Of Conspiracy Theories and Helene
There’s a conspiracy theory making the rounds that goes thusly: The Biden Administration has, at best, slow walked the recovery efforts to Hurricane Helene’s swath of destruction or, at worst, actively obstructed those efforts in an effort to suppress the votes of those displaced in next month’s election; additionally the Government and the media are actively suppressing or intentionally under reporting the state of things on the ground in Appalachia for the same purpose.
A brief aside: I am not aiming this essay at the folks actively trying to recover from the storm, who have far more important things to worry about right now and who, by right of the trauma they are currently experiencing, will form their own opinions and explanations about what went on and why. They have seen memories and histories, family and neighbors washed away. They have the right to process and understand this trauma for themselves. This is not a case of some doofus in New Hampshire telling the victims of Helene what to think.
No, I am addressing those who, like me, are trying to understand what is going on in a fluid situation, knowing that first reports tend to be inaccurate.
Back to the conspiracy theory. First off it is in clear violation of Hanlon’s Razor: That one should never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity. Were there a tiny cabal pulling the strings here we would hear whistles being already blown, officials reporting that they’d been ordered to stand down, folks violating orders out of conscience, that sort of thing.
It is much more likely that government forecasters got the storm and its devastating results wrong. Incompetence? Certainly. Dereliction of duty? Entirely possible. Layers of misunderstandings and ignorance of the region and how a hurricane striking there would impact the residents? Probably. A tiny cabal managing to operate in complete secrecy? Almost certainly not.
Let me remind you: We’ve seen this story before. And just like after Helene, Katrina was followed by conspiracy theories, too. I’ll allow Kanye West to elucidate the intricacies of the theory:
Yes, in Anno Domini 2024 we can see this as just and early step in Kanye’s mouth marching him from fame to infamy, but this belief that race was a motivating factor in the government response wasn’t an unaired suggestion at the time.
I can’t claim to have any more than a distant and surface level understanding of either culture – I’ve neither eaten a beignet nor supped at a Waffle House, not by choice but through lack of opportunity – so I’ll simply say this: It’s my guess that neither New Orleans – now or pre-Katrina – nor Appalachia are monolithic cultures, but rather intricate webs of subcultures, where people can tell what part of town or what county you’re from through subtle dialect differences. Both carry with them a deep sense of, and pride of, place.
To see that place destroyed must be unspeakably traumatic and must result in a deeply felt sense of –excuse the pun – powerlessness.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere here at Ordinary Times, that’s fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
Both theories combine that powerlessness with a resentment of the occupant of the White House and a misunderstanding of the relationship of causation and correlation. Just because two things or events correlate, doesn’t mean one caused the other.
There’s also a logical flaw which is particularly pronounced when it comes to the Helene response.
Let me set the stage.
We have a tight election going which is, like seemingly every election, the most consequential election of our lifetimes.
It’s a tight race.
The candidate for the party in power is not, shall we say, the best retail politician.
Nor is she a great speaker.
She is up against a candidate who, if nothing else, has proven he can win an election despite what the conventional wisdom, particularly among the cognoscenti, would suggest.1
Wouldn’t the smarter play – if, in fact, the response was primarily politically motivated; which is possible, but unlikely – be to swoop in with a show of care, concern and competence, winning over the locals?
Like I said: I don’t buy that politics, and the election next month, were the prime motivator here. I think it far more likely that the government response was more due to being underprepared than to being unwilling.
Was it politics that motivated the FAA to restrict the landing of privately owned planes so as to suppress images of the destruction or was it a decision made in good faith that time will sort of the wisdom of?
It could be either, but for it to be the former I’d be forced to choose whether the media was intentionally underreporting the story or whether the government is keeping the story dark.
Helene is tragic. This is inarguable. It knocked power out for an area longer than the greatest extent of the Western Front in WWI.
Helene was just a Tropical Storm over land, but one traveling over wet land and hot on the heels of a previous flooding event. Knox News reports that, according to Tennessee Valley Authority spokesperson Scott Brooks, “The Nolichucky River watershed got rainfall ‘equal to about a 1-in-5,000-years rain event’.”
This was a Black Swan2 event, not something FEMA planners prepared and drilled for.
It is understandable that the victims of Helene may not be looking at the situation with cool rationality.
But those of us who do have that luxury should, in my opinion, take advantage of it. Let the facts develop. Contribute to those organizations dedicating themselves to search, rescue and recovery and if nothing else, keep the folks in Appalachia right now it our thoughts and prayers.
