You are drowning in doom.

Everything only seems to go one way. The news always validates what you already suspect. It’s the same thing every day. It all just gets worse and worse.

If life were truly terrible, you would have no desire to spend every waking hour brooding over depressing predictions about how everything is only going to get worse.

You open your phone and you scroll just so you can get mad. The truth is that you don’t want to see any glimmer of hope.

You mad?

You want to be mad, you want to be sad, you want to know how bad everything is. You want the hard stuff. The dark stuff. The worse it gets, the better it is. There’s no light at the end of the tunnel.

Good. You are addicted. It’s making you miserable, but you are hooked. You can’t stop. You are like the strung-out crackhead at the safe injection site, but instead of a dilapidated room and glazed-over eyes, it’s you hunched over your iPhone on your couch next to the air conditioner.

Doomerism is addicting.

Mainlining apocalypse

It’s a modern drug of the internet. It’s like falling down a hole over and over again. You fall down and then you fall some more. And then you kind of want to see how far it goes, so you start running as fast as you can down into the black abyss.

You seek out more and more obscure accounts and sources. You want to feel like apocalypse is right around the corner. You want to know all the bad stuff first so you can say “told you so” when your nightmare (secretly a fantasy) becomes reality.

You want to get as depressed as you can about the state of the world. There is no future. That’s what you say. You are happiest when you are sad. That’s your dirty little secret, but you will never say it. You can’t. You have to pretend like you are dooming for the sake of the greater good.

You don’t ever want to fix it. You don’t want any solutions. In fact, seeing solutions ticks you off, so you scroll right past those. Deep down, you want to hear over and over again that everything is hopeless.

It’s dark. It’s twisted. And it could only exist in a time like ours. Relative material abundance, decent medical care, and a fairly predictable life when compared to most other times in history. These are the conditions for doomerism.

If life were truly terrible, you would have no desire to spend every waking hour brooding over depressing predictions about how everything is only going to get worse. No. You would be hoping for any kind of lifeboat. Any kind of hope.

Doomerism is a kind of LARP product of the internet and abundance-induced boredom.

Terminally online

A key to doomerism is the abstract nature of the engine. Doomerism is almost always primarily based on, and derived from, news or social media. The real thrust is almost never found in real, tangible life.

The primary drivers tend to be far away, abstract, or found primarily in the digital realm. The farther one moves from the actual world and into the digital, the deeper into the realm of doomerism one wanders.

Every doomer is terminally online. Of course, it’s very possible to be depressed offline. There are, tragically, far too many souls lost in the dark labyrinth of depression.

But this is not doomerism. Every doomer, without question, is addicted to the discourse, social media, or the news cycle. These abstract digital forces take up the majority of the doomer’s daily concern. Life and living have all but evaporated for the doomer. All that remains is discourse addiction and dooming.

The cure for doomerism

While doomerism is a serious affliction, it can be cured. The first step to treating doomerism is reclaiming your agency and reasserting control over your personal domain.

The news cycle, discourse, or latest and greatest rage-bait are worthless in your personal world. They don’t help you cultivate your culture; they don’t positively impact your personal growth or your quality of life in any meaningful way.

All they do is distract you from taking control in your personal domain. They draw more and more of your attention into the domain where you are helpless while you give up any hope of impacting the domain where you are most able.

Vital realism

Of course this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t take an interest in world affairs or politics. Of course not. But you must put these things in the right place. You must realize that overly obsessive doom and gloom are like a cancer of the spirit. Even if the doomed analysis was correct, it doesn’t help in any positive way. It is worthless.

To overcome doomerism, you must return to the actual and the personal. You must learn to accept the things you cannot change and realize that all the pointlessly depressing discourse is like a drug wanting to drag you down into the toilet bowl.

It might feel like it is gravely important and you need to know it, but it really isn’t and you really don’t. Think for a moment about all the extremely depressing bits of info you have learned, worried over, and then forgotten. How much of your life did you lose?

We only have so much energy to expend. We can only spin so many plates at one time. If we focus every last drop of our hearts and souls on that which we are not a part of, we become spectators in our own lives. Watching carefully. Depressed about the outcome. Analyzing what could have been done differently after the fact. Dooming.

The solution to doomerism is not naive Polyannaism but vital realism. It’s allocating your effort and emotion to the domains where your action is most profoundly felt.

The world will not change because of doomerism. The world is indifferent to the doomer. It will change if we make positive change where we we stand. Cultivate our culture, live the values we believe, and make a positive impact on the world around us.

​Doomerism, O.w. root, Online, Lifestyle 

President-elect Donald Trump is already making good on his promise to “Make America Healthy Again” — starting with appointing RFK Jr. to lead the Department of Health and Human Services.

And conservatives everywhere couldn’t be happier.

“The gig is up,” Kevin Roberts, author and president of the Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action tells Jill Savage and Matthew Peterson of “Blaze News Tonight.”

