Dispatch from Republicanistan

Where Mark Robinson is leading the recovery effort and the government is hindering private citizens from saving Western North Carolina.

After I saw a Republican legislator pleading with people not to believe rumors and lies about the recovery effort in Western North Carolina, I realized I needed to take quick trip to Republicanistan to find out what’s going on. It’s an ugly place and, unfortunately, threatens the disaster relief. I wouldn’t advise going to Republicanistan without an experienced guide and some powerful ammunition. It’s hard to tell who is a Russian bot, who’s a grifter, and who’s just a brainwashed resident of Republicanistan. You would hate to get caught in a twitter firefight with a bot and inadvertently set off the algorithm that spreads disinformation.

There are numerous ports of entry to Republicanistan. I used the comment section of a Mark Robinson twitter post. It got me right in there.

In Republicanistan, Mark Robinson is leading the recovery effort in Western North Carolina. Apparently, he and his staff (both of them, I suppose) landed on the ground shortly after the storm moved out and started bringing in supplies. That worthless DemoRAT Roy Cooper was up in New York at a fundraiser while the state got pounded. He hasn’t been seen since. Thank God for Mark Robinson or all would be lost!

To make matters worse, Joe Biden is impeding the situation. He won’t sign some sort of authorization, a T-100 or T-10 or something, that would allow federal troops to operate in the disaster area. FEMA has barely shown up. All the aircraft bringing in supplies are from private organizations. Nothing is arriving from the federal government. The only thing keeping Western North Carolina afloat is the volunteers.

And Governor DeSantis of Florida is going to fix our roads for free! If not for those Republican governors out there, and Mark Robinson of course, there would be no recovery effort at all in North Carolina. Mark also brought in the national guard from Iowa and Nebraska. What an absolute hero.

I want to take an aside for a minute. We liberals seem to believe that people in Republicanistan have disdain for experts. That’s just false. They revere experts. In fact, they love them so much that everybody becomes one! On everything! You would be amazed at how fast they got up to speed on rescue and recovery.

In Republicanistan, the federal government is just a failure. As one conservative columnist tweeted yesterday, “We’re from the government and we’re here to help,” paraphrasing Reagan’s famous “nine most terrifying words in the English language.” You see in Republicanistan, people stranded without food, water, and medicine for almost a week would prefer to wait for private citizens to help them out instead of FEMA. If the government would just get out of the way, a bunch of MAGA strongmen and strongwomen would have situation solved by next week.

According to the Executive Director of Women for America First, all FEMA’s aircraft and tankers are sitting in South Carolina and have not been deployed. And now FEMA has the audacity to ask for more funds! They’ve already given almost a billion dollars to illegals but only give people in North Carolina $750. If we would just stop sending money to Ukraine, we would have plenty of money to save Western North Carolina.

Then, I ran into the scammers. They’re telling people to support their individual rescue efforts instead of the ones run by the government and nonprofits. They alone can save western North Carolina because the state and federal government are botching the recovery effort and leaving people to die. Venmo them and everything will get fixed pronto!

A few hours was all I could take in Republicanistan. I got out, but thousands, maybe millions, are still there, sharing misinformation and disinformation with little clue about what’s actually happening. I was relieved to get back into the real world where both tragic and amazing stories are unfolding. Towns have disappeared. Entire families were swept away. The death toll keeps rising.

But people are stepping up. Volunteer helicopter pilots are delivering supplies and rescuing victims. My buddy, Brian, is driving truckloads of donated supplies, every day, from Carrboro to Avery County and he’s taking a cleanup crew to the small town of Lansing this weekend. Neal, a friend who splits his time between his house in Mills River and a mountaintop farm near Whiteside Cove, joined a caravan of farmers from Macon County, hauling four-wheelers and chainsaws to reach people still stranded in Madison County. A friend from Wadesboro drove to Asheville to deliver supplies to his son, who promptly took the goods to people he believed needed them more. My friend noted that while the scene was devastating, the power of the human spirit was beautiful as people came together to weather the storm.

Photos and videos tell so much, too. Whole towns are shoveling out of the mud and silt piled high in buildings and blocking roads. I doubt anybody asked whether the person pushing the wheelbarrow next to them was a Republican or a Democrat. They were all just trying to get the job done.

And fortunately, Mark Robinson is not in charge of anything except his inflammatory twitter feed. Governor Roy Cooper is overseeing the recovery, meeting with President Joe Biden and working with neighboring governors, all Republicans, to get people the help they need. More than 5,000 National Guard and 1,000 active duty troops are on the ground. Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters are evacuating people and delivering supplies to areas inaccessible by road. Lines of dump trucks hauling rock to repair roads traveled up I-40. Walmart sent truckloads of supplies into the region yesterday. That’s the government coordinating those efforts.

For people who don’t understand the region and topography, it’s hard to imagine how large and remote the area hit by Helene is. It’s hundreds of square miles with communities difficult to reach in good times. Curvy roads make distances in the mountains much further than they are in the flatlands. A five mile drive on paved roads can easily take fifteen or twenty minutes without any traffic. Many of those roads are now washed out because they followed creeks and rivers. There’s no way this disaster can be addressed without massive government support and it’s not going to be fixed soon.

But, in Republicanistan, the government is just getting in the way of the people who could really solve the crisis. It’s better to sit on keyboards and criticize the relief effort, sending money to individuals who may be grifters rather than government and nonprofit organizations doing the work. Individual stories on TikTok of offended MAGA-types having their efforts rejected are far more interesting than the boring stories of FEMA evacuations and tractor trailers full of supplies reaching their destination.

Pray for Western North Carolina and give thanks for the people doing the hard work.