- In the original post I wrongly suggested that Coal Country’s pivot to the GOP beginning in the nineties was a wider phenomenon than it was. This has been removed. Thank you to commenters for pointing out the error.
- The term, coined by Nassim Nicholas Taleb in his book of the same name, refers to an event which is extremely unlikely in the short term but certain to happen in the long term. These events appear, because we lack either the anticipation of the event or are ignorant that is a possibility. A turkey being slaughter by the same hand that fattened him is a Black Swan event to the turkey, because he didn’t know it could happen.
Letting the facts develop would be great – if you had any of the right.
Lets start with NWS forecasts – two days before the storm – once the track firmed up – Weather Service forecast offices from Florida to Virginia put out watches and warnings for significant life threatening flooding. They kept those warnings up – and expanded the urgency of those warnings as the storm progressed inland. Online writers from North Carolina have noted since then that they didn’t fully believe what they were being told and while that lack of belief was likely not responsible for any injury or death, the NWS can only do so much to offset it. an estimated 40 Trillion gallons of water flowed in this storm, and the likelihood of any area escaping unscathed was precisely nil.
Then there’s the federal response. FEMA keeps putting out statements every day about what they are doing – statements that started before the storm when they announced the prepositioning of supplies and search and rescue professionals. FEMA actually does plan for events of this size and seem to be executing to plan. The problem is that FEMA Is never the first or second of third wave of boots on the ground – the search and rescue folks come in state-level task forces from all over (even though FEMA Pays for them); temporary power is run into disaster zones by the US Army and the Corps of Engineers (coordinated by FEMA and paid for by FEMA); initial shelter funding goes to state and local agencies and charities who do the important work of stabilizing people’s housing. FEMA directs and manages all that, but it’s an army of federal employees and contractors sitting in rooms elsewhere on computers and phones twelve hours a day for months. Those same nameless faceless bureaucrats also contract for the water and food deliveries currently being carried out by the National Guard, Army, Marines, and convoys escorted by countless police cars. And thanks to the President’s swift response to each state’s disaster declaration request, all the private contractors removing debris will be paid by FEMA through USACE. FEMA also supports many of the charities working in the zone now – everyone from the Cajun Navy to Samaritan’s Purse to the mule trains can and likely will get some or all their costs eventually reimbursed.
In short FEMA will not likely be the image seen on the ground – BY DESIGN. They are working hard around the clock as is and was the Weather Service and every other federal agency assigned by FEMA to respond. Accusing them of malpractice or incompetence or laziness is an insult. They will be doing for months and in some cases years. Right along side the people needing them.
Claiming otherwise – whether from ignorance of the process or willingly for political purposes is deeply insulting and frankly unpatriotic.Report
“The area devastated by this disaster is populated by folks with an historic respect for the power of organized labor and which only underwent its political realignment from Democrats to the GOP within the last three decades.”
WAIT, WHAAAT?Report
Many parts of Appalachia were solid blue until the nineties.Report
Can you expand on your claim that WNC Appalachian folks are “strong union supporters”? There’s never been extensive industry in the area except for some long-departed fabric production and clothing assembly. The union presence was far north of here in coal country.Report
I was thinking of Coal Country when I made that comment. If I need to correct it, I will.Report
In the long sweep of the storm path from Florida thru Georgia, South Carolina North Carolina and Virginia, Coal Country is a fleck of blue in a sea of red.Report
I’ll edit. Thank you.Report
Do a refresh and you’ll see the updated version. Thank you to both of you for pointing out the error.Report
It’s important to grasp how conspiracy theorists work.
Before an event even happens, the conspiracist is already in a state of anxiety, fear and rage.
Something Is Wrong with the world, they think, and they are constantly searching for a villain to blame.
In other words their belief in a conspiracy isn’t an innocent error or result of faulty reasoning.
And the fear and rage doesn’t need to spring from a place of powerlessness but a sense of injustice, that the proper order of things is being perverted.
In all this, Trumpism stand like a beacon, a perverse Statue of Bigotry summoning all who are angry and resentful.
Are the Jews making it rain, or causing a forest fire?
Welcome to Trumplandia!
Do vaccines cause autism?
Step right this way!
Are immigrants trying to eat your daughter and rape your dog?
You are among likeminded friends!
Like I said earlier. the only absolute creed that one must believe in to be a Trumpist is that Trump never loses, and in fact is the rightful President.Report