It’s Weird That They Care So Much Whether Arson Caused Wildfires.
There’s a scene in the first episode of the the miniseries Chernobyl in which Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin greets party apparatchik Boris Shcherbina and nuclear physicist Valery Legasov at the reactor site. Fomin hands Shcherbina a list of “individuals who we believe are accountable” for the nuclear accident visibly unfolding a mile or two away from them under a rising plume of radioactive smoke.
It’s a very weird thing to say in the midst of that. Anyway, regarding Fomin’s list, it calls to mind a memorable line from the movie The Social Network: “And you did all that instead of doing what?”
As we know, the usual segment of the right in North America is pushing really hard the idea that the important thing vis-a-vis this summer’s wildfires across Canada, America, Greece, etc. is how many of them were caused by arson.
A lot of people on the right, at least in North America, like spending time outdoors. In or near forests. They know, of course, that a forest fire (or really, any kind of fire, because, y’know…. fire) will spread faster and farther in bone-dry conditions than in less dry conditions.
And given that this means that fires of any cause — arson, lightning, cigarette butt, banned campfire, etc. — will spread faster and farther in such conditions…. why, fundamentally, do they see the cause of the fires as the important thing to push out into the public mind? Rather than, e.g., “the big tinderbox is burning especially big this very hot dry summer (mightn’t that be where our energies should be focused)”?
I haven’t a clue. There are multiple reasons that I can think of as to why they might think that’s really important and seem immune to the fact that it’s not.
- They have some kind of psychological or mental or emotional block that prevents facing reality.
- They are highly susceptible to suggestion from people on TV screens.
- They have some kind of malicious intent.
Reiterating that we’re speaking about people who view whether arson was involved as the most important thing to focus on about this summer’s wildfires, each member of that group probably has one of those things. Maybe more than one.
Does anybody have any other theories? Wonder what the implication of these facts is for the future, and how others should respond to it.
