Trump and the MAGA GOP's willfully cruel conspiracy theories about the California fires
There is no conservatism left in today's GOP. It's purely cruel extremism.
TAT readers,
There are so many national security threats to deal with this week but today, I will divert my attention to a very personal tragedy, having already dealt with President Carter’s funeral, earlier in the week. The juxtaposition of the funeral of POTUS Carter, a most moral man who acted on his faith and deep affinity for the good our nation could and should do, stands in stark contrast to the virtual absence of morality in Trump and today’s MAGA, GOP. Today’s brief essay is a personal story but highlights the absence of human empathy and morality, in Trump and his MAGA sycophants.
This week’s essay on President Jimmy Carter:
The point of today’s essay is simple, it is to show that human beings, not party politics are on the sharp end of the spear, when politicians separate their words and actions from the people that are impacted by them. Today’s story revolves around the devastation of the horrific fires, ravaging southern California. This is not to exclude those impacted by other tragic disasters, but telling this story from my own personal experience, makes it easier to frame the absolute cruelty of Trump and his minions.
Onward
Last Tuesday, fires first popped up around Pacific Palisades, one of the nation’s most beautiful neighborhoods and small cities. Like most of LA, the only thing separating these small communities from their adjacent cities and communities, is the width of a city street. On one side of the Palisades, as it is called locally is Santa Monica. Continue up Sunset Blvd. from the Beach and there’s the part of Brentwood made famous with OJ’s murder of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. Head west and its unincorporated space north of the Pacific Coast Highway on towards the city of Malibu. At the end of Sunset is the original Getty Museum, referred to as the “Getty Villa.” a few miles inland and near the top of the mountains between the San Fernando Valley and downtown LA, stands the spectacular and gleaming new Getty Museum.
When you get to Malibu and travel 6-7 miles inland up Las Virgenes road, called “Malibu Canyon” by locals, you come to a sleepy little equestrian community of 400 families when my children were young, called, Old Agoura, my former hometown and where I raised my children. Part of Agoura proper, Old Agoura was and still is an idyllic treasure for raising children. It’s the kind of community where our agricultural zoning and regional horse arena at the end of the street, saw most families with “backyard horses” and of course other varieties of livestock that most of the kids raised for 4-H, to show at the Ventura County Fair, situated right on the beach.
Our little family paradise was at the mouth of one of the local canyons, in our case, Chesebro Canyon. Our neighbor to the east and north was 7,400 acres of national park where we rode horses, bikes, hiked and admired, when we existed the freeway on the way home from work in the evening. It was completely normal to see our children running around our streets and even riding their bikes, skateboards and especially their horses as they headed to the local horse arena or park. Once a month, local couples would get together during a full moon and pack our saddle bags with wine, cheese and other snacks, to savor the brilliantly moonlit park for a moonlight ride. The deep canyons and mountain peaks offered different but spectacular views in the crystal-clear moonlight. Most of my time as a member of the community, offers some of my favorite and warmest memories. The one drawback was the same then as it is now, the constant threat of wild, brush fires when the Santa Ana winds blow.
It was and still is common for community members to hitch up our horse trailers at the first hint of fire or even as the evening news suggested that a Santa Ana might blow. Often, we would rally our trailers at the parking lot of the horse arena, 300 - 400 yards away at the end of the street. We would there venture out to areas impacted by fires to rescue horses and other animals. Fire has roared down our canyon as well and into the backyards of our neighbors. If you haven’t felt the searing and ash filled hot wind of such fires with winds blowing well in excess of 60 miles an hour, take my word for it, you never want to.
The thick, ash-filled smoke and heat are hell on earth, and terrifying. Still, we supported each other and mourned together for losses, animals, homes and human beings alike. Like all communities, we were a very diverse lot politically. Never once did the political beliefs of anyone, interfere with being a good neighbor. We rescued, supported and mourned losses together, regardless of politics. We especially didn’t tell lies, to heap more cruelty onto the victims of our local fires.
This week’s fires beginning in the Palisades, saw winds far in excess of that any of my friends and former neighbors have ever experienced. Whoever says that “things can’t get worse,” are wrong, dead wrong. This week proved it. Now, there are six or seven local fires burning in addition to the Palisades fire and my idyllic hometown was evacuated. Fortunately, as winds eased a little, many of my friends returned home last night but there are now, in excess of 10,000 structures burned to the ground, tens of thousands homeless and at last count, at least 11 dead.
I have been so wrapped up in following these tragedies, that I hadn’t paid a lot of attention to what was being said about them in social media. This morning, with my friends returning home, I began seeing the Trumpian/ MAGA mis and disinformation and I felt the most all-consuming revulsion for him and his party, now completely devoid of any semblance of “conservatism.” Conservatives don’t toss cruel lies around at those suffering the most devastating losses. There is nothing political about saying this about the Trumpian GOP. It is purely disgust, at the lack of any semblance of humanity and its evil twin, cruelty.
The credible sources for Trump and MAGA’s cruelty are plentiful. Below are some examples, along with quotes about the fires from the Trump and his MAGA GOP.
Gavin Newsom slams ‘hurricane-force’ disinformation over Los Angeles fires - POLITICO
“Much of the criticism has come from Republicans — including President-elect Donald Trump, who on Thursday demanded on Truth Social that Newsom “open up the water main” in Northern California to send water south as fire hydrants run dry. There is no such central water valve in the state.”