“The K Street-dominated, ridiculous policy that inverts the way America should work is coming to an end. It inverts it in this way, it prioritizes the interest of Washington and New York elites ahead of ordinary Americans.”

“If Trump and Vance’s victory means anything, it means that we’re restoring what this country is supposed to be about, which is that this is a place where ordinary Americans, regardless of where you’re from, where your people came from, run this country,” he adds.

“That’s why it’s a beautiful time to be alive,” Peterson agrees.

While Trump’s appointments are a great sign of things to come, Roberts says this is only the first phase.

“The second phase, in a lot of ways, it’s more important than Washington,” he says, explaining that we have to “revitalize federalism.”

“If in fact we want to devolve power from Washington back to the states, we have to make Washington a lot less important in our lives, and one of the ways we do that is to make sure that states have appropriate power and authority in a complimentary way with Washington,” he says.

But how do American citizens contribute to this change?

“The single, most important thing individuals can do at home is to pay attention to their families, to the relationships they have, and to be present in meetings of their county commission, of their county executive, of their school boards. In other words, federal politics, national politics, as important as they’ve been to us this year, are the least important when compared to what we do in our daily lives,” he says.

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​Video phone, Camera phone, Video, Free, Upload, Sharing, Youtube.com, Blaze news tonight, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze media, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Blaze news, Jill savage, Matthew peterson, The heritage foundation, Rfk jr, Donald trump, Jd vance, Presidential election 2024, Drain the swamp 

Concerts are supposed to be fun. Unfortunately, the typical excitement and anticipation of attending a show or sporting event has been overshadowed by panic and stress. Nearly 50% of concertgoers recently admitted they’ve considered taking a second job just to afford tickets.

In addition to shelling out a small fortune for concert tickets, fans now have to worry if their tickets will vanish into thin air, thanks to one company’s epic data breach earlier this year. With the data from about 560 million people up for grabs, your ticket might just be the hottest item on a hacker’s wish list.

We find ourselves in this situation because Live Nation-Ticketmaster manages the artists, runs the venues, and sells the tickets — virtually every piece of the ecosystem.

Why is this all happening? The ticketing industry’s self-made monopolist, Ticketmaster, changed the game, and it’s time we as fans do something about it.

The merger of Ticketmaster with its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, back in 2010 has brought turmoil and frustration for artists, concert venues, and consumers alike. But while many affected by Ticketmaster’s monopoly in the live event and ticket ecosystem have spoken out, not much has happened.

Thankfully, the lawsuit from the Department of Justice and a bipartisan group of more than 40 state and district attorneys general compiles over a decade’s worth of evidence that true competition in live events and the ticketing industry is absent — leading to increased costs and fewer event opportunities for fans.

Ticketmaster’s latest blunder with Oasis’ highly anticipated 2025 comeback tour underscores the company’s ongoing failure to put fans first. At the outset, overwhelming traffic caused Ticketmaster’s system to crash, leaving thousands of U.K. fans stuck in queues without ever getting a chance to purchase tickets, while others paid considerably more than they anticipated.

Sound familiar, Swifties?

We find ourselves in this situation because Live Nation-Ticketmaster manages the artists, runs the venues, and sells the tickets — virtually every piece of this ecosystem. Its overwhelming control over ticketing, touring, and promotions has led to restricted consumer choices and inflated ticket prices, all while Live Nation-Ticketmaster becomes ever more profitable.

The lack of real competition between Ticketmaster and other ticket sellers is evident. Live Nation owns or manages 60% of the highest-grossing venues in the United States, granting Ticketmaster exclusive rights for initial ticket sales at those venues. Additionally, Live Nation directly manages more than 350 musical artists and their tours. Guess which venues they use?

Then there are the concerns around its business tactics that box out other market participants. Its network of exclusive contracts eliminates choice, forcing venues and artists into the hands of a single corporate player.

And of course, as we just saw with Oasis and many other high-demand sales, the lack of competition results in poor execution and poor customer service.

In some instances, Live Nation even exclusively sells its own canned water — Liquid Death — at its venues. The list goes on.

The federal government must take decisive action to dismantle this monopoly and introduce real competition in the live event industry. With former President Donald Trump decidedly winning the election, we can only hope his new team at the Justice Department will continue to keep antitrust enforcement at the forefront.

Transparency in primary ticketing is nonexistent, while venues, artists, and promoters remain under the control of a single entity. Restrictive terms and conditions limit what people can do with a ticket.

Now is the time for fans to say, enough is enough — especially if you are one of the 145 million Americans who plan to attend a live event in the next year and don’t want to see the tickets you spent a small fortune on disappear.

​Oasis, Taylor swift, Tickets, Ticketmaster, Live nation, Concerts, Monopoly, Antitrust lawsuit, Opinion & analysis 

It had a billion-dollar budget, lavish sets, and some of the biggest names in entertainment — so why did the Democrats’ latest presidential campaign tank at the voting booth?

