this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2024
51 points (93.2% liked)

Showerthoughts

29395 readers
229 users here now

A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.

Rules

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
 

Back during the Bush and Obama years, I remember hearing so many right-wing conspiracies about FEMA camps.

Why didn't anyone ask "If FEMA has the ability to set up camps and transport large numbers of people, why aren't they doing that every time there's a big hurricane or wildfire?"

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] JollyG@lemmy.world 21 points 1 day ago (1 children)

When bad people do good things they are generally seen as sinister, as if they are concealing a horrible action behind a facade of good will. So if you believe the government is fundamentally evil, and you see it trying to do something good (which is the whole purpose of FEMA) then its actions are going to look sinister to you. So stories about FEMA having camps (at their core, these are stories about the government using the facade of aid and assistance to hide something evil) will make sense to you because they are consistent with your sentiments about the what the government is. So too would stories about FEMA using disasters as a pretext for land snatching or stories about FEMA ignoring people in peril because these are all stories about an evil government. To the extent that they are consistent with your sentiments about the government, they are easy to accept as true, even if they contradict each other.

[โ€“] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 8 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago)

Yeah, this reminds me of a core conclusion in this article I read earlier today: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2024/10/hurricane-milton-conspiracies-misinformation/680221/?gift=LfMDGClsXPxuFi6NzzlsSmMf2SO62OLofWrLa23Hg1Y&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

Basically all of this isn't about convincing people of anything new. It's just information to reaffirm existing beliefs and prevent people from coming to terms with the fact they've gone down a rabbit hole of crazy.