"FEMA also been accused by former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, and other Republicans of not being able to respond well enough to Helene because it had diverted disaster relief funds to help migrants.
That is not true, because while FEMA administers the Shelter and Services Program, funding for it comes from a separate pot of money funded by Congress for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Other false claims that have circulated include that people taking federal relief money could see their land seized or that that $750 is the most they will ever get to rebuild. FEMA has pushed back against the false claims and conspiracy theories, setting up a page on its website to combat misinformation and rumors."
Trump has now successfully sown distrust in FEMA.
FEMA. An agency created to help people recover from natural disasters.
We can put that right up on the list with news organizations, the Department of Education, our election system, and children’s hospitals.
The damage that Trump has done to this country will take decades to recover from. If we ever can. You figure, with the 3 stooges on the bench willing to carry on Trump’s legacy, we’re looking at 40 years minimum of lingering Trump fuckery.
And there’s a very good chance he’ll become President again. At that point, we as a country deserve whatever we get.
As usual, Trump only amplifies something that was floating around for decades. FEMA has long been the target of conspiracy theories. You can get a taste of it from the old X-Files movie. Being a federal department that gets to do extraordinary things in emergencies tends to make it a target.
The difference is back then, it was relegated to the insane fringe. The premise of the X-Files is “what if all those farfetched conspiracy theories were true”, evil FEMA was in the same category as cryptids and alien abduction. Now it’s part of the platform of the second largest political party in the country. It’s roughly equivalent to campaigning on killing Bigfoot, if not worse because at least the latter is harmless.
I somewhat disagree with this.
The conspiracy theories that have been floating around were the typically outlandish and unrealistic conspiracy theories of the time. You know, like the moon landing being fake. And with social media being nonexistent and the conspiracy theories being so batshit crazy, it was near impossible for these theories to gain any kind of critical mass or be taken seriously.
And Trump doesn’t amplify existing things. He creates conspiracy theories around literally everything and just hopes some of them stick. Mostly around migrants. Or he ties them back to migrants.
FEMA? Fema can’t help you because they gave all their money to the migrants. Child Care? Gas? Those would plummet in price if we just got rid of all the migrants, if you believe what Trump said at the debate. 20,000 Hatians in Ohio? If we were to just get rid of them, it would solve whatever problems your state is having too! Judges in his trials can’t be impartial because they have Mexican heritage.
The real problem is that there are far more openly racist people in our country than we were willing to admit to. We all have that creepy Uncle Joe in our family that only comes around for holidays, looks at his niece just a little too long, and spends half the day spouting racist bullshit, but never really considered just how many Uncle Joes there are in this country. Trump realized that and has simply been tapping into their racism ever since. That’s all it is. Trump has simply coralled the most gullible and racist into one huge voting bloc, and we severely underestimated how big that bloc could get.
And now it’s too late. There are enough of them in this country where they are openly embracing the racism and saying “Yeah, we want it this way.” And theree may be enough of them to get what they want.
People forget the conspiracy theories from Katrina. Where they accused FEMA of stockpiling body bags in New Orleans before the hurricane. And of course the 9/11 conspiracies which weren’t helped by the Bush administration actually lying to make sure we ended up in not one, but two wars.
TBF, the crazies have been talking about deranged things in relation to FEMA for decades. Like everything else, dementia donnie did not build that, he just walked in the front door and put his name on this shit.
For instance, the hatriot radio types were talking about Clinton’s “FEMA death camps” way back in the 90s.
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As to the last part, the reason cons fight so hard against a properly liberal (in every meaning of that term) education is because they know that getting a proper education is highly likely to NOT churn out a reprogrammable meatbot ready for Republicans to dump propaganda in their heads…
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I think our schools should start teaching critical thinking, media literacy and how to spot and name logical fallacies from a very early age and all through the 12th grade. You don’t have to be university-bound to learn this stuff; this should be foundational. It also gives people the tools to be more autodidactic - the poorly-educated talk about how they “did their own research” and others should do this, too. With proper instruction, I would actually think this is a good thing; however, for people who are primed for nonsense and not armored with critical thinking skills, this often does not turn out well. Otherwise, with a properly educated citizenry, I would think “doing your own research” would not have the negative connotation it now does.
But schooling should be done in such a way that people can, and have the will to, learn new things.
This. This, this, this, this, this.
We spent decades telling people, some of which quite frankly have no business in college, that college is literally the only path forward. And then when all of these people show up and find college to be way, way too hard for them, we continued to (and continue to) dumb down the education we provide so more people will graduate with increasingly worthless degrees.
It’s how we’ve traditionally handled everything in the US. Rather than give people the tools to rise up to meet the standards, we simply drop the standards and then wonder why so many so-called college graduates having no clue what they’re talking about.
But the graduation percentages are all that matters. Push them through the system for 13 years, give them the same diploma that you give students who actually earned it, and then wonder why employers consider diplomas in general worthless. And the same thing is happening with college degrees now.
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I’m not saying this isn’t true, just please don’t drag the rest of the world with you. Psychos in the world are taking notes, if Trump wins they’ll follow his lead.
Not just Trump. Elongated Muskrat couldn’t help himself.
That would be death, destruction and collapse - enjoy.
Putin, and Trump.