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We should have seen this one coming. Not the fires —\u00a0 the conservative reactions. Especially about the one thing they seem most afraid of.<\/p>\n
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Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley, 9 Jan 2025<\/strong>: Elon Musk Endorses Alex Jones\u2019 Claim That the Los Angeles Fires Were Set Intentionally<\/a>, subtitled “Big if true.”<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Wednesday afternoon on Twitter, now known as X, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones wrote that the ongoing Los Angeles wildfires have been engineered by \u201cglobalists\u201d in order to \u201cdeindustrialize\u201d the United States.<\/p>\n Billionaire technology investor Elon Musk, who is living on the incoming president\u2019s property<\/a> while leading his commission on reorganizing the government<\/a> and advising him on other matters, saw this post\u2014and he liked what he saw!<\/p>\n [[ image of tweet by Alex Jones omitted ]]<\/p>\n This is interesting\u2014concerning, even\u2014for a number of reasons. But it may be significant at the moment given that Jones has, in the past, explained that \u201cJewish mafia\u201d <\/a> figures like George Soros are a key part of the \u201cglobalist\u201d alliance. (If you\u2019re wondering why the Jewish mafia would burn down Hollywood, which it runs<\/em>, a different post of Jones\u2019 sort of explains<\/a>: It\u2019s because globalists want to turn the Pacific Palisades neighborhood that has been devastated by fire into a \u201csmart city<\/a>.\u201d In urban planning, the phrase \u201csmart city\u201d refers to the idea of using technology to gather information about traffic and wastewater and stuff<\/a>, but in Jones\u2019 mind, smart city initiatives are a kind of Trojan horse for implementing totalitarian surveillance and mind control<\/a>, similar to how Bill Gates put microchips in the COVID vaccine.) The accusation also echoes Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene\u2019s infamous claim that a previous<\/em> wildfire was started by the (Jewish) Rothschild family using satellite-borne lasers<\/a>.<\/p>\n It would not be Musk\u2019s first foray into white-supremacist conspiracy thinking: For one, he also<\/em> believes that George Soros orchestrates world events in an effort to destroy \u201cthe West<\/a>.\u201d In late 2023, he responded positively to a Twitter\/X post that complained that \u201cwestern Jewish populations\u201d have been \u201cflooding\u201d developed countries with \u201chordes of minorities\u201d and encouraging \u201chatred against whites.\u201d (Wrote Musk: \u201cYou have said the actual truth.\u201d)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n To promote such vast conspiracy theories tells me that these are very stupid people. They have no idea of how absurdly complex it would be to arrange such world-wide conspiracies. Not to mention the bigotry apparent in their chosen targets.<\/p>\n \\<\/p>\n I saw two examples of such stupendously naive thinking on Facebook today. No links; I’ll have to paraphrase.<\/p>\n The thing about social media is that anyone with such a half-baked idea can post something, implicitly accusing the government of being incompetent, and have their message spread, and so gradually undermine the competence and authority of government officials, about whom there is no rational reason to think they are not doing the very best they can, under difficult circumstances, to manage such a crisis.<\/p>\n Some people just don’t have a grip on reality.<\/p>\n \\\\<\/p>\n It’s the climate, stupid.<\/p>\n NY Times, Christopher Flavelle, 10 Jan 2025<\/strong>: L.A. Fires Show Limits of America\u2019s Efforts to Cope With Climate Change<\/a>, subtitled “California has focused on fortifying communities against wildfires. But with growing threats, that may not be enough.”<\/p>\n This week\u2019s fires around Los Angeles present a puzzle: Why is California, the state best equipped to deal with wildfires, seemingly unable to prevent blazes from consuming entire chunks of the country\u2019s second-largest city?<\/p>\n California\u2019s building code for wildfires is among the most protective in the nation. Its local fire departments are backed up by CalFire, the state fire agency, which has a $4 billion budget<\/a> and some of the best trained firefighters in the world. The state\u2019s huge tax base generates effectively unlimited resources for wildfire protection. And California has mandatory statewide requirements that homeowners in risky areas create \u201cdefensible space\u201d around their property \u2014 rules that other Western states would like to apply but can\u2019t because it would anger conservative voters.<\/p>\n Yet the events of this week demonstrate the limits of those efforts, raising uncomfortable questions about whether any part of the United States \u2014 even the wealthiest, best prepared and most experienced \u2014 can truly adapt to wildfires made worse by a hotter climate.