Yes, there was that desperate, last-minute casting change. But new lead Kamala Harris seemed to get the notoriously troubled production back on track despite a predecessor unwilling to give up his former role and co-star Tim Walz’s troublingly erratic public behavior.

Megan Thee Stallion, Lady Gaga, and Charli XCX just weren’t up to the task of rescuing Harris from herself.

The sheer star power on hand seemed to guarantee a runaway hit: Gen Z favorite Alex Cooper (“Call Me Daddy”), as well as proven draws like Will Ferrell, Rihanna, George Clooney, Jennifer Lopez, and even Oprah Winfrey.

Pay to play

Winfrey’s glorified cameo was said to cost a cool million. Also rumored to have gotten a seven-figure payday was Beyoncé — who perversely enough appeared in a non-singing role — and any number of other artists ranging from Taylor Swift to Eminem.

Whatever the exact line items were, one thing is certain: A campaign that still had more than $100 million in the bank in October now finds itself $20 million in the hole.

In retrospect, maybe that GloRilla performance wasn’t such a good idea after all.

Or maybe the era of the big-budget, mass-marketed, four-quadrant blockbuster is over.

Joy division

Where was the big-name actor or actress who would come along and save Harris from her floundering campaign?

The tear-streaked viral post recorded on the spur of the moment by Lady Gaga that would finally convince regular people in Pennsylvania and North Carolina that Harris really was the answer to their prayers — and not just a Polly POC-et puppet who couldn’t string two sentences together without cackling like a banshee and waxing poetic about the joy of abortion rights?

Indeed, what happened to the days of influential celebrity videos with warnings about “fascism” and “democracy”? Did they stop uploading them, or did everybody just stop watching?

Falling stars

The answer seems to be a bit of both. A recent YouGov poll found that only 10% of Americans say a celebrity’s opinion has caused them to cast a vote or rethink their vote. Another poll by USA Today and Suffolk University found that political endorsements had a much larger effect on swaying the Democratic vote than celebrity endorsements.

The study also found that conservatives were rarely swayed by either, including from within the conservative movement’s leadership. (The influence of Hulk Hogan’s bodice-ripping howl of support for Trump remains a subject for future historians.)

Perhaps this is why the standard-issue Democratic endorsements Harris got from Obama and the Clintons didn’t do much: They weren’t delivered with much conviction. It probably didn’t help that the DNC brand was tainted by the still-fresh memory of Joe Biden’s public stab in the back.

Megan Thee Stallion, Lady Gaga, and Charli XCX just weren’t up to the task of rescuing Harris from herself. Even those who somehow enjoy their music apparently found it hard to get very excited about their political opinions.

Box office poison?

The celebrities who did endorse Harris did so with smug certitude that didn’t do much to reach independents. Their urgent pleas to “get out and vote” (with the obvious insinuation that meant voting for Harris) also clearly backfired, since Trump won men under 30 by 14 points and Harris won young women under 30 by only 18 points. Gen Z voters just weren’t pulling the lever for the Democrats the way their celebrities and pop culture puppets told them to.

As Jimmy Vielkind and Aaron Zitner point out, Harris’ result for young women was “down from the 32-point margin for Biden among that group in 2020.”

Trump’s mastery of social media and popular podcasts like Joe Rogan’s show also clearly bolstered his already well-known brand and put him front and center in the mind of many undecideds.

Triple threat

But the fact remains that Trump didn’t really need anybody’s endorsement — at least not the way Harris did. Our former and future president is a consummate entertainer. He sings, he tells jokes, he does his own stunts. He even dances. Who needs celebrities when you can groove out with the candidate himself?

Expensive disasters tend to end with a lot of finger-pointing, and the Harris campaign is no exception. The Democrats might as well take the opportunity to clean house — starting with those among them who insist on blaming the voters.

If the incredible comeback of Donald Trump can teach us anything, it’s that fewer and fewer people are waiting for the media to tell them what’s worth their time and attention. After years of having their taste underestimated and dismissed, Americans are finally confident enough to call out real, once-in-a-generation talent when they see it. Anyone who wants to win the people over better start with that.

​Kamala harris, Beyonce, Lady gaga, Celebrity endorsements, Donald trump, Paul r. brian, Tim walz, Culture, Politics, Election 2024 

As Donald Trump prepares to re-enter the White House in January, the push to police “truth” is gaining momentum.

Literally. With real cops.

Police1, a powerful arm of “public safety policy management” behemoth Lexipol, is reshaping law enforcement across the United States — though certainly not for the better.

Barring decisive pushback, the madness spreading across the UK and Ireland will soon find its way into the United States.

