In MAGA world, there are no accidents
The Baltimore bridge disaster reminded us that these folks should be nowhere near power.
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Donald Trump has been talking disconcertingly often on the campaign trail about a looming terror attack. All indications are that Tuesday’s bridge collapse in Baltimore wasn’t that, but MAGAs aren’t about to let reality get in the way of pushing conspiracies useful to their cause.
First, the actual facts: Early Tuesday morning, a container ship lost power on Baltimore’s Patapsco River. Unable to navigate, the vessel crashed into the Francis Scott Key Bridge, knocking out a support column. The bridge collapsed, and vehicles and construction workers plunged into the water. As of Tuesday evening, six workers are presumed dead.
The bridge collapse is a tragedy. But for many on the right, it’s also an opportunity to spread conspiracy theories, encourage chaos, push bigotry and resentment, stoke fears, and do Donald Trump’s bidding by smearing Biden. This ugly response is a burden on those directly affected in Baltimore and elsewhere. It’s also a deliberate effort to undermine collective solidarity and resilience.
Far right populist rage makes it harder to respond to emergencies, and often compounds them in terrifying ways. Facing down disasters requires calm, deliberation, and a willingness to set aside one’s immediate comfort and fear for a broader good. The right’s go-to response of panic and paranoia makes us all less safe by sowing confusion and promoting a reactionary brand of politics.
Worms of the brain
Disasters are by their nature unexpected and chaotic. It can be difficult to figure out causes and responsibilities in the heat of the moment, especially when the first priority has to be to rescue victims, not to assign blame.
There will no doubt be an investigation into what happened on the container ship. All indications at the moment though are that the explanation for the disaster is what it appears to be in footage of the incident — the ship’s power failed, resulting in an unintentional collision with the bridge. President Joe Biden referred to the disaster as an “accident” in remarks on Tuesday. Baltimore Police Commissioner Richard Worley said “there is absolutely no indication that there is any terrorism or that this was done on purpose.”
Have these reassurances stopped salivating MAGA vultures from rabid fear-mongering and irresponsible dipshittery? No, of course not.
Georgia congresswoman and reliable conspiracy theorist goon Marjorie Taylor Greene rushed to her keyboard to call for a “serious investigation” into what she said might be “an intentional attack.”
Even slightly less unhinged House Republicans couldn’t resist the lure of making completely irresponsible claims. As you can see in the below clip, South Carolina Rep. Nancy Mace on Newsmax incoherently blamed the collapse on Biden’s infrastructure bill, alleging it only devoted “$40 billion for traditional roads and bridges.” (Mace voted against the infrastructure bill but then tried to take credit for it anyway.)
During a Newsmax hit of his own, American Conservative Union Chairman Matt Schlapp suggested the container ship failure was somehow caused by “drug-addled” employees and covid lockdowns. Fox host Maria Bartiromo, meanwhile, linked the disaster to “the wide open border.” (Watch below.)
While prominent right-wing voices recklessly speculated and conspiracy-mongered, the platform formerly known as twitter was absolutely overrun with racism. A number of users with significant platforms linked the bridge collapse to DEI, spread bigoted tropes about Baltimore’s mayor, and ludicrously alleged Biden is to blame.
Be afraid, be very afraid
The right’s smorgasbord of vaguely explicatory gabble is obviously intended to try to turn the horrific bridge collapse to partisan advantage. Republicans oppose diversity inclusion programs; they oppose anything associated with Biden; they oppose covid public health measures; and they oppose most all immigration. So they try to link the bridge collapse to these partisan talking points in the vague hope of smearing diversity programs and/or immigrants and/or covid mitigation efforts. (It should be noted that the missing men are from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, and Mexico, with local reporting indicating they have spouses and children.)
It’s also an election year, so the right is also hoping to smear Biden, to suggest his failures led to the collapse, or to daydream about bad things happening that could hurt his reelection prospects. This was especially apparent during Maria Bartiromo’s interview with Rick Scott, when she almost sounded giddy wondering if the bridge collapse “is gonna stoke inflation again.” That would hurt the country, and considering the circumstances it could hardly be considered Biden’s fault, but it might boost Trump — and boosting Trump is the goal of propagandists like Bartiromo and hacks like Scott.
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Similarly, if the bridge collapse was the result of a foreign terrorist attack, as Greene seems to hope, or if it somehow (?) had something to do with immigration, that would give Trump a chance to spend weeks or months attacking Biden on border policies or implying he’s weak on crime.
Of course, the GOP is hampered here by the fact that the bridge collapse had nothing to do with any of these things. That makes it difficult for them to agree on a single talking point, and difficult for anyone not in the right-wing bubble to take them seriously.
Democratic and left anger over mass shootings has occasionally, painfully, led to partial gun control legislation, because the connection between mass shootings and easy access to guns is very clear. Trump’s mishandling of the covid pandemic harmed him badly in 2020 because the connection between his policies (or lack of policies) and mass death was equally clear. In contrast, right-wing foam-flecked screaming about the bridge collapse is not going to lead to legislative changes and is not going to harm Biden, because the whole thing is obviously nonsense. (Trump, for what it’s worth, dissed Baltimore as a “rodent infested mess” when he was in office, and one wonders if he would’ve tried to shake down the Maryland governor for political dirt before agreeing to help with the rebuilding effort.)
Foaming can have other benefits of course. Mace and Greene get right-wing news hits in part because they can be counted on for irresponsible batshittery, and spewing irresponsible batshittery on right-wing news is a boost to fundraising. Similarly, right-wing social media influencers can build their brands and paychecks by rushing to their keyboards with nonsense conspiracy theories pegged to the day’s news, especially if the day’s news involves an unexpected tragedy.
The worst disaster is solidarity
Beyond the personal incentives, though, MAGA has a collective interest in pushing conspiracies, even if those conspiracies are too incoherent to promote any specific policy or identify a specific target of hate.
Conspiracy theories undermine faith in a shared truth or a shared community. MAGA isn’t really trying to get people to believe any one story. They’re just trying to sow doubt. If nobody can be trusted, if everyone is corrupt, then Trump and his ilk are no worse than anyone else. Conspiracy theories alienate people from the democratic process. That’s good for Trump, who hates democracy.
In addition to undermining trust in the political process, conspiracy theories also undermine our trust in each other. This is especially important for MAGA during disasters because, as Rebecca Solnit has pointed out, disasters are often a moment when people demonstrate a great capacity for self-sacrifice, community, and solidarity. Solnit’s 2009 book “A Paradise Built in Hell” discusses how during disasters — such as the great 1906 San Francisco earthquake — people risk their lives for one another, care for each other, cook for each other. While “horrible in itself,” she adds that disaster “is sometimes a door back into paradise, the paradise at least in which we are who we hope to be, do the work we desire, and are each our sister’s and brother’s keeper.”
Even the covid pandemic, which forced people to isolate and separate, opened up opportunities for people to aid and support one another. Solnit points out that people did food runs for each other; Dolly Parton began offering free lessons for kids and Heather Cox Richardson began giving free history lessons online. Even at the national level, the pandemic gave Democrats an opening to pass the expanded child tax credit, which led to massive reductions in child poverty before it lapsed in 2022.
Solnit says in her book that authorities often become nervous and even violent when people start working together under difficult, chaotic situations. After the San Francisco quake, police attacked “looters” — that is, people searching abandoned stores for desperately needed supplies for themselves and their communities. In New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, police officers shot people crossing a highway to try to get to safety, killing two and wounding four.
MAGA, in particular, is a movement built on stoking divisions and cultivating paranoid fear of Black people, immigrants, LGBT people, Muslims, Jews, and other marginalized people. Spreading conspiracy theories following disasters is a way to prevent the formation of solidarity, community, and trust. It’s a way for the Marjorie Taylor Greenes of the world to signal to their followers to embrace their worst selves.
This is why MAGA has been so opposed to common sense covid policies like masking, vaccination, and testing. As a result, Republican excess death rates ended up substantially higher than those of Democrats. But that was a small price to pay for putting the brakes on a potential outbreak of trust, community, and caring.
Disasters like covid, or like the Baltimore bridge collapse, are moments when we can pull together or turn on one another. The right fears its power will be diminished going forward if we choose the first. They flood the public sphere with hate, conspiracy theories, and nonsense to forestall any option but bad ones.
That’s it for today
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We’ll be back with more tomorrow. Until then, have a good one.
Thank you Noah for stating it like it is. To the Marjorie Greenes of this world I say, your shriveled heart, your hateful attitudes towards humanity are on full display for all to see. And of course, the people making the pothole repairs in the bridge were Hispanic, of course, they were, white men won’t do those jobs anymore. I live in a small town of Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and almost all of the road working crews, the ones actually doing the work, are Hispanic. The white guys in the white construction helmets are the ones standing around with their arms folded, watching the Hispanic guys do the work. As the Republicans devolve into more and more ridiculousness, and yes, I’m gonna say more stupidity, I continue to be amazed that people actually listen to them and follow them. But then I see the video clips of the men and women that they’re interviewing at rallies And I do understand somewhat. Of course trump did say, “ I love the poorly educated.” Well, they certainly love him and all the people that follow him, they are members of the Maga cult.
Excellent.
R’s can’t use the border or infrastructure bills here since they voted against both; also the former was voted on years ago. What we have is R’s playing to despair and that government doesn’t work. What is likely is regulations were loosened by R’s, so inspections of bridge and ship were not up to speed. The choice in November: Biden or Dictatorship.