Right-Wing Media Is Saying the Wildfire Smoke Is Good, Actually
3 years ago by jmp242 to c/worldnews
Ok, I can get sort of disagreeing the wildfires are from climate change - that's a couple of logical steps you have to make. But "It's not causing anyone to cough" is plainly ludicrous. It was making me cough when I went outside.
"It doesn't smell bad"? Maybe they have COVID and lost their sense of smell altogether? It certainly smelled bad to me. And if you thought it smelled great - wow. I just don't ever want to be around you if you like those sorts of smells. I can't see it actually working with anyone who's ever been in wildfire smoke before - like you don't need science or education or anything to notice if it makes you cough, or tell something doesn't smell great.
I especially don't get this "dying to trigger the libs". Interesting tactic I have to say. I am not compelled to try and trigger anyone - are they all trolls now or something? I have more interesting things to do than to cut off my nose to piss someone else off.
I think there is a lot of pride to be conservative coming into play here. Hard to explain, but I sometimes see this in my family. They proudly present their ignorance to show off their conservativism, hold it in front of them like a banner. When I inquire a bit deeper their views are often a bit more reasonable, it just feels like average boomers wanting to be cool by flaunting their ignorance, as weird as this sounds.
Yeah it feels like most right wing people are more progressive than they think.
I'm not from the U.S. but everytime I talk with a conservative we agree on a lot of things once they stop talking with slogans
That's my experience too. Often when I talk to people they have pretty moderate or left-leaning views that would fit well in any of our more left-leaning parties. However the majority of them still votes for our biggest conservative party, which openly promises and does the opposite of what they claim they would want in a conversation. Frustrating.
Well yeah, they wouldn't want to be a stupid science bitch.
Yes, there are likely lots of people like me who remember having smudge fires to keep the bugs down when working outside in the country or how a campsite smells.
But, living in Alberta, with the air quality rapidly going to hell, the notion that breathing this stuff in day after day even if only when outside is somehow not harmful is ridiculous.
I often find with really nuts conservative ideas there's this kernel of truth that they are based on. The conservative focuses on that, the progressive focuses on the crazy parts. I am not excusing this. The lack of critical or deep thinking is a serious problem. All I'm trying to say is if you meet them in reality you might be able to find some common ground and maybe help them see another point of view or learn a little yourself about their perspective. Doesn't quite work that way dealing with online trolls but occasional can in person.
The documentary Behind the Curve explores this idea a bit. It follows die hard flat earthers around their daily lives to get to know them a bit more.
There's a running theme throughout the movie that these people weren't very happy with their lives prior to becoming flat earthers. Joining the "movement" gave them instant friends and a sense of direction. There's subtle hints now and again that most don't actually believe the Earth is flat, but they feel like "coming out" would ruin their reputation with their new community.
I get the sense that a lot of right wingers feel the same.
The Right uses fear and intimidation to keep their base in line. They brainwash their children into believing as they do that an absolute authority exists and someone will tell them who that is and that to succeed in life all they have to do is follow a proscription.
and the reason we don't hear much about flat earth any more is because most of them moved on... to QAnon.
"Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre
People I work with are infinitely suspicious of the wildfires. They say shit like, “Hmm, isn’t it odd they all started around the same time?”
Yes, Jeffrey, that’s how wildfires work. Entire biomes burn to the ground if the conditions are hot and dry for long enough.
Yeah, there's a "Trudeau started the wildfires as an excuse for carbon taxes" narrative that is insanely popular among the Canadian right wing.
I've even seen some "15 Minute Cities" theorists claiming the fires are being lit in order to "drive people into the liberal cities so the government can control them".
It's just entirely divorced from reality.
Some 15 minute cities critics really make me laugh when they fail to realise the area they live in is already a "15 minute city" with a school, grocery store and library a stone's throw away, no car or bicycle needed
They are basically living out "Don't Look Up".
You don't need a high level of education to know you shouldn't inject bleach into your system to kill COVID-19, and yet people died listening to Trump's suggestion.
I can't find the article anymore because it was back in 2020 when I read it but a woman claimed her father injested bleach after seeing Trump's press conference and died from it. The only articles I find now are upticks in poisonings. Maybe it was debunked since then?
Same ... it's clear that attempting to convince my own family is just as effective as speaking to a charcuterie board. Want to breathe the smoke? Fine, go ham. I'm fresh out of pity for the science deniers.
I don't know why it's so hard to understand that breathing particulate matter into your lungs isn't a good thing... A child should be able to understand this. My 10 and 12 year old INSTINCTIVELY understood this... they pulled their shirts up over their nose on their own when we woke up and went outside on the first bad day.
I effectively grew out of my mild asthma when I was younger (especially as I stopped being around cigarette smoke), so I had a bit of a panic when I had symptoms for the first time in 10 years last Tuesday before I learned why it looked like a doom map outside.....
I used to think that way, but climate change doesn't discriminate. It will be the great equalizer. When global famine first hits, those with the most hoarded will become targets and no amount of private contracted bodyguards will be able to protect them. With that being said, it's easy to be doom and gloom about climate change but please have faith that ultimately humanity will persevere even though it will get quite bad for a time. Remember, climate doom is just another means to encourage apathy and inaction. All hope is not lost, and future generations will pull thru.
it makes them a buck to burn the world alive, so they'll do it; our systems are set up to encourage this kind of thinking, even
I don’t get this weird need to be contrary to everything, doesn’t it get exhausting?