You see, Police1 is busy preparing officers to confront what it labels the “misinformation” crisis of the digital age. If they’re not already prepared, the author of a recent article on the Police1 website, Joseph J. Lestrange, insists they should be.

But Lestrange isn’t your average op-ed writer. As a former high-ranking official in the Biden administration, he sees misinformation and disinformation not as minor nuisances but as direct threats — ones that erode public trust, fuel hostility toward officers, and undermine police operations. With AI-powered tools like deepfakes and manipulated audio, he warns, these threats have reached unprecedented sophistication, opening the door to ever more calculated assaults on public perception. At the same time, these threats open the door to another possible assault — specifically, law enforcement overreach.

As the fight against misinformation intensifies, “Big Brother” risks morphing into an even more pervasive “Bigger Brother,” blurring the line between protection and control. More of the latter. Much less of the former.

Lestrange suggests that police agencies adopt “Misinformation/Disinformation Units” to identify, fact-check, and counter false narratives. This move would position law enforcement as responders and architects of public perception, armed with the power to collaborate with tech giants and preemptively flag “harmful” content. Lestrange frames the unholy alliance to protect officers and rebuild community trust.

But these units, if created, would cast a dark shadow and raise serious concerns about transparency, civil liberties, and unchecked power. If Edward Snowden taught us anything — now over a decade ago — it’s that government tools meant for “protection” can easily slip into surveillance and control tools, threatening the very freedoms they claim to defend.

Not surprisingly, Lestrange’s promises of “impartial policing” ring hollow. These units risk becoming tools for selective narrative control — amplifying certain voices and silencing others. The report’s concerns about eroding public trust underscore how fragile this balance is; if law enforcement assumes the role of “truth arbiter,” any misstep or bias will swiftly deepen public distrust. Let me be clear here. This isn’t an attack on officers. Most boys (and girls) in blue are decent, honorable people. The real issue lies with the powerful few who officers must answer to. Those behind the curtain pull the strings not to protect us but to manipulate and control us.

The implications are potentially dire with Police1 and Lexipol driving this model nationwide. By framing narrative control as essential to policing, Lexipol pushes departments to blur the line between traditional duties and digital influence. This shift should raise alarms: It marks a slippery slope into content moderation — a realm typically reserved for independent platforms, not government agencies. We’re on the verge of Orwell’s Thought Police becoming a reality.

Some essential questions must be asked. Who will hold these “misinformation” units accountable? What will prevent personal or political biases from determining what gets flagged as “harmful”? Without strict transparency and oversight, these units risk becoming unchecked gatekeepers of information, placing the public’s right to knowledge — and the integrity of law enforcement — in jeopardy.

The threat is not hypothetical; it is already a reality in the U.K., where similar units have been established, wielding considerable influence over what is deemed “truth.” In my own country, Ireland, people are already being arrested for “misgendering” others. Referring to a biological man who believes he’s a woman isn’t just expected — it’s now mandatory. Calling him what he truly is can land you in prison for years. In other words, speaking the truth is now a punishable offense.

This raises crucial concerns about who holds the power to decide what constitutes “mis” or “dis” information. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the public witnessed how accurate yet dissenting narratives were swiftly demonized, labeled misinformation, and suppressed. Such tactics delegitimized valid perspectives, leading to a chilling effect on open dialogue. In the U.S., if Lexipol’s framework for misinformation units is adopted without strict oversight, the implications could be similarly far-reaching, threatening the plurality of voices that is fundamental to democracy.

And as public safety agencies venture into content moderation, the question of who defines “truth” will become increasingly critical — and potentially contentious — highlighting the need for clear, accountable practices to safeguard public trust and democratic integrity. Barring decisive pushback, the madness spreading across the U.K. and Ireland will soon find its way into the United States.

As Trump’s team readies to take charge, his allies like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy must push back against a state apparatus eager to police thought — a system the current administration eagerly embraces.

​Orwell, Big brother, Ireland, Irish censorship, Orwell 1984, Tech 

Democrats have latched onto Pete Hegseth’s past as a Fox News personality as a negative attribute, but Dave Rubin of “The Rubin Report” doesn’t agree in the slightest.

“Pete Hegseth is going to be an excellent head of the Department of Defense. Not only his track record, but as a television personality, he will be able to get up there and deal with the tough questions and communicate the policies properly,” Rubin explains.

In a recent interview, Hegseth made this crystal clear.

“First of all, you’ve got to fire the chairman of Joint Chiefs,” he said, explaining how the Trump administration could course correct after a disastrous four years under the Biden administration.

“You’re going to bring in a new secretary of defense, but any general that was involved, general, admiral, whatever, that was involved in any of the DEI, woke s***, has got to go,” he continued.

“You’ve got to get DEI and CRT out of military academies so you’re not training young officers to be baptized in this type of thinking, and then whatever the combat standards were say in, I don’t know, 1995, let’s just make those the standards,” he added.

