On Thursday, Oct. 2, I exited the Winston-Salem Costco with products purchased for home and the storm-ravaged North Carolina mountains. At that moment, a man and a woman were loading a large pickup truck parked next to my car with items clearly headed for the mountains. While they did so, I stood outside my car, expressing appreciation for their caring actions.
The man walked over to me, noting the goods were going to hard-hit Asheville. He then proceeded to inform me that FEMA workers had “taken over” two Asheville hotels there, forcing out locals who had taken shelter there. Next, he declared that “our feckless president” froze air traffic across the city so he could fly over, thereby slowing rescue efforts. Returning to his truck, the gentleman advised that if I also wanted to contribute to the recovery I should send money to a church relief program, but “not the Red Cross,” thought not to have shown up to help.
Bill Leonard
I made no response except to say, “Thank you for what you are doing today.” And I meant it.
Returning home and doing some fact-checking into these unusual claims, I discovered the well-intentioned caregiver was sadly ill-informed. In fact, hotel rooms were not confiscated by FEMA and the rescue-related airspace over Asheville was not shut down by the Biden visit. The Red Cross was there from the first.
“Disinformation,” “rumors,” more accurately, lies related to storm relief, are rampant, many perpetuated by the current Republican presidential and vice-presidential candidates. In fact, the lies are so widespread that FEMA was forced to create a webpage refuting them.
Here is a sample of the rumors with FEMA’s response:
- Rumor: FEMA only provides loans to disaster survivors.
Fact: This is false. In most cases, FEMA grants do not have to be paid back. - Rumor: The FAA is restricting access to the airspace for Helene rescue and recovery operations.
Fact: The FAA is not restricting access for recovery operations. The FAA is coordinating closely with state and local officials to make sure everyone is operating safely in very crowded and congested airspace. - Rumor: FEMA is in the process of confiscating Helene survivor property. If I apply for disaster assistance and my land is deemed unlivable, my property will be seized.
Fact: FEMA cannot seize your property or land. Applying for disaster assistance does not grant FEMA or the federal government authority or ownership of your property or land. - Rumor: FEMA does not have enough money to provide disaster assistance for Helene.
Fact: FEMA has enough money right now for immediate response and recovery needs. - Rumor: Funding for FEMA disaster response was diverted to support international efforts or border related issues.
Fact: This is false. No money is being diverted from disaster response needs. FEMA’s disaster response efforts and individual assistance is funded through the Disaster Relief Fund, which is a dedicated fund for disaster efforts.
Numerous elected officials — Republicans and Democrats — also have refuted the falsehoods, including North Carolina Republican state Sen. Kevin Corbin, who posted on Facebook:
“To refuse an interview because it is fact checked is to admit to lying.”
Friends, can I ask a small favor? Will you all help STOP this conspiracy theory junk that is floating all over Facebook and the internet about the floods in WNC. Example: FEMA is stealing money from donations, body bags ordered but government has denied, bodies not being buried, government is controlling the weather from Antarctica, government is trying to get lithium from WNC, stacks of bodies left at hospitals, and on and on and on and on and on. PLEASE help stop this junk. It is just a distraction to people trying to do their job.
Yet the lies continue unabated, with reports that some in the devastated areas now refuse FEMA assistance because of them. The lies didn’t start with the hurricane. CBS reporter Scott Pelley recently explained why Donald Trump withdrew from the 50-year-old tradition of presidential candidate interviews on the network.
Pelley observed: “The campaign offered shifting explanations. First it complained that we would fact-check the interview. We fact-check every story. Later, Trump said he needed an apology for his interview in 2020. Trump claims correspondent Lesley Stahl said in that interview that Hunter Biden’s controversial laptop came from Russia. She never said that.”
To refuse an interview because it is fact-checked is to admit to lying.
When responding to criticism for falsely claiming that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating the pets of local white citizens, vice presidential candidate JD Vance responded, “If I have to create stories so that the American media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people, then that’s what I’m going to do because you guys are completely letting Kamala Harris coast.”
To “create stories” like that is simply a cool euphemism for lying.
The lies about the Haitians led to bomb threats in Springfield that forced the closing of several schools and other public buildings. Haitians in the town still do not feel safe. Republican leaders in Springfield and across the state of Ohio implored the candidates to cease and desist with the lies about Haitians. They have not.
By contrast, we might recall the words of Jimmy Carter, now in his 100th year, who, in his 1976 presidential campaign pledged: “I will never lie to you.” And he apparently kept that vow. Forty-eight years later, how the mighty — no, the nation — has fallen.
“Truth and freedom are inseparable for all who share life in this world.”
And what of American Christianity, dragged into the current political arena by assorted Christian nationalist agendas? Can we reclaim the words of Jesus of Nazareth, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free?” That simple but profound phrase is at once a theological confession of faith in Jesus’ spiritual centrality, at least where Christians are concerned. But it is also a profound statement that truth and freedom are inseparable for all who share life in this world.