False claims from the Guardian article:
The Libs of TikTok account laid out a variety of rightwing criticisms in one post on X. “Don’t you hate it when climate change appoints a DEI hire to run the fire dept, gives away fire equipment to Ukraine, stops critical controlled burns, defunds the fire dept, refuses to build more water reservoirs and store water, cancels fire insurance, mismanages forests and brush, and fires firefighters for refusing an experimental vaccine?”
Elon Musk, the owner of X and a frequent spreader of misinformation, claimed: “They prioritized DEI over saving lives and homes.” In a response to Libs of TikTok, he wrote: “Wild theory: maybe, just maybe, the root cause wasn’t climate change?”
Andy Biggs, a Republican congressman from Arizona, told Newsmax that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) diverted money to migrants instead of natural disasters – a claim that was debunked repeatedly during the aftermath of the North Carolina hurricane.
Alex Jones, the man behind Infowars and a prolific spreader of lies, has gone even further, posting erroneously that Joe Biden had grounded firefighting plans and that the fires were being spread “by design” as part of a “globalist plot to wage economic warfare”. Musk responded in a now-deleted tweet with a simple one-word: “True”.
Conservatives blame California wildfires on Delta smelt fish, DEI and more
“Trump wasn’t alone in blaming the Delta smelt. Roger Stone, a Republican operative whom Trump pardoned for multiple felony convictions, shared a photo of the smelt on X on Wednesday, writing, “This is the fish Gavin Newscum burned California down in order to save.”
The quotes and sources above are just a handful of the bold, full-throated lies spewing from the President-elect, his immoral influencers and MAGA operatives, some of which are elected Republican officials. What the hell is wrong with today’s GOP Representatives and Senators? Not one of them has a backbone either. No one stands up and tells the truth about Trump’s lies. Most actually repeat them in a humiliating display of subservience. Trump and his party collectively are spineless liars and sycophants. This isn’t an irate political statement, but rather, a sensible, well-informed and accurately expressed truth. Words have meanings even though most news media refuses to use such basic language. Real leaders don’t tell lies. Today’s GOP does it daily. President Carter’s mantra was that he would not lie to the American people. Trump and the GOP cannot even find the word truth in a dictionary.
If this sounds like I am angry, it is because that I am. It is the legitimate anger connected to the pain of seeing cruelty imposed onto human beings, already tortured by their circumstances. human These human beings are devastated on a massive scale and instead of helping, they are too busy trying to continue baiting their base with more MAGA conspiracy theories. Pundits and Newsroom editors are too cowardly as well, to say things simply and honestly. For example, the NBC link above still calls the right, “conservatives.” How in the hell does supporting oligarchs, autocrats, far-right extremist groups and liars like Musk, Stone, Zuckerberg and more, indicate that they are conservatives, when all that they do and say, clearly defines them as far-right extremists?
To be fair, I still have a couple of Trump voter friends on Facebook that have offered prayers and encouraged others to do the same. I greatly appreciate their humanity. For centuries, America has stood for something and more often than not, it was to assist in easing human suffering and encouraging democracy and equitable rights, be it at home or abroad. The MAGA GOP seems to have forgotten just who Americans are and like FOX and their lying right-wing news organizations, continue to attempt to redefine just who we are as Americans. I refuse, no matter how much Musk, Zuckerberg and the GOP attempt to rebrand our American identity into far-right serfdom.
America was built around the ideals of the Scottish Enlightenment, defined by pursuit of knowledge, embracing equitable human rights and not religious rights that so many believe is true, and with special focus on nobly redefining the relationship between human beings, and their government structure. All of this is absent in the Trump/ MAGA movement. Knowledge, human rights, tyrannical government, progress etc. are all absent from today’s GOP, unless of course you’re an autocratic, oligarch and a white male.
The point of today’s short essay is to implore all readers, regardless of your politics to remember and honor the basic human rights of our neighbors and fellow citizens, especially as they experience tragedies that just may well be, the worst of their entire lives. We are all human beings, that happen to be Americans too. Why don’t we treat each other as we’d wish to be treated? This is the same biblical concept of, “do unto others.” Only immoral powermongers supersede humanity for their own personal and selfish purposes. Trump and his minions have a lot of soul-searching to do, so long as they stand silent on his perpetual, cruel dishonesty.
A couple of my old neighbors who I had worked with on the rescue missions during catastrophes have become die-hard Trump/ MAGA fanatics. Would I still hitch up a horse trailer and do all possible to help them? Absolutely and without a single word other than condolences, support and offers of all else that they would need in their time of tragedy. This is what separates MAGA and Trump from Americans operating on our true values. is a wide and dangerous chasm that divides our nation. We are all human beings and yet, in our current political landscape, it is principled conservatives, liberals and all other political beliefs that endorse the equitable human rights that our nation was created to endorse. The only political beliefs that don’t, are those that define the MAGA movement.
MAGA is in the process of destroying our nation as it was intended to be, via what I call, The Four Horsemen of the MAGA Apocalypse, Autocracy, Oligarchy, White Christian Nationalism and Political Violence. With such weapons, the “do unto others” wisdom, humanity, decency and ultimately morality, no longer exist in their extremist movement. That makes them un-American and anti-patriots. Those who support Trump and the extremist far-right ideology of his GOP, have a decision to make… either act like an American or follow Trump and MAGA. Doing both is quite impossible. It would appear to Californians suffering their current tragedies, that Trump and MAGA have already chosen their path.
Like the recent floods in the East, Trump’s mis and disinformation, created a far-more catastrophe for the victims. He won’t change but I am hoping that MAGA friends and fellow Americans that support him, will.
Godspeed relief to those victimized by the ongoing tragedies in Southern California.
My very best for your weekend,
Paul