While Hegseth admits the trust has been broken between the military and the people, he doesn’t believe it’s too late.

“You have to reestablish that trust by putting in no-nonsense war fighters in those positions who aren’t going to cater to the socially correct garbage,” he concluded.

Rubin is thoroughly impressed.

“I think you can see right there, exactly why I think he’s the right pick. He can communicate the ideas, he’s been in the belly of the beast, he’s got the TV presence, and he just laid it out. You got to fire a whole bunch of people at the top. We have to get DEI and the woke stuff out,” Rubin says.

Want more from Dave Rubin?

To enjoy more honest conversations, free speech, and big ideas with Dave Rubin, subscribe to BlazeTV — the largest multi-platform network of voices who love America, defend the Constitution, and live the American dream.

​Video phone, Camera phone, Video, Free, Upload, Sharing, Youtube.com, The rubin report, Dave rubin, The blaze, Blazetv, Blaze news, Blaze media, Blaze podcasts, Blaze podcast network, Pete hegseth, Secretary of defense, Trump administration, Trump victory, Woke military 

It wasn’t as if the Tar Heel State didn’t see Hurricane Helene coming. On Sept. 25, one day before Helene stormed ashore, North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency as the storm’s path showed it churning northward toward Appalachia after making landfall in Florida.

Yet, that advance declaration was not followed by any state evacuation orders, and the population largely sheltered in place as Helene hit the steep, wooded hills of Western North Carolina, squatting over the area, unleashing more than an inch of water per hour for more than a day. The unprecedented, relentless downpour, falling on ground already saturated by rain the week before, tore old pines and hardwoods out by the roots, creating arboreal torpedoes that rocketed down the steep inclines; water that turned photogenic stony creeks into whitewater torrents, lifting ancient streambed boulders and tossing them like chips on to roads and into homes and buildings. The storm left 230 people dead, nearly half of them in North Carolina, with dozens still missing as of early November.

There is no such thing as a ‘perfect response,’ but the one following Helene teaches important lessons.

As residents in Asheville, Chimney Creek, and other smaller communities continue to pick up from the carnage, after-action reports indicate government agencies at the federal and state levels were slow to react. Interviews with several private relief groups that sprang into action after Helene, along with statistics provided by congressional sources, indicate that Cooper’s office and the Biden administration were slow to activate military personnel and assets like helicopters that were critical in the days after the storm. In addition, budgetary moves and internal communications have also drawn questions about how the Federal Emergency Management Agency is spending its money and how it envisioned its purpose in a Biden administration suffused with “diversity, equity, and inclusion” mandates.

FEMA is also wrestling with revelations that politics had influenced some of its relief efforts. The agency fired a staffer who told crews to avoid houses in storm-damaged parts of Florida that displayed Donald Trump campaign signs. The dismissed worker said this week her orders were not an isolated incident and that FEMA avoided “politically hostile” zones in the Carolinas, too.

“There seems to have been a priority shift, period,” said Eric Eggers, the vice president of the conservative Government Accountability Institute. “It seems impossible to separate its mission creep and its ideological pursuit of an agenda when its duties are to fix that bridge or clear that road.”

As devastating and increasingly expensive natural disasters continue to be a fact of life in the United States, FEMA’s halting response, especially in the early days after Helene, when lives were in jeopardy, suggests both the capabilities and limits of state and federal responses.

Communication breakdowns

In the first days, survivors told RealClearInvestigations that the impact of governments’ slow-footed efforts was countered by the heroic efforts of private citizens and groups who rushed to provide help. As FEMA and others began to assert themselves, some conflicts arose between government representatives and volunteers, although everyone RCI spoke with agreed that such disasters inevitably spawn chaos. There is no such thing as a “perfect response,” but many people said the one following Helene teaches important lessons.

Helene didn’t slam into Western North Carolina the way hurricanes typically do but instead squatted like an angry demon over the region in which the economically vital fall tourist season was just swinging into gear.

In Avery County, a parks and recreation gymnasium had been set up as a shelter with approximately 40 beds and generators for backup power, according to Jamie Shell, the editor of the weekly Avery Journal-Times and a lifelong Tar Heel.

“On the day prior to the storm, we were in touch with the county emergency management office and county manager to get a feel for where they were in terms of initial response,” he said. “I remember a number of generated auto-calls and emails from the county to the county residents informing them of the historic and potentially devastating nature of the event, warning people to make plans to seek higher ground and evacuate as needed due to the torrential rains and damaging winds that would arrive.”

By Friday morning, Shell said people were fending off the elements as best they could.

“It was a case where most everyone who were not necessary (emergency) personnel were pretty much sheltering in place, as roads were being littered with fallen trees and high water, with the worst damage along creeks and rivers,” he said.

