The dirty side of the storm

Here at the Ranch at the Edge of Nowhere, located about 50 miles northwest of Houston, we continue to reap the blessings of Tropical Storm (formerly Hurricane) Harvey. We're not in the worst of it by far, but it's still pretty stressful, and it is far from over.

And in our front yard, it looks like déjà blew all over again. My husband Ron Kaye took the above photo early this morning. That lovely old tree fell some time in the wee hours, due either to high winds, loose saturated earth, or a combination of the two. Currently it is seriously threatening a power line and has pretty much wrecked the fence. The damage is more extensive than is apparent in the photo.

You know, it seems like we just went through this nine or so years ago.

But... good news!... all is not lost. New-Wage hustledork/selfish-help crapitalist/McSpirituality guru Joe "Mr. Fire" Vitale, whose email-orchestrated mass meditation saved Texas from Hurricane Rita in 2005 and Hurricane Ike in 2008 -- not to mention the wildfires in 2011 -- is on the job with Harvey, too. So we're in good hands.

In related news...
As some of you may know, one of my hobbies is tracking conspiracy nuts, something I originally became interested in because they have so often made good fodder for this Whirled. Accordingly, once Harvey became a thing in the news, I began Googling for any Harvey-related conspiracy theories. I expected to see all sorts of stuff about how Harvey isn't a genuine threat and is merely a product of the "fake news." Or, alternatively, I speculated there might be tales about #NotMyPresident Trump and his elitist buddies taking over the government's weather-control facilities in order to create Harvey, the way President Obama supposedly helped create Superstorm Sandy a few years ago.

I still recall how many conspiracy tales buzzed around natural disasters when Obama was in office. On more than one occasion the nut-cakes blamed him either for assisting the government/HAARP/the Illuminati in deliberately creating the storms, or for helping to perpetuate either hoaxes or "false flag" events to get us all into a panic. Some people managed to embrace both major theories at once. Of course the same loony theories were also put forth regarding mass shootings and some terror attacks.

According to the conspiranoids, the reason for false flag events or hoaxes or human-made storms was that the ensuing panic and chaos would make it easier for Obama and his henchmen to take our guns away and herd us into FEMA camps, where we'd either be killed or turned into slaves for the elite, and most certainly we would be forcibly vaccinated with microchips and whatnot. (The stupidest and most evil man in Scamworld, phony doctor and cancer quack Leonard Coldwell, was and remains one of the most passionate embracers of these narratives.)

At any rate, I have eagerly searched for the conspiracy tales around Harvey. But so far... nothing -- at least, not anything directly blaming Mad King Donald. Apparently Trump is as blameless as Obama was blameworthy. But I guess that is not terribly surprising, seeing as how most of today's passionate conspiracy believers also happen to be alt-right types. Another factor may be that at least two of the top conspiracy peddlers -- Alex Jones and Mike "The Health Ranger" Adams -- are actually in Texas, and perhaps are seeing some of the ongoing, and very real, horrors first hand.

But when searching yesterday, I did come across this August 25 piece from The Daily Beast, a reminder of the good old daze when we had a real president, and his haters were still for the most part on the fringe.

[Addendum, 29 August: There has also been a sprinkling of the usual geoengineering conspiracy speculation. I just now found this bit of nonsense, also dated August 25, on the Liberty Beacon site. And here is the MetaBunk site's take on that piece.]

I will be back with more soon. Meanwhile, my friends, if you're even marginally in the path of the storm, stay safe. And for those who want to do something to help the victims of the hurricane, millions of whom are floundering in my beloved former home town of Houston, and many of whom have lost everything but their lives, start here.