Marjorie Taylor Greene keeps blowing dark Hurricane Milton conspiracies

Remember the days when a natural disaster brought people together?
After something bad happened, we’d rally to help victims rebuild communities and lives. It didn’t matter if it was an earthquake in Haiti or a typhoon in the Philippines. Tragedy was apolitical. Decency was the impulse. Even if you couldn’t help, you at least did not hurt.
Conspiracy theories never arrived before the natural disaster.
So I don’t know what Marjorie Taylor Greene uses to dye her hair. It might be mercury or formaldehyde. Or maybe she starts her day in the gym, banging her head against dumbbells until she is convinced Joe Biden is perched in a secret lair behind a bookcase in the Oval Office and manipulating the weather with a joystick designed by the makers of Frostpunk.
The Georgia congresswoman was back in the news as Hurricanes Helene and Milton battered her nation over the last two weeks. MTG, as she refers to herself, bravely pinpointed the cause of all this extreme weather.
As she informed the zombies and chuckleheads who follow her on X: “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
She did not identify “they.” Based on her past analysis of California wildfires, it might be the Jews and space lasers. Since MTG always shoehorns an anti-vax jab into her jabbering, “they” might also be Pfizer or Moderna. Or maybe migrants are conjuring the rainbands and eyeballs in a diabolical plot to displace citizens and squat in the mangled ruins?
Trying to make sense of MTG is like cleaning your contact lenses with Velveeta.
But she’s not alone in wondering if Bigfoot is behind the storm surges.
The conspiracy theories were raging across the internet this week: Don’t apply for assistance or the feds will confiscate your property! A shadowy cabal of government spooks and mercenary contractors generated Hurricane Helene to mine the lithium in North Carolina! FEMA will only give $750 to victims because the agency budget was diverted to house illegal immigrants in luxury hotels! Undercover agents are blockading aid and preventing evacuations for anyone in a red hat! Food and water will only be provided to non-binary poli-sci grads who have a tattoo of Karl Marx and believe looting is a human right!
The crazy is in overdrive when FEMA is forced to create a webpage: “Hurricane Rumor Response.”
Yeah, instead of search-and-rescue, precious resources are going to search-and-debunk. We are sleepwalking toward a point of no return in North America. How can a society function, especially during an emergency, when a screaming chunk of the populace inhabits a parallel universe in which outright lies are awarded gold medals? Psst, MTG. If Biden could control the weather, don’t you think he’d have a tornado permanently twist around Mar-a-Lago?
If there’s ever an egg shortage, it’s not because George Soros is in cahoots with the Easter Bunny. The Deep State can’t make a cyclone any more than MTG can get on “Jeopardy!”
But conspiracy theories now follow everything. Taylor Swift, altruistic goddess that she is, donated $5 million this week for hurricane relief. Mark my words: MTG will soon hop on X to allege this money will be used to fly in more cats and dogs for migrant snack time.
Here’s what’s really nuts: these far-right dipsticks who see a conspiracy lurking behind everything are only hurting themselves. Donald Trump’s mouth is a firehose of lies. His cultists drink them all down and then ask for more. A caller to a Sirius program recently shared a story about how his father-in-law lost his home in Hurricane Helene but refuses to get help in case the feds swipe the deed to his property. The caller was beside himself with anguish and frustration. His father-in-law is actively hostile to his own best interests.
MTG believes “they” control the weather because two hurricanes this month caused more damage to counties that vote Republican. But her idiocy is only motivating some conservatives to refuse the aid they desperately need.
And as always with Trump’s GOP, every accusation is a confession.
Did Biden ever doctor a NOAA hurricane map with a Sharpie to falsely claim a hurricane would hit Alabama? No, that was Trump. Did Biden ever chuck rolls of paper towel at storm survivors in Puerto Rico like he was operating a T-shirt cannon at the rodeo? No, that was Trump. Did Biden ever balk at providing emergency aid to cities that did not vote for him? No, that was Trump. Did Biden ever suggest stopping a hurricane with a nuclear blast? No, that was Trump.
What is the greater threat? A natural disaster or unnatural folly?
If climate change doesn’t kill us all, the conspiracies will.