Power soon went out, making communication difficult for both survivors and potential rescue efforts, and creeks crested, complicating overland travel. Shell said some roads remained passable, but without power or an aerial view, it was impossible for people to find shelter if their homes were damaged or lost, and for relief efforts that didn’t have small planes or helicopters to get to wrecked spots, and even then potential landing zones were unclear.

Here, too, politics has emerged to cloud the relief picture. Shell said he relied on a Starlink hookup, the satellite company launched and owned by Elon Musk, and that county officials were also reliant on Musk’s system. Private relief agencies told RCI that Starlink provided thousands of Starlinks, which they distributed via helicopter after Helene, offering torn-up zones their only method of communication.

Between them, the United Cajun Navy and Operation Helo, two of the private groups that operated rescue and relief operations with helicopters, distributed nearly 1,000 Starlink hookups to powerless homes. Musk trumpeted the fact that Starlink’s services would be free in the remainder of 2024 for Helene and Hurricane Milton victims, although there are reports users are still being hit with hardware starter costs.

Such assistance from Starlink might have been greater, according to some congressional sources, had the Federal Communications Commission not canceled an $885.5 million deal with Starlink to expand rural broadband access. Instead, the Biden administration sunk $42 billion into a rural broadband access program that has not hooked up any customers — a failure that dogged Vice President Kamala Harris in her failed presidential campaign, as Harris was the point person on that project.

Some Republican officials in Washington have grumbled that Cooper and the Biden administration moved too slowly in terms of activating the National Guard or the huge U.S. Army assets at Fort Liberty, formerly Fort Bragg, in North Carolina. Information provided by the state to Congress and shared with RCI shows the state’s “rotor and fixed-wing aircraft” made available rose from fewer than 10 in the storm’s initial 48 hours to 20 by Sept. 30, but it stayed at that number for three full days. North Carolina Highway Patrol provided fewer than five helicopters through Oct. 9.

Congressional sources also provided information showing there were fewer than 1,000 troops available for relief efforts until Oct. 3.

‘None of us were prepared’

Private relief agencies, untangled by orders, swung into action more quickly.

“When I got there, all I heard was, ‘Where’s FEMA? Where’s FEMA?’” said Brian Trascher, a leader of the United Cajun Navy, a private disaster relief outfit that formed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. “In fact, FEMA moves fairly quickly once they know where the problem is but otherwise everything was a clusterf***. They didn’t have anything prepositioned and so for about four or five days, most of the search and rescue was done by private people.”

But Trascher offered praise to FEMA, too. He had been meeting with FEMA officials in Washington as Helene approached, part of an ongoing effort by the feds and the Cajun Navy to cooperate better in response to disasters. It is not true that FEMA was invisible in Helene’s immediate aftermath — Trascher said he ran into a top official he knows within hours of his arrival in North Carolina — and FEMA staff on the ground were committed and hard-working, he said.

That take was echoed by others deeply involved in the first few days of Helene’s response. Of the four private relief groups that discussed the situation with RCI, all agreed FEMA officials in Western North Carolina were earnest but said both the federal bureaucracy and the military response proved creaky.

The air over the Helene-ravaged landscape was wide open in the first few days, and the private helicopters were free to go wherever they could. That began to change once federal agencies came into the picture. The Federal Aviation Agency did give out some “squawk codes” to the flyers working with private groups, Trascher said, but more codes and a better-coordinated response with the FAA are needed going forward, according to Trascher and Eric Robinson, a co-founder of Operation Helo.

The private relief executives also expressed doubts that FEMA had the most experienced hands on deck. In addition, although many National Guardsmen in the area are native Tar Heels and were champing at the bit to help, they were repeatedly snarled by delays in orders, according to several people familiar with the first days of response.

“We ran it like a military op,” Robinson said of Operation Helo, a group based in North Carolina that was born in Helene’s aftermath. “But the strength of the storm, the amount of water, I don’t think anyone anticipated that.”

Robinson described whole towns annihilated, saying there were lakes “that it looked like you could walk across, there was so much debris floating.” His team distributed more than 517 Starlinks and was also assisted personally by Ivanka Trump in the week after Helene struck.

At one point, Robinson said there were people marooned on a hilltop, and his group asked the National Guard to handle the job. Though more than willing, the guardsmen had to wait more than three hours for their orders. “We just went and got them in the meantime,” he said.

Another group distributing emergency aid and Starlinks was Samaritan’s Purse, the international relief agency whose Boone headquarters left it literally at Helene’s ground zero.

“We all knew the storm was coming, and we were ready,” said Franklin Graham, the group’s president and chief executive. “But none of us were prepared for the infrastructure’s collapse.”

Like other private officials involved in relief efforts, Graham was far from biting in his criticism of FEMA and North Carolina agencies. Similarly, he acknowledged, as Trascher and Robinson did, that private groups enjoyed freedom from the red tape that customarily snarls government bureaucracies.

