By Laurie Baron
SAN DIEGO — Reacting to the ferocity of Hurricane Helene, Marjorie Taylor Greene posted on X: “Yes, they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” Although Greene doesn’t say who “they” are, “they probably are the same Jews she blamed for igniting California’s wildfires in 2021 with giant space lasers.
Greene is selective about who causes natural disasters. This summer when an earthquake shook New York, she contended that “God is sending America strong signs to tell us to repent. Earthquakes and eclipses and many more things to come. I pray that our country listens.” If Jews are really the Chosen People, perhaps the Almighty outsources Hurricanes to them.
Of course, Donald Trump would never resort to blaming the Jews for the devastation left in Helene’s wake. After all, they are too busy conspiring with the Democrats to engineer his defeat in November. Nevertheless, he did accuse the Biden/Harris administration of sabotaging FEMA’s relief efforts by diverting FEMA funds to illegal immigrants to get them to vote for Harris. Rather than credit FEMA for anything, a viral photograph shows Trump heroically wading through the floodwaters caused by Helene’s torrential rains on a mission to rescue the storm’s victims. This picture may disappoint his MAGA minions who believe he can walk on water.
Indeed, Trump knows how to redirect hurricanes by redrawing their paths with a sharpie. If he hadn’t been campaigning, he could have shifted the Helene’s trajectory into the Atlantic like he switched Hurricane Dorian’s to extend into Alabama in 2021. Marjorie Taylor Greene needs to concede that “the sharpie is mightier than the laser.”
PS You can either lament or celebrate that this is my 700th column for the San Diego Jewish World.
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Laurie Baron is a professor emeritus of history at San Diego State University.