Saturday, January 11, 2025

It Isn’t Just The “Blue State”

Under the guidance of the Orange Guy, the GOP is incapable of relieving, or even responding, to human suffering.

Over 1 million acres burned in Texas last year, and FoxNews barely noticed. Why? Because of Greg Abbott? Or because it was in the sparsely populated Texas Panhandle? Probably both, and a little bit of neither.

The devastation in California is on the scale of an epic movie. Katy Tur yesterday, without irony, compared it to a “Walking Dead” movie.  Our signature accomplishments of the last 100 years turned against us. Some areas could not be reached by firefighters because the roads were clogged with abandoned (and subsequently burned out) cars. People fleeing the fire created gridlock, and police told them to abandon the vehicles. But that blocked the roads for firefighters.

And whole neighborhoods caught fire almost simultaneously. A spokesperson for the LAFD said they couldn’t have put enough fire companies in the area to fight a fire like that. This holocaust was caused by nature (hurricane force wind gusts) and humankind. The loss of property, especially personal property (imagine losing everything in your house; all you own just reduced to ash) beggars imagination.

There may be a real frustration that our systems and our accomplishments could not only not spare us, but could turn against us. But that discussion is for another day. Most of what we are hearing now is in the fog if war, in the disconnected bits that not only obscure the true picture, but paint a false one. We can analyze failures later. Right now is the time to help.

And the GOP/FoxNews social club can’t handle that idea, can’t summon compassion for the people (who wept for the people of the Texas Panhandle?), and so the scream and yell like children who can’t offer empathy or sympathy or help, and can’t understand people who do. 

I’m seeing a lot of intertoob commentary about how this is bad for Democrats or Newsom or democracy. It is only if you treat the children like adults. FoxNews is a cable channel, a technology that is literally dying. It has authority only because I can find a clip if almost anything they say after 6 pm on Twitter (and that’s not because Elmo streams it there). Fox is posted to outrage liberals who are then told they must fight Fox! How? I dunno, except driving Fox off the air would kill two major Twitter feeds.

Maybe we stop giving Trump and Murdoch power, and treat them like they are: lame ducks. Maybe we show adult, human compassion for California and quit rewarding the petulant children with attention. Canada is not taking time to argue with them; nor is Mexico. American firefighters are also just getting the job done. We can deal with the GOP by not rewarding their demands for attention.

Most if it’s on FoxNews anyway. Cut off their oxygen supply. That’s a good way to stop a fire, I’m told.
This is the way.
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