“I do think FEMA might be better if it wasn’t run by a political appointee,” Graham said. “It was working in our favor initially that there were no rules, and what we saw was a true example of neighbors helping neighbors.”

Budgetary woes

As of early November, FEMA said it had spent “approximately $4.3 billion on Hurricane Helene response and recovery.” Of that total, some $213 million went in direct assistance to 126,000 North Carolina households, with another $202 million “for debris removal and reimbursement of emergency protective measures for the state.”

Helene also brought new attention to FEMA’s budgeting. Even as it pushed money out to storm victims, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, who oversees FEMA, and other Biden administration officials began raising alarms that the agency could run short on hurricane relief money.

But along with those calls came revelations from Homeland Security’s watchdog inspector general that the agency was sitting on $73 billion in unliquidated funds committed to previous disasters — including $8.3 billion for those declared in 2012 or earlier. The agency has also spent nearly $4 billion on COVID relief in September, the same month as Helene — including for funeral expenses, vaccination and testing sites, and personal protective equipment. That spending was paused in September to shift money to its Immediate Needs Funding, FEMA said, but it acknowledged $3.8 billion was “obligated” for the virus that peaked in 2021.

Gov. Cooper’s office also pushed back against reports it may have been tardy in calling up the National Guard or responding to hard-hit zones.

“The North Carolina National Guard was activated and on the ground before, during, and after the storm, and we believe this was the fastest and largest integration of active-duty military soldiers under Title 10 working with the National Guard in North Carolina history,” said Jordan Monaghan, a spokesman for the governor. “Immediately following the storm, staged equipment and personnel began moving into Western NC, using Asheville’s airport as a staging area where supplies were flown in, loaded onto helicopters, and flown into counties that couldn’t be reached by road. Where roads were passable, supplies were delivered by truck.”

On Sept. 30, Cooper asked Biden to “make all necessary federal resources available,” and that so-called “Title 10” request was approved by the Defense Department on Oct. 2, according to Monaghan. At that point, helicopters and other key assets took to wing.

Both FEMA and Cooper’s office stressed the unprecedented nature of Helene, and that view was echoed by Trascher, who said some of the areas the Cajun Navy serviced were “the worst I’d seen since Katrina.”

As of early November, power outages had fallen from more than 1 million to fewer than 900, while roughly 1,000 of the 1,300 closed roads have been opened, according to Cooper’s office. All told, there have been “2,024 FEMA workers and thousands of Department of Transportation workers, utility workers, law enforcement officers, and volunteers on the ground.”

‘Disaster equity’ and government failure

Yet, under the Biden administration’s “whole of government” emphasis on diversity, equity, and inclusion, there are indications FEMA has moved away from a broad-based relief template.

In the past two weeks, FEMA also became embroiled in the scandal surrounding the orders of the now-dismissed staffer that Hurricane Milton relief crews should bypass homes displaying Trump campaign signs. The former supervisor, Marn’i Washington, told the Black Star Group’s digital platform that her orders were not an isolated incident. Instead, they reflected long-standing agency policy that calls for avoidance of areas or homes it considers “politically hostile.”

“FEMA always preaches avoidance first and then de-escalation, so this is not isolated,” she said. “This is a colossal event of avoidance not just in the state of Florida, but you will find avoidance in the Carolinas.”

In an in-house 2023 Zoom meeting that has received renewed attention, FEMA and other federal officers focused on how disasters allegedly hit the LGBTQ community with special fury. In that meeting, FEMA Emergency Management Specialist Tyler Atkins said LGBTQ people and others who have been disadvantaged “already are struggling,” and natural disasters compound their struggles.

Maggie Jarry, a senior emergency management specialist with the Department of Health and Human Services, then chimed in, saying emergency management in the U.S. must shift from prioritizing “the greatest good for the greatest amount of people” to “disaster equity.”

“We have to look at policies and understand to what extent they have disadvantaged communities that have less assets, communities that have pre-existing vulnerabilities in accessing disaster-related recovery supports,” Jarry said.

A FEMA spokesperson told RCI that any notion the agency has lost touch with its core mission is false.

“FEMA’s mission remains clear and unchanged — to help people before, during, and after disasters,” he said. “We are fully committed to ensuring that all communities have the support they need to prepare for and recover from disasters. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and recovery programs are funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts. Disaster Relief Fund money has not been diverted to other, non-disaster related efforts.”

FEMA’s Helene response enjoyed considerably better coverage than it received during Hurricane Katrina in 2005 when media accounts blistered the agency and the Bush administration for weeks. This time around, there were many stories outlining what FEMA does and does not do, with the former primarily involving reimbursement to state and local projects for debris removal, reconstruction, and the like. It also provides cash to survivors in the immediate aftermath of declared disasters.

Many media outlets also magnified FEMA’s attempt to combat “misinformation,” and these reports frequently blamed the Trump campaign for spreading unfounded rumors. At one point, FEMA even paused relief operations in parts of North Carolina over unfounded rumors that vigilantes were “hunting” FEMA workers.

