I believe the victims of Helene will be forgotten by the federal government and by most Americans (including most of the loud, right-wing online crowd), who quickly move on to the next big story to fight about. The left vs. right spin battles aren’t about helping Americans, they’re about driving narratives and ginning up controversy.
Among the right, there are many popular pundits and social media personalities, whose bread and butter is “connecting dots” of all sorts of truly unconnected events into big conspiracy theories, Many people buy into almost all of them, even though 99.9% of these connected dots theories are bs. What they are is constant money-making by feeding right-wing grievances. Grand conspiracy theories that lack hard evidence linking the pieces together only fuel more anger, more divides and can get in the way of helping the actual victims. The worst effect of these grand conspiracy theories is they work to spread fear and disempower people. Fear weighs you down and gets in the way of unleashing all our human potential – it sucks us of our God-given power of personal agency – to forge ahead, even in the most extreme adversity.
I’m not saying people need to hush, don’t have a right to their own views, or that I know it all about anything. In America we do have the right to believe in and talk about conspiracy theories – and sometimes those do turn out to be true, even though most don’t. I’m all for people expressing their views, even controversial ones. What I’m saying is tread cautiously about buying into grand conspiracy theories, because they usually aren’t true – especially with this inept bunch of nitwits in the Biden administration. They always cover-up their failures to respond promptly or assess a crisis situation accurately. And rather than a grand conspiracy theory, what’s unfolding could much more likely be a chaotic cover-up effort, like in Benghazi, the pandemic, the Afghanistan withdrawal or the wildfires in Maui.
Don’t assign superhuman powers to these corrupt nincompoops, that leave you feeling powerless.
In Helene, the WH has been busily churning out photo-ops about all their grand relief efforts and one press conference after another about their “whole of government” approach to dealing with this disaster, to cover-up for their slow response and failures. However, their biggest narrative about Helene is to rant about right-wing misinformation impeding FEMA’s efforts and endangering FEMA workers… At the same time they’re ramping up alarm about dangerous right-wing misinformation and even a story about NG reporting two trucks of armed militia hunting FEMA workers.
No matter what the crisis, at home or abroad, this administration, just like the Obama administration, can be counted on to be leading from way, way behind, then spending more time trying to do damage control for their failures than actually finding solutions. And in the end, the Dem spin crowd will blame Trump or the right-wing conspiracy theories for causing all of the problems with this disaster response. The evil right-wing will become the obscure filmmaker of Benghazi scapegoat for this crisis.
By the time government investigations into this disaster response happen most of the country will no longer care and none of the lessons learned that could improve disaster response will likely be implemented. That’s the way the federal bureaucracy operates – each partisan side embarks on endless investigations, hurling allegations of nefarious wrongdoing back and forth, while American victims suffer. I’m not wasting a lot of energy or fuming about the government in this disaster.
The big lesson I’m learning is that individual citizens have real power and personal agency to respond quickly, to effect real results fast. In this disaster they demonstrated the ability to network in innovative and creative ways. Individual YouTubers and people on other social media initiated fundraisers, coordinated with local churches and other people on the ground to get assistance rolling in before the government even responded. Many churches and religious groups jumped into action. Teams of private groups and organizations rolled in and organized amongst themselves, even bringing air assets before the government responded. Individual citizens showed the true spirit of America and the best of us. If we call the government, especially in Washington, to come save us, well, we will probably find out no one’s answering.
Americans all over the country and even some people beyond our borders saw people in crisis in NC & TN and wanted to help. That’s the spirit of America that will save our country, not all the partisan fighting, political drama, and definitely not letting fear of the government and corrupt elites take hold.
America is a country dedicated to the empowerment of individuals and individual liberty. Individuals rushed into action and saved lives in this disaster and mobilized. That should be the lesson learned.
The photo above is a small piece I stitched a long time ago. The more chaotic and crazy things become, I’m finding more calm and inner peace by trusting that God is in control. I spent a good part of my adult life avoiding religion, even though I was raised going to church. I used to consider myself pretty much agnostic. In the past 25 years, I came to know that it is only by the grace of God that I am still here and free to speak my mind. I hope more Americans start trusting in each other rather than placing trust in politicians or the government. Individuals united in common causes can work miracles, as we’ve seen with the relief efforts in NC & TN. People just saw a need and pulled together to help. They’ve provided a true beacon of hope, in a world filled with cynicism and distrust.
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