Not for the rich oil tycoons. But yeah, for the brain washed masses it must be exhausting. But I think that only furthers their rage and obstinence. They'ed rather that than admin they've been fooled or used.
It comes from the same place as the deeply held but mutually exclusive beliefs that the government is both totally stupid and incompetent but also so capable and efficient that they are somehow carrying out massive conspiracies on the entire citizenry.
They're not just doing it to do it
well that's part of it, but it's mainly "if we accept that climate change is real, then it's us who are at fault for it; as such we need to discredit and downplay it and anything resulting from it"
like they have a vested interest in saying that it's not a big deal, it's a conscious choice that they're making; they're not being stupid (or at least not in choosing to deny this)
I mean, to me (in the DC area, so not nearly as bad as it was further north) it just smelled like a campfire outside to me. It wasn't a particularly offensive smell.
But I could FEEL that the air quality was bad every time I took a breath, and I don't have any kinds of respiratory issues.
Ok, if you were further away it could have smelled different. Up here in NY it smelled like burning trash and plastic and chemicals. It was horrible. I was referring to people who live in the same small town as I do, so they had to smell the same thing.
To be clear I'm not downplaying how terrible it must have smelled in more heavily effected areas; I didn't mean to come across as doing so.
It doesn't help that there was a landfill fire nearby right when the wildfire smoke was blowing in. Or that VA was trying to keep it quiet so everyone would just blame the Canada situation for the air being so bad.
I've also been seeing so many comments on news posts about the fire talking about how they are intentional fires.
I don't understand how these people are allowed to spread such misinformation 😔
What's that saying, where's there's smoke there's liar?
I can get sort of disagreeing the wildfires are from climate change
Eh, no. Wild fires would also occur without climate change, but anybody denying that climate change isn't making wild fires (and a hundred other things) worse is not making a "couple of logical steps", they're denying science.
These people just have an all encompassing need to be contrarian. But if they wanna go and frolick in the aqi 500 air be my guest.
Yes... I like it when problems are somewhat self-correcting. If only it were even more so... can we get them to think anthrax is good for them?
I think its disingenuous to say that right wing media is saying this. Most right wing media I've seen does not deny that the smoke is dangerous. While some people have claimed that there is little to no health risk, as far as I'm aware no one has tried to describe it as "a good thing". The article you linked has no purpose but to spread baseless hate and negativity, much like most right wing media.
I'd say it's inaccurate to claim right wing media in general is claiming it's a good thing, but as for anyone claiming such, well, there's an example in the article
Greg Kelly on Newsmax blamed them on “our woke friends to the north,” before describing the smoke as “manageable,” “not an unpleasant odor,” and “a beautiful, interesting aura.”
I read the article, this is not an example of a claim that its's a good thing. Sure its a laughable attempt to downplay how serious it is, but he in no way claimed it was overall a good thing. Manageable means it is negative but not significant, he isn't praising wildfires and begging for more of them.
“This doesn’t kill anybody, it doesn’t make anybody cough, this is not a health event,” he added, contradicting public health experts and basic common sense. “This has got nothing to do with climate. This is wildfire smoke. This is natural. This is not because of climate change. This is not because of fossil fuels.”
Seriously, we should start making laws that put rich powerful assholes in jail when they start spouting obvious lies that make the world a worse place.
canadian govt really needs a more active forest service - letting it get out of hand like this is a bit ridiculous.
Canada has an absolutely massive forest service as well as an insanely large forestry industry overall. They're better equipped to deal with this sort of thing than pretty much anyone else in the world. Once you reach this magnitude of crown fire there's really very little you can do.
They'll spend millions of dollars dumping water from choppers and planes, pushing in firebreaks that won't hold it - there's really nothing left to do at this stage but get out of the way. You can't hose a crown fire out, people on the ground are just risking their lives.
Firebreaks are ineffective because this thing is causing spotfires miles and miles ahead of the front.
Are we ready to take climate change seriously? If not, this is your life every summer from now on.
Signed, a wildland firefighter and forest worker from Australia.
Yes, the reason people are losing it this year is because the winds are going opposite their usual direction so the smoke is going South. These fires happen every year but this year is much worse due to a dry winter.
In Alberta, where I am, there have been cuts to fire service, in some cases on idealogical grounds, which is frustrating. The fires people are worked up about are on the other side of the country but just pointing out this is nation wide and much worse than previous years (earlier, more, etc).
It's a rock and a hard place situation. One of the reasons the fires are so bad now is that for many years much effort was put into preventing fires. It allows a lot of fuel to build up, so that when the fire finally gets too big to handle it's got a huge reserve to burn through. We may have to endure a few years of huge fires to get back down to the usual background level.
Also, low precipitation in the winter leading to drier conditions.
Yeah, Canada needs to get this under control. I sat in traffic for an hour this week to get to the beach and then when I got there... the air was full of smoke! What a waste. US politicians need to take a hardline on the Canadians here.
Anyone remember when COVID was "good for you"? How did that turn out for them?
We had absurd amounts of smoke on the east coast of Australia a few years ago. It hung around for weeks. I think it effected lots of micronations in the Pacific and even reached parts of South America.
Anyone saying "this is fine" is off their rocker. It's literally particles in the air clogging lungs.
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Let's be real. A lot of these people don't actually believe anything that comes out of their mouth, but if they think it'll trigger a liberal they're down with it.
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