Storms Helene and Milton have triggered rise of misinformation stoked by Trump and fellow Republicans
Meteorologists tracking the advance of Hurricane Milton have been targeted by a deluge of conspiracy theories that they were controlling the weather, abuse and even death threats, amid what they say is an unprecedented surge in misinformation as two major hurricanes have hit the US.
A series of falsehoods and threats have swirled in the two weeks since Hurricane Helene tore through six states causing several hundred deaths, followed by Milton crashing into Florida on Wednesday.
The extent of the misinformation, which has been stoked by Donald Trump and his followers, has been such that it has stymied the ability to help hurricane-hit communities, according to the head of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema).
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Killing education is definitely a big part of it, but controlling every news source in huge areas and pumping outright lies and disinformation 24/7 can eventually break down anyone living in that environment.
These people desperately cling to hierarchy. Bad people go to jail, good people don’t.
These people never hear about Trump being bad, and only see him slip though the law effortlessly.
All they see is Trump being innocent and not getting in trouble at all, ever, for anything. Half of all politics and nearly all Media hide or obfuscate Trump’s insanity and incompetence.
So many voters see a president everyone they know and talk to adores, getting dragged by Democrats to no effect.
“If he was guilty he’d be in Jail, but since he’s not in jail Democrats must be liars and everything Republicans say about him is true.”
Easy, thoughtless conclusions that reinforce their worldview and solidify them as supremely correct.
Now, they’ll certainly move the goalposts once he is in Jail, because they will also never admit they were wrong about anything because if they’re wrong about Trump, they’re wrong about their entire worldview and that’s something they are not mentally able to do.
I think its a very specific kind of person myself. Noy necessarily stupid, although many of them are.
To me, the person they target the best is both A) people who are easy to wind up and B) the kind who’ll, despite even knowing they know nothing about a given subject, will, if they hear something they just don’t like, will declare it to be bullshit and will never, ever back down from that regardless.
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Honestly it would be funny to see Biden do some of this. He only has a few months left and can do whatever because of the supreme court. He could just go on TV an be like: “You know what? The conspiracies are true. We’re gonna turn off the doppler radars in southern states. No more flying. No more weather forecast. We’re going to ban farm laborers to come harvest your crops. The unpredicted weather is gonna ruin the crops anyways. We’re going to stop FEMA from giving aid in your republican states. Communism is unacceptable. We’re gonna ban fossil fuel in the south because that drives the weather crazy. No more cars. Enjoy the 1800s. Bye”
Hey – I live here and can move but a lot of people are impoverished and can’t. Feels wrong to collectively turn the back to them
To those who disagree with the above:
- Moving is damn expensive.
- Don’t forget that the Republicans are working hard to prevent legitimate voters from voting, namely anyone who is more likely to support NOAA, NHC, climate science, education, FEMA, etc.
I would send the crying shit stain loser MAGATs cheeseburgers and Diet Cokes. Do not waste a good tree product on them.
In response to that, we could have.
-Progressives hate MAGA and want it dismantled.
-Progressives hate the National Rifle Association and want it dismantled.
-Progressives hate the Greed Over People and want it to be silenced.
-Progressives now also hate the Heritage Foundation.
All the things conservatives hate are non partisan services to humanity whereas the things you named are blights upon our nation.
It’s nice to put myself in the other person’s shoes like this every once in a while to double check that holy shit I have NOT been tricked into supporting the baddies.
(Relatively speaking, of course)
Everything is a conspiracy when you don’t know how anything works.
If you live in the south east and you are repeating conspiracy theories about the hurricane. May you rot in hell.
This is absolutely baffling being from practically any other English speaking country.
I mean, we have our share of crazies, but they’re a tiny proportion.
It’s one thing to doubt the well established climate science (very frustrating), but it’s another thing to actually believe humans can precisely control the weather.
It’s extremely troubling knowing these people exist, and can vote in the most powerful country on earth.
😬
Something, something if you believe in things without evidence (religion) it’s not actually that surprising. And we (Australia) are much less religious than you. Though, this is certainly my bias talking.
Even being in the US, it is just as baffling, yet it is also somehow completely believable because some of us get to see it up close.
It’s insane knee-jerk team sports by people who tend to not get affected by certain social issues.
I mean cloud seeding has been happening for a very long time. I first heard of it as a story about a dude in the '50’s pissed the ski season sucked flew up and just dumped dry ice at a lower-ish Altitude somewhere up in the ADKs and sure as shit it works… under very specific conditions and nothing like how the mad skier did it.
