Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:18 pm
*The following is an opinion column by R Muse*
There isn’t much that should surprise the poor souls tasked with closely following and commenting on politics these days, but the regular cast of conservatives plagued with Obama Derangement Syndrome (ODS) came fairly close late this week. Throughout the President’s tenure in the White House, conservative talking heads, and some Republican politicians, have come up with some truly bizarre conspiracy theories alleging that the President is involved in some nefarious acts against the American people to advance his agenda.
Besides creating conspiracies due to their ODS issue, conservatives are dependably dreaming up various schemes to demean science that doesn’t fit their agenda or the dictates of their money machine the Koch brothers.
The latest conspiracy theory targeting the President is both a result of conservative Obama Derangement and science denial syndrome(s) and is exceedingly vile because they make light of hundreds of human beings’ deaths.
Hurricane Matthew has claimed at least 843 souls in Haiti and four in Florida as of Friday afternoon, and yet conservatives claimed it was either non-existent, a fabricated construct of the National Weather Service, or a ploy by President Obama to advance the idea that climate change is real and a clear and present danger. Republican standard bearer and serial misogynist Donald Trump didn’t follow the same path he took during Hurricane Sandy and it is surprising, but the danger is far from over and Mr. Trump never fails to deliver untoward comments at the right time.
Some of Trump’s conservative supporters, though, couldn’t wait to wade in and proffer their “theories” on a devastating weather event they believe is a hoax. For example, Rush Limbaugh wasted little time pleading his “Case of Fake Global Warming” that now involves the Obama Administration’s “Case of Fake Hurricanes.” As reported over at Wonkette, Limbaugh thinks the Obama Administration and liberals want the massive Hurricane Matthew to kill Americans to aid them in promoting policies to address climate change, and that they are fabricating hurricane tracking and forecasting into a potent political tool. Limbaugh said,
“I’ve become an expert in spotting the politics in hurricane tracking and hurricane forecasting. And by that I mean people that work at the — the National Hurricane Center is part of the National Weather Service, which is part of the Commerce Department, which is part of the Obama administration, which by definition has been tainted just like the DOJ has.
With hurricane tracking and hurricane forecasting, I’ve been able to spot where I think they might be playing games because it’s in the interests of the left to have destructive hurricanes because then they can blame it on climate change, which they can continue desperately trying to sell.”
Limbaugh adds that he thinks this particular hurricane, this deadly super storm, is probably a legitimate weather event; something over eight-hundred dead Haitians, four dead Floridians, and a million or so displaced Florida residents make hard to deny. However, Rush says no matter that the current “maybe” hurricane is likely legit, it is the past ten years of “post-Katrina storms that have been overhyped” by the Trilateral Commission Subcommittee on Climate Change. It is something that only he and his crack research team have the proof of and that no other American is privy to. According to factually brilliant Rush Limbaugh,
“We had 11 years of no hurricanes—11 straight years of no major hurricanes striking land in the United States, which just bores a hole right through the whole climate change argument.”
Now it is relatively common knowledge that Limbaugh has, in fact, abused prescription opioids and likely affected his cognitive abilities, but opioids don’t cause memory loss; at least not short-term loss. He is just a blowhard liar as verified by Politifact that debunked his statement about disproving climate change with a “pants on fire” rating.
Anyone with a memory knows it was less than four years ago that Hurricane Sandy “struck land in the United States” causing nearly immeasurable destruction in New Jersey, among other states. And, if Limbaugh had even a rudimentary understanding of the effects of “the whole climate change argument” he would know the devastating wildfires, historically severe droughts, unusually extreme rainfall and the resulting flooding that have decimated “land in the United States” all substantiate every aspect of the “whole climate change argument.” And those effects have increased exponentially during the 11 years Limbaugh claims there were no hurricanes.
Limbaugh wasn’t alone in proposing the Administration is manipulating weather, or at least the federal agencies that warned of the impending disastrous hurricane, to advance a climate change agenda. Matt Drudge said that he was joined by Donald Trump’s supporters in “wondering if the government was lying about the intensity of the deadly hurricane” and questioned the legitimacy of the National Hurricane Center’s data. Alex Jones, another anti-Obama conservative conspiracy theorist and Trump supporter agreed with Drudge and tweeted “this is exactly why they want to eradicate free speech… so you can’t question official global warming narrative.”
It is bad enough that global warming is not any kind of narrative, but a real and present danger that is responsible for the increased severity of hurricanes without idiot conservatives making light of literally hundreds of deaths and massive destruction. It is noteworthy that the conservative conspiracy nuts were accusing the Obama Administration of hijinks after the hurricane claimed 800-plus hundred Haitians’ lives and before it made landfall in the United States.
It takes a special kind of vile human being to devise a conspiracy blaming the President of the United States of manipulating weather data to advance a climate change agenda, and the regularly dependable cast of suspects stepped up and fulfilled their despicable roles. What is telling is that President Obama did not utter the words “climate change” or “global warming” in any comments or orders regarding the impending damage from the hurricane and it verifies that despite his term in office is winding down, Obama Derangement Syndrome is alive and flourishing in the conservative wing nut wing of the Republican Party.
Born in the South, raised in the Mid-West and California for a well-rounded view of America; it doesn't look good.
Former minister, lifelong musician, Mahayana Zen-Buddhist.
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