A Tennessee Republican congressman on Friday told a conservative podcaster that the first thing he wants to do when he returns to Washington D.C. is advocate to reorganize FEMA – and “shut it down.”“When I get back to Washington that’s the first thing, we’re gonna — we need a reorganization of FEMA....
It’s very deliberate.
One of the key features of an abusive relationship is shutting you down from people who can help you.
If someone’s in the middle of a disaster, and Joe Biden’s federal government comes and helps them out, it’s a catastrophe for the Republicans. It brings the psychotic lies people have been told about the government into contact with the reality of the federal government in the real world, which is one of the few ways they might be able to break out of their elaborate propaganda-bubbles.
If, on the other hand, they’re convinced that FEMA is now coming to kill them, but also their home has been washed away in a mudslide, then they might wind up fleeing the state, living with their family on their brother-in-law’s couches, trying to scrape by, becoming more and more desperate, with no one to give them any substantive assistance of any kind. The desperation increases. The fear of anything governmental or democratic can continue, and increase.
And then, when their brother-in-law offers them a rifle and an invitation to come with a few people and shoot up the election office, or the Democratic organizer’s home, because the government already tried to kill them once when they were at their lowest point, and they escaped only by the skin of their teeth, so it might as well be go time… well, they might accept the offer. Because why not?
By demonizing FEMA, the Republicans are turning what would have been a problem into a recruitment tool.
Also grist for the mill of war. If you’re planning to annex Canada, or Mexico, or all of Latin America or whatever, you’ll need a lot of bodies. Desperate people are way more likely to say “holy shit the army’s recruiting for that war in Mexico. I don’t like it, but having 3 hots and a cot sounds pretty swell instead of fistfighting Ralph behind the Shoney’s for the last slice of pizza.”