<\/p>\n \u201cClimate change, and climate events, are causing us to butt up against that limit,\u201d said Joshua Saks, the adaptation program director for Georgetown Climate Center at Georgetown University Law Center in Washington. \u201cThe risk will always grow, and at some point outpace what you\u2019ve done.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n I heard an NPR piece this morning about the California wildfires, which discussed the history of urban planning in LA, how so many houses were built tightly together on narrow roads, without adequate evacuation planning, because no one thought about evacuation planning 60 or 70 years ago. The current crisis is not about reservoirs so much as living the consequences of bad (or simply naive) decisions made decades ago. (Can we make better decisions today?) This piece acknowledges this.<\/p>\n Part of the extensive damage from the fires in Los Angeles may reflect errors in planning or execution. Fire hydrants designed to fight house fires ran dry<\/a>, as water reserves faced greater demand than officials anticipated. It\u2019s not clear that residents had sufficient warning or that evacuation routes were well planned. The second-guessing and questions about accountability have already begun<\/a> even as the fires continue to rage.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n But some people just want to blame people they already don’t like. They deny all the evidence for climate change.<\/p>\n Salon, Amanda Marcotte, 10 Jan 2025<\/strong>: “DEI is deadly”: Fox News spin on California wildfires exposes MAGA’s total incoherence<\/a>, subtitled “Jesse Watters implied women are too stupid to run fire departments \u2014 most LA fire department leaders are men”<\/p>\n One thing no one can deny: MAGA influencers put a lot of work into pushing really incoherent talking points. Most everyone with sense understands that the fires ravaging Los Angeles are, in large part, a predictable consequence of climate change<\/a>. However, it is an article of faith in MAGA circles that climate change is a “hoax” invented by the “libs” to deny gender-affirming care to cis men, in the form of oversized gas-guzzling trucks. So they quickly jumped into action during a time of immense need, seeking someone or something else to blame. And because the movement takes all its cues from a right-wing influencer named Chaya Raichik \u2014 who posts under the name “Libs of Tik Tok”<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 they’ve settled on blaming women.<\/p>\n On Wednesday, Raichik tweeted a picture while falsely implying <\/a>both that the entirety of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) leadership is female and also that women’s inherent inferiority is why the fires are spinning out of control.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n Marcotte makes a cute point about how “oversized gas-guzzling trucks” are a kind of “gender-affirming care to cis men.”<\/p>\n Watters also griped that the fire chief had<\/a> marched in Pride parades and claimed, “California is committing suicide before our very eyes. DEI is deadly.” He did not explain how either being queer or female made someone less capable of doing the job of fire chief.<\/p>\n They won’t say, of course, because they know the claim being implied here is too embarrassingly dumb to speak out loud. The unspoken argument is that women are stupidbrains who can’t do anything right, and instead we need geniuses, who are all men like Donald Trump, running things. But they won’t come out and say that, because they know that this argument is self-refuting. So instead, they gesture in the direction of the argument, yell “DEI” a lot, and deny that they’re misogynist when someone draws the obvious inference for the sexist theatrics.<\/p>\n Welcome to this era of MAGA, where they have given up even pretending their points make sense.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Every day, Trump lies.<\/p>\n Mediaite, 10 Jan 2025<\/strong>: \u2018A Staggering Quantity of Wrongness\u2019: CNN\u2019s Daniel Dale Dismantles Trump\u2019s False Wildfire Claims<\/a><\/p>\n Willful ignorance, and motivated thinking.<\/p>\n JMG, 10 Jan 2025<\/strong>: Newsmax: Wildfires Are \u201cOpposite Of Climate Change\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n No, they’re not. They’re evidence of it. Trumpism: Up is down.<\/p>\n \\\\<\/p>\n Today’s quote seen on Facebook:<\/p>\n \u201dThere is something feeble and a little contemptible about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought. Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not rational, he becomes furious when they are disputed.\u201d But this is on a (somewhat, but not entirely) different subject.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The past few days have been fodder for examples of (conservative) lies, evasions, and misrepresentations, as they react to the fires in Southern California. Conservatives blame the LA fires on the vast world-wide conspiracy theories they are obsessed with; Two … Continue reading \n
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\n\u2014 Bertrand Russell, Human Society in Ethics and Politics (1954), pp. 219-20<\/p><\/blockquote>\n