The wildfires ravaging the entire west coast of America seem an allegory of the nation's demise. Whole towns are being evacuated in a hurry before an unstoppable wall of fire. The country is going up in smoke.What's particularly remarkable is the dearth of consensus about the wildfires. There's no doubt that the blazes this year have reached
new records of devastation compared with previous years.
The entire west coast seems engulfed with fire or choking smoke. Yet the explanations differ wildly for the phenomenal crisis. An ecological cause seems the most convincing. Detrimental climate change and years of cumulative drought have cascaded to create inferno conditions.
President Donald Trump and his supporters are deniers of climate change. So, in order to avoid a glaring contradiction between their views and the physical world, Trump's political base have come up with an alternative explanation for the wildfires - it's the work of arsonists belonging to nebulous leftist groups like "Antifa".
This is denial compounded with delusion. Firefighters and law enforcement officers have largely
dismissed social media claims of arsonists as "malicious rumours" which are only undermining efforts at bringing the crisis under control by peddling confusion and diverting scarce resources.
Nevertheless, Trump-supporting conspiracy networks like QAnon have continued to promote the notion that the US west coast is being burned down by leftwing "domestic terrorists".
To even conceive of such an enormous disaster - with over 100 massive fires scorching the three states of California, Oregon and Washington - being the result of arsonists is a sign of delusional thinking. At least seven other states, Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Nevada, Utah and Wyoming, are also reportedly fighting wildfires. Are we to believe this national phenomenon is the work of subversives? Therein lies a propensity for paranoia, which is not an uncommon trait in US politics.
However, that kind of "explanation" is a convenient way for Trump supporters to avoid the issue of discussing climate change. For his part, the president hasn't publicly talked about wanton acts of arson. He has blamed the fires on "poor forest management" which still has the effect of avoiding acknowledgement of climate change as a factor.
The "Antifa arsonists" narrative also plays conveniently into Trump's campaign to turn the forthcoming election into a law and order referendum. Trump has accused Democrat rival Joe Biden of "appeasing domestic terrorists" while putting himself forward as saving America from "socialist revolution".
The way Trump and his rightwing supporters tell it, the widespread public protests against allegations of police brutality and racism are all demonstrations by violent mobs. This is in spite of the fact that the vast majority of protests across the US in recent months have been
documented as peaceful.
Like the wildfire rumours, it is easier and more politically expedient to blame public protests on violent radicals belonging to "Antifa" and Black Lives Matter. In that way, dealing with underlying systemic causes are avoided: climate change in the case of wildfires, and police force racism in the case of protests.
In any event, where America has a profound problem is the absolute lack of national consensus about its many pressing challenges. The lack of consensus is greatly exacerbated in the age of social media where rumours and delusions can become axiomatic articles of belief. Without consensus, there can be no dialogue for a process of learning and solving through agreed policies.
The Trump camp definitely has a defect of engaging in "alternative facts" and "post-truth politics". This is not to claim that the Democrats have solutions, far from it. But the latter do seem to retain a cognitive ability to at least acknowledge objective realities. They may not do much about fixing it, but at least some modicum of discussion is possible, which is a start. Not so with Trump and his followers. They seem to increasingly live in a feverish fantasy-world which is taking on fascist features.
The American house is burning down indeed, not just literally. But there seems little chance for a working consensus to stop the consuming flames.
The wildfires, the protests against policing - and we could add the denials of a public health danger from the coronavirus pandemic - show that America is a place of parallel universes. That makes politics almost impossible to function.
Reader Comments
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What horseshit!
Avoid talking about a dead issue such is global warming now called climate change, why would anyone with more than three brain cells still be talking about this? It has been disproved time and again. The planet we live on goes through cycles of warming and cooling due to many factors, but man is not one of those factors. This is a lie that has been told so many times that a large part of the population actually believes it. Surely, most Californians think so, but when the clear light of day is shed on the lie it begins to fade. The simple truth of the climate is it is always changing. Earth started many millions of years ago as a molten rock that cooled over time. Then the dinosaurs appeared and using today's logic, their flatulence caused the earth to heat up further but then it cooled again after the dinosaurs were wiped out into an ice age that only went away after man appeared and started using campfires.
Does that make any sense to anyone out there other than Al Gore?
Finian Cunningham @Sputnik News Get a grip on yourself. Trump did not cause the climate to change any more than the billions of other people on the planet did.
Feckin idiot.
The cops arrested two of these criminals one of which is no less than 44 years old. That's how much of adults these libs are. And right now I just caught a title on here about another thug who was arrested for setting a fire using a molotov cocktail. After he was released he went on and set 6 more. The author of this article seems to be the one who suffers from delusion and paranoia.
...
The SSOT articles, I usually read in their entireties, well, ... not this one.
But it was significant he said parallel universe.
Trees blazing all the way to the top.
As I sped up the road I saw fire trucks not doing anything, just protecting the road if it came up from the valley side..
It was dark, and I had a moment. Are they blocking the road?
What I do?
Can I dart past?
It was a small fire 30 feet away.
And they did nothing, waiting to protect the mountain road if necessary.
And I drove by, and saw something I'll never forget.
Seeing the fire, I didn't feel hysterical, as the writer of this article might appear to be; but a sense of awe, at the living power of the earth, and an appreciation.
And a sense of sadness too, as there are forces beyond the power of one man, driving by, to influence and control.
read the link. Table of u.s. biggest fires, going all the way back to 1850. Climate change my ass. Piss poor forest management and people living in stupid places. That's the problem.