It’s honestly not that baffling of a jump from cloud seeding to hurricane inseminating when you put it side by side with shit like flat earthers, Christianity, Tom Brady winning 7 rings deflating footballs, aliens building ancient architecture, the music city miracle wasn’t a forward lateral, Brett Hull’s skate wasnt in the goal crease for the 99 Stanley Cup winning goal, government using vaccines to drug the public rather than just putting drugs in toilet paper for 1/1billionth the cost and 100% distribution efficiency… etc. (Totally fucked myself by throwing a blanket over all of Christianity instead of itemizing shit like eating meat on Friday and humans have been around for only 2000 years lol)
Death threats to meteorologists - as one does.
Does anyone but me think that’s simply insane?
The irony
Of course it’s insane! To threaten these absolute gods who wield the power of nature (and also accept part time work explaining their plots on television.)
Is their plan to shoot someone who can summon hurricanes?
What’s going to happen if (when?) a meteorologist actually gets murdered over this?
If I were a meteorologist, I would refuse to go on the air after that. Could you blame any of them for wanting to preserve their own lies? Which will inevitably lead to more people getting killed in weather events.
This is so fucked up.
I know you meant lives not lies, but it’s an interesting typo
Ah fuck, yeah I did.
We should just stop any weather predictions for the South.
Let it all be God’s surprise to them, and if a surprise hurricane comes up and knocks them on their ass, well, God works in mysterious ways.
Or not because there are plenty of good people in the South who are worried about these threats and worried about climate change and try to get politicians who are also worried about climate change into office so they can do something about it. Those people are in the minority, but they still exist.
Also, plenty of children.
As someone who escaped, we should set up funds to let decent people leave for civilized places.
I simply do not consider the south redeemable at this point, we’ve given them 150 years and it’s just been a cancer on the rest of the country.
If Milton had stayed Cat 5, this could have been a self-solving problem.
Except not all the idiots lived in the path of Milton, or even where hurricanes go at all. I can’t explain why the presence of hurricanes has become yet another idiotic political issue, but the MAGA morons are latching on to it.
I just saw someone on Facebook saying the aurora being bigger than usual was caused by the weather radars.
I mean ignoring the fact that the aurora has gone through phases for all of recorded history, the amount of energy it would take to generate that is enormous. Do they think we’ve launched a bunch of nuclear power plants into orbit to power these things? Or maybe the giant nuclear power plant in the sky might be the real reason?
No, they just don’t understand the scale of things because they’re used to their small town thinking. Just like they don’t understand how much a billion dollars is and why one persons shouldn’t be allowed to have that much while others have none.
Why is Trump allowed to keep spreading this unethical horseshit?
The rulers welcome any culture war distractions to take the masses’ eyes off the ongoing class war we have been losing for generations.
The horrible horrible truth is – because they want it https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/
Look up the John Stewart bit from earlier in this election where he shows clips of the same question verbatim being asked to politicians. They first clip of each one was them being asked at a podium or town hall then the very same question is asked to the same politician in a court room and you can guess the results. 100% of the clips showed the complete opposite answers being given by the politician to the public vs in the court room.
Does anyone want to summarize the misinformation they’re referring to? I’m slightly curious but not enough to dig into what the crazy half of the country is up to today. I’m sure I’m not the only one feeling a lack of enthusiasm to read their bullshit directly.
MTG claimed the hurricanes were controlled weather created by democrats
I love how I read her name Magic the Gathering every time
How hard would it be, to take a state, like Mississippi, wall it off completely from the US (except for the coast so they can have marine ports) get all the citizens who don’t want to be in a conservative hell hole a several year stipend and move them to somewhere else of their choosing.
Then, we set up this walled off land to be completely controlled by conservatives. They will be able to live in a conservative Utopia. We will move everyone who requests it and their stuff freely to this area.
We let them do whatever they deem necessary. Hell, we can give them a head start, by letting them stay connected to the grid, and help them organize their own government. Then once we do that, we create a massive DMZ around the state.
Then we just let them do what they will inevitably do and become a western Iran.
Like a trail of tears kind of thing? That hasn’t historically worked out morally
Uhm. If I remember right, that was a forced relocation.
This would be more of like a national experiment. “Come live in a GOP paradise” “And for anyone stuck in this state, yo we got you covered.”
Maybe put like a priority housing into effect so GOP land refugees get first bids on homes, or can’t be denied apartments because they’ll have the government covering it for x many years.
Then the people who want to live in GOP land can have first class one way tickets, with all moving expenses paid, but then once they get there they gotta negotiate amongst themselves how to get property because that’s GOP land rules not modern society rules.
But yeah the first year a lot of people will kick the bucket mostly because of the lack of everything they take for granted
And then bomb them into oblivion for the crime of poisoning their neighboring states’ air.
My hope is that if we can contain it to a geographic area we would have better ways to negotiate with them on curbing emissions.
They’ll likely have enough problems with death and disease where bombing them would probably end up helping them
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That’s mean I just have a wild imagination
Conspiracies?! Sounds like we’re over the target.
