conspiracy theories

Images of homes that collapsed under mudslides or falling trees, waterlogged farms, and debris-filled roads drove home (yes, home!) to me recently the impact of Hurricane Helene on rural areas in the southeastern United States. That hurricane and the no-less-devastating Hurricane Milton that followed it only exacerbated already existing underlying problems for rural America. Those would include federal insurance programs that prioritize rising sea levels over flooding from heavy rainfall, deepening poverty, and unequal access to private home insurance — issues, in other words, faced by poor inland farming communities. And for millions of rural Americans impacted by Helene, don’t forget limited access to healthcare services, widespread electricity outages, and of course, difficulty getting to the ballot box. Case in point: some 80% of North Carolinians under major disaster declarations live in rural areas.

Given that Helene’s human impact was plain for all to see, what struck me was that significant numbers of headlines about that storm’s devastation centered not on those people hardest hit, but on the bizarre conspiracy theories of extremist observers: that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) is funneling tens of millions in funds and supplies meant for hurricane survivors to migrants, that the Biden administration has been in cahoots with meteorologists to control the weather, or that Biden and crew actually planned the storm! One of my personal favorites came from a neighbor I encountered at the post office in our rural Maryland town: we don’t have enough money for FEMA rescue operations, she told me, because we’re funding Israeli healthcare and housing — a reference, undoubtedly, to the tens of billions of dollars of bombs and other aid this country has sent Israel’s military in its war in Gaza and beyond.