Right-wing forecast: Hurricane conspiracy theories, mixed with lies

Chances are quite good that yet another major hurricane will come ashore in the United States sometime before the 2024 presidential election is decided, and that it will afflict mainly Republican areas of the country. And if that should happen, large parts of the country will go even crazier than they already are.

And that is seriously crazy. Barking mad.

No particular expertise is required to see how these things could happen. We're still in the midst of hurricane season, after all, and 2024 has been a particularly active one so far. Also, if you glance at a map, Southern coastal regions are where Republicans live. Damn few Democratic strongholds in the Gulf states.

Houston, New Orleans — that's about it. You'd think even a dunce like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene could figure that out.

But no, the Georgia Republican thinks it's all a big conspiracy. She professes to believe that "they" control the weather. "They" presumably being the same mysterious cabal responsible for "Jewish space lasers" that caused massive wildfires in California awhile back.

What's more, Greene has lots of company. Writing in The Atlantic, Charlie Warzel documented how crackpot conspiracy theories swept the internet. Infowars' Alex Jones alleged that hurricanes Helene and Milton were "weather weapons" deployed against American patriots by the U.S. government, i.e. the Biden administration.

"Scrolling through these platforms," Warzel wrote, "watching them fill with false information, harebrained theories and doctored images — all while panicked residents boarded up their houses, struggled to evacuate, and prayed that their worldly possessions wouldn't be obliterated overnight —offered a portrait of American discourse almost too bleak to reckon with head-on."

Remember when Vice President Al Gore used to carry on about "the information superhighway" that was going to usher in a new age of enlightenment? Well, that's not what happened.

Lies, harassment, threats

Instead of roadside shacks at the edge of town housing palm readers, tarot card mavens, horoscope experts and other solitary purveyors of mystical mumbo jumbo and superstition, we now have websites peddling delusional nonsense to thousands. Sheer folly has gotten organized.

And the politicians are not far behind. Donald Trump, JD Vance and Fox News have all peddled the lie that the Federal Emergency Management Agency is offering only one-time payments of $750 to homeowners who have lost their property due to the hurricanes, and that the money must be repaid.

None of that is true. Republican governors in the affected states have been unanimous in praising the federal response.

Elon Musk, owner of X, claimed — utterly without evidence, because it's absolutely false — that FEMA was "actively blocking shipments and seizing goods and services locally and locking them away. ... It's very real and scary how much they have taken control to stop people helping."

Musk's post has been read a reported 40 million times.

If the United States is going to deport immigrants, maybe we should ship him back to South Africa.

Anyway, as a consequence of Musk's and Trump's lies, crazy people have been harassing and threatening to shoot FEMA workers trying to deliver lifesaving supplies to hurricane victims. Other idiots are threatening to kill TV meteorologists for debunking "weaponized weather" fables.

It's enough to make a newspaper columnist feel superfluous. I used to get death threats all the time. Haven't had one for months now. Perhaps I should become an "influencer."

Sharks, Hannibal Lecter, name-calling

Anyway, hurricane or no hurricane, when and by whom will the 2024 election be decided? It's not necessary to use your Marjorie Taylor Greene Magic Decoder Ring to understand that the signs and portents aren't good. Is there any chance that candidate Trump would concede defeat? I would say that there is no chance at all.

The man has been visibly "decompensating," as psychologists say, for months now. During his increasingly chaotic "rallies," Trump can scarcely keep a coherent thought in his head. It's all sharks, Hannibal Lecter and name-calling Kamala Harris now. At an appearance near Philadelphia the other night, he quit talking and stood listening to recorded music for fully 40 minutes. Just stood there.

That's a long damn time. Members of the Trump Cult pretended it was a genius stroke, because that's what cults do. There is pretty much no behavior so bizarre that it can't be rationalized as an expression of sheer genius. Adepts surrender to reality quietly, and one at a time. Meanwhile, Trump is much further gone than Joe Biden has been at his most confused.

That doesn't mean Trump can't try to incite an insurrection if he loses come Nov. 5. But it surely means the effort would fail.

But what do I know? I'm one of those "radical left lunatics" the great man blames for betraying America. An elitist. A guy who believes what the National Weather Service tells him.

Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President."