Those pro-FEMA slants lost considerable traction days after the presidential election, however, when the story broke about FEMA relief teams in Florida deliberately bypassing homes that displayed support for Trump’s campaign.

All of these threads — the Biden administration’s “Justice40” for diversity, equity, and inclusion; the spending on matters unrelated to natural disasters or tied up in endless projects going nowhere; federal contracts to help rural America canceled — add up to an unsavory “politics of disaster relief” according to the Government Accountability Institute.

Eggers and Peter Schweizer, GAI’s leader, examined the problem in a recent podcast by that name. What happened after Helene is further evidence of that problem, Eggers said.

“In some ways, it’s a triumph of the human and American spirit, but in other ways, it seems like a failure of the American government,” he said.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published by RealClearInvestigations and made available via RealClearWire.

​Fema, Hurricane helene, Disaster relief, Dei, Disaster equity, North carolina, Cajun navy, Donald trump, Opinion & analysis 

When I woke up on Nov. 6, I knew I would see a lot of disappointed and angry people posting online. Still, the sheer volume of unhinged and hysterical videos surprised even me. Coming, as I do, from the Bosnia of the 1990s — an actual war-torn country where people, in fact, had reason to fear political outcomes — it is difficult to understand these posts as the activity of serious people. It is impossible to avoid secondhand embarrassment for those engaging in it.

Did you know that when people are actually scared, they don’t post videos of themselves screaming and threatening “the other side” for public consumption?

These contrived pieces of performance art are not products of fear. They are vile propaganda.

I was 17 during the first multiparty election in Bosnia. The media was already spreading fear prior to the election, and it became evident early on that the three nationalist ethnic parties were the favorites. I wasn’t eligible to vote at the time, but even if I had been, none of the three ethnic parties would have had a home for me, the child of a mixed marriage.

I don’t remember who won, but I do remember that when I woke up, there was neither a celebration nor an angry mob. Instead, there was a sudden shift. No one from the outside would have noticed it. People went to work. They went grocery shopping. The kids went to school. But there was an unbearable quiet. When fear settles over a town, it becomes quiet.

People don’t talk about fear. The conversations become shorter; the jokes are fewer. People become emotionally disengaged.

I remember there was no talk of anyone leaving because of the omnipresence of fear. They might mention in passing about going on a “short trip” to visit family, but most simply left, and most simply knew what was going on when this was mentioned. This is when I yielded to fear.

The weirdest thing I learned about fear is that it makes you act normal, maybe too normal. This kind of fear is not what people feel when their lives are in imminent danger and the threat is easy to recognize. Our bodies and our instincts are designed to deal with that kind of fear. But in the situation I describe, the very system designed to protect you from threats becomes a threat. Instinctively I knew I had to signal to the system that I was not a threat to those operating it. Opinions became too expensive and insults to myself or those I loved nonexistent.

In short, I became invisible, but that was easy. The harder part was that I couldn’t show my fear. Acting fearful is a threat in itself. I learned to measure my speech and my gestures. My answers were short and vague, and I was the smallest person in every room. Every interaction was exhausting.

The social media performance actresses need to learn something important: Anger is not fear. Disappointment is not fear. Openly threatening people is not what people do when they are in the grip of fear. In other words, they are not coping with fear. They are coping with the reality that they did not get their way. There’s a world of difference.

Disappointment is easy to understand, too, and people who have been indulged by a system that permits them to believe reality is something they can escape — that a man can be a woman; that we can live peacefully in a world without borders; that other people will work so that you can eat; that silence is the same thing as violence — these people are going to lack fully developed skills of communication and self-awareness. When confronted, as they always are, with reality, they will act out their frustration in ways that are not constructive.

Unmet emotional needs will also cause some people to seek validation from those who are screaming the loudest. But if you are setting up a camera to record yourself screaming and crying and then taking the time to edit and upload it, then you are not afraid. You are ignorant and self-indulgent.

Memes like those I am seeing on the bluest parts of my social media feeds include numbers for suicide prevention hotlines, women shaving their heads and vowing celibacy, and people pretending to seek escape routes from the country to which frightened people have been escaping to defy tyranny for centuries. These contrived pieces of performance art are not products of fear. They are ridiculous tantrums designed to provoke strong emotions and galvanize people for political purposes. They are vile propaganda.

Real fear, as I have experienced, is isolating and anonymous. In this digital age and in this largely (thank God) still free country, almost nothing is hidden or anonymous.

I am not impressed with the attempts to gaslight me into believing I am facing danger again.

Editor’s note: This article appeared originally at Chronicles: A Magazine of Culture.

​2024 presidential election, Leftists, Tiktok videos, Fear, Rage, Donald trump, Bosnian genocide, Civil war, Opinion & analysis