F**king Mondays: Wild(fire) Conspiracies, Overton Windows, and Zuck the MAGA Bro

Surprise surprise, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are spreading conspiracy theories about the LA fires.

Welcome to another edition of F**king Mondays! In the roundup today:

LA’s Wild(fire) Conspiracy Theories

I lived in Los Angeles on and off for 10 years so watching the catastrophic fires destroy the city is particularly painful for me. I have many friends who have been evacuated and many of the places I used to frequent have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of heroic firefighters are doing battle with the raging flames but there still seems to be no end in sight to the nightmare. The latest reporting indicates more horrors to come (via the Washington Post):

Firefighters are working to contain three active blazes in the Los Angeles area ahead of a predicted return of winds that stoked devastating wildfires that have burned an area bigger than San Francisco and killed at least 24 people.

A red flag warning is in place for parts of the city and county, with wind gusts of up to 70 mph forecast between 4 a.m. Tuesday and noon Wednesday — strong enough to potentially cause “explosive fire growth,” according to National Weather Service officials.

The fires in the Los Angeles area have burned over 40,000 acres and forced some 150,000 people to evacuate. The Palisades Fire, the largest, was 13 percent contained as of Monday morning. The Eaton Fire, which has killed 16 people — making it one of the deadliest in California’s history — was 33 percent contained. The fires’ causes remain under investigation.

Unfortunately malevolent actors are using the tragedy to spread conspiracy theories and score political points:

Unsurprisingly almost all of this is either false or deliberately misleading, but Trump’s smears have made California Governor Gavin Newsom and LA Mayor Karen Bass convenient scapegoats. Right wing mobs directed by Elon Musk on X are also claiming the state’s inability to control the raging fires are a consequence of “DEI hires” and “DEI ideology” that placed diversity ahead of competency:

It may turn out to be the case that DEI practices have made things worse, but thus far there is no evidence whatsoever that a commitment to hiring minorities has had any negative impact on containing the fires. LA Fire Chief Kristen Crowley has hit back on these claims saying severe budget cuts are one of the main reasons why firefighters have had such a hard time. Reported the Guardian:

Crowley publicly criticized the city on Friday for budget cuts that she said had made it harder for firefighters to do their jobs at a time when they are seeing more calls. She also cast blame on the city for water running out on Tuesday when about 20% of the hydrants tapped to fight the Palisades fire went dry.

“I’m not a politician, I’m a public servant. It’s my job as the fire chief for Los Angeles city fire department to make sure our firefighters have exactly what they need to do their jobs,” she told CNN.

But in public city budget hearings last year, Crowley asked the city for an increase of 159 personnel. Instead, Bass and the city council cut 61 fire department positions despite calls for service increasing 55% since 2010.

Crowley warned that budget cuts could hamper the department’s ability to respond to emergencies, including wildfires. Cuts in overtime limited the department’s ability to prepare and train for “large scale emergencies”, she said, and the department had also lost mechanics, leading to delays in repairing the vehicle fleet.

The most obvious explanation for why California hasn’t been able to contain the fires is that climate change has made them far more dangerous over the years — particularly in a grassland environment like Los Angeles where wildfires are extremely common. There were no doubt errors made by the city and the state that should be investigated when this is over, but the evidence thus far points to a terrifying natural disaster made worse by climate change.

Given most of the right wing critics bashing DEI/liberals/women for the fires don’t believe in man made climate change, it is easy to see why they would be so eager to find something or someone else to blame. But there is only so long this charade can go on for.

During the fires, far right conspiracy theorist and actor Mel Gibson went on Joe Rogan’s podcast to decry global warming as a “hoax”. During the recording Gibson’s Malibu home burnt down.

There were no black women, Jews, or DNC officials near his house, and at some point Gibson and others like him are going to have to come to terms with reality.

Trump, Greenland, and the Overton Window

Originally conceived in the 1990’s by political scientist Joseph P Overton, the ‘Overton Window’ is defined as “the spectrum of ideas on public policy and social issues considered acceptable by the general public at a given time.”

You could argue that Trump’s mere presence in American politics has been a shattering of the Overton Window — a dramatic, if not traumatic departure from previous social and political norms. Trump’s ability to normalize the insane is, I believe, part of his superpower. He behaves like a madman and makes outlandish claims not because he has intention of following through on them, but because it destabilizes his opponents. It also changes the parameters of debate, and allows him to follow through on his real agenda.

While the media frets over Trump’s plans to annex Greenland, Canada, and the Panama Canal, Trump and his incoming administration are planning to gut the federal government and ensure billionaires and giant corporations get enormous tax cuts. This, I believe, is the real play.

Trump probably has no interest in taking Greenland from Denmark or bullying Canada into becoming the 51st state. Instead he wants everyone to think that he might while he gets to the real business of auctioning off the state and enriching his friends.

It’s a powerful political subterfuge and unfortunately the public is falling for it. Again.

Zuckerberg likes free speech?

Last week Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced drastic changes to censorship content policies on Facebook, Instagram, and Threads. Reported FP:

Meta will “get rid of a bunch of restrictions on topics like immigration and gender” while also lowering the threshold for its automated systems to take down potentially harmful content, Zuckerberg said. Accompanying changes to Meta’s hateful conduct policies say that this includes allowing “allegations of mental illness or abnormality when based on gender or sexual orientation.”

Meta will also “get rid of fact-checkers” in the United States and replace them with a “community notes” system where users call out misinformation themselves—similar to the one deployed by Elon Musk on the website formerly known as Twitter, which he took over in 2022 and renamed X the following year.

“It’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram,” Zuckerberg said.

This is an enormously complicated topic and one I don’t have definitive opinion on. I do however have a definitive opinion on Mark Zuckerberg, and don’t believe any of his platforms should be trusted at all.

In many ways I think Facebook was right in taking Russian bot farms and rampant Covid misinformation. But I also think it went way too far and became almost Orwellian in its attempts to suppress speech. My old site The Daily Banter was destroyed after Facebook deemed our content “too political”, as were thousands of other responsible outlets. Facebook took a sledgehammer to a problem that needed a scalpel, and now Zuckerberg says he has realized the errors of his ways. This has coincidentally happened just as Trump is set to take back the White House and disinformation warfare is cool again. What could go wrong?

Given Facebook has screwed publishers in every way imaginable, there is no good reason for any of them to use the platform. Zuckerberg has demonetized them, shadow banned them, enticed them into creating videos, podcasts and newsletters only to turn around months later and announce they were “pivoting” to something else. It’s a godawful platform run by a truly unscrupulous tech weirdo who now wants in with the MAGA bros.

My guess is Zuckerberg will pivot again when Trump conspiracy theories start killing people and the president-elect’s popularity is in decline. But hey, Zuckerberg will get an invite to Mar-a-Lago, so not all is lost.

Wishing everyone a great week!

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