Billionaires Are Not Going To Save Us

We need to look to our own communities for help, not to billionaires.

By Liz Theoharis, Tom Dispatch

It was William Shakespeare who, in Troilus and Cressida, wrote, “One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.” And yet, in the polarized news cycle since Hurricane Helene ravaged the southeastern United States and the hurricanes have kept coming, we’ve heard a tale not of shared humanity, but of ruin, discord, and political polarization.

Hundreds are dead from that storm — the deadliest to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina in 2005 — hundreds more are missing, and hundreds of thousands of residences are still without power or clean water. And in addition to the staggering human loss and physical damage, a hurricane of misinformation and division has continued to pummel the region.

There’s Elon Musk’s politicized deployment of Starlink satellite internet access, which he’s used to credit Donald Trump less than one month before the November election, while undermining the legitimacy of federal recovery efforts. Indeed, listen to Fox News or read Musk’s claims on his social media platform X, and there’s no mention of the pre-arrangements the federal government made with Starlink through the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to provide internet access — for local governments and the Eastern Band of the Cherokee Nation.

Then, of course, there’s Donald Trump falsely claiming that the federal government’s response to Helene was delayed and insufficient because the funds that might have gone to hurricane victims are instead being used to house undocumented immigrants. (FEMA does spend some money on migrant housing, but through an entirely different program.) With this outrageous fearmongering, he’s fanning the flames of anti-immigrant hate that are already raging during this election season. His racist and xenophobic rhetoric has also forced FEMA and the White House to spend precious time and energy trying to counter his lies, rather than focusing their full attention on saving lives and rebuilding broken communities.

And don’t forget Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who insisted that the government actually controls the weather. This ludicrous claim is taken from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones (notorious for arguing that the Sandy Hook school shooting was a hoax), who suggested that the government directed Helene towards North Carolina “to force people out of the region so it could mine the state’s large reserves of lithium, a key component in the batteries that power electric vehicles and store renewable energy.”