OCTOBER 14, 2024 – Each of us might well say that by a certain age, we’re “concerned about the current direction of the country.” The more you see and experience of this land of ours—the third most populous in the world—the more chronic dysfunctionality you’ll notice. Because of this, we’re naturally likely to conclude that a downward trend line reflects our overall prospects. Although “history repeats itself” is cliché, history informs—or should inform—how we view the present and anticipate the future. Accordingly, I think the study of history, irrespective of spin and bias, reveals a universal truth: there’s always a substantial basis for “concern about the direction of the country.”
At times, however, there have been acute reasons to worry. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, for example, my fellow third graders and I were genuinely worried about the immediate direction of the whole world. Throughout my middle and high school years, there were daily reminders on network news and front pages of the newspapers that our country was mired in an irretrievable mess in Southeast Asia. Throw in the assassinations, civil rights demonstrations, anti-war protests, urban riots, the Watergate scandal, alarms about what we were doing to the environment (remember “Love Canal”?), seriously out-of-control inflation (when prime rocketed to 21% in 1980 (it’s currently 8%)) and sky-high employment (a peak of 9% in 1975; it’s currently 4.1%), and for roughly two decades we had an ocean of worries to give us concern about the direction of the country.
Storming around after that period, of course, were the rodeo bulls of the internet; financial crises; ongoing conflict in the Middle East; 9-11, Al Qaeda and later, ISIS; the forever wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; our reckoning with police brutality; the Covid pandemic; the expanding nuclear threat by North Korea and Iran; China’s expanded belligerency toward Taiwan; and the rise of Trumpism and associated assaults on political order and governmental institutions, most notably, a concerted effort to disrupt the electoral process, the cornerstone of American representative democracy. And lest we forget the ginormous elephant in the room: climate change.
But now something new has swept over us; a development that should give every single one of us—no matter how jaded—pause and . . . “concern about the direction of the country.” That “something” is . . . lightning bolt; thunderclap . . . “weaponization of the weather.”
That’s the first time I think I’ve ever deployed “weaponization.” I generally consider it an abused and imprecise term that came into vogue by propagandists when condemning their opponents. Whenever I encounter it, I think “propaganda.” But when it comes to the weather—the weather, for crying out loud—“weaponization” of the subject is the perfect descriptor for the nonsense involved.
In any event, we should be worried—very worried.
Legitimate news media (e.g. outlets that publish reports by journalists, not blatant partisans, propogandists, conspiracy theorists, and other forms of nut-balls) have widely reported on the recent crazy thoughts and talk about the government manipulating the weather to the detriment to Republican voters. This patent balderdash is coupled with flat out make-believe stories denigrating FEMA. The attacks, which include death threats against FEMA personnel and meteorologists, could be mistaken for dark satire if they were proportionate to the nominal fringe element that has always existed among us; if they were simply a bad flash in the pan of everyday life in America; if they weren’t inhibiting the deployment of government resources to save life, limb and property of hurricane victims.
In what other country; in what other society anywhere else in the world do people of ill-intent intentionally work up such facially groundless ideas to discredit government institutions designed to track and warn of storms and assist victims of the weather after it strikes? Who were the mothers of such people? Who were their elementary school teachers? Who are their friends, family and acquaintances? Or is it more revealing to ask, who were their abusers; their mind manipulators; their fanatical religious leaders; their disinformation sources; their cult leaders who can influence people to believe anything that is upside down and inside out?
Speaking of cult leaders . . .
It’s difficult to prove a direct causal relationship between the cultist’s rhetoric and his crowd’s beliefs, but evidence abounds that the current central unsavory streak in American society—the spread of disinformation and rejection of incontrovertible truth—was accentuated by the political rise of Donald J. Trump; the draw of his rhetoric; the near universal capitulation of the Republican Party to the cult of his personality; and in the interest of aggrandizement of political power, inversion of the most basic precept of American democracy: that the end does not justify the means. Trump’s explicit license by word and example to lie, cheat, flaunt the law and reject norms of respect and civil behavior has mixed with other social toxins of our era to create a mortal threat.
The probability is now even that this mentality will prevail in the upcoming election. Yet, if Harris wins—at the ballot box, in certification of the electoral vote, and in every court where a Republican solution searches for a non-existent problem—the “weather weaponizers” and their ilk will remain among us, as will roughly half the electorate who choose to acquiesce in, accept or embrace the authoritarian words, actions, promises and premises of a man who cynically fans the flames of fiction to advance his personal wealth and power . . . at any cost to the country and its citizenry.
Against the pre-existing tableau of spectacularly false claims, the current flood of “Weather Warriors” ought to give every American the gravest concern about the direction of our country.
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© 2024 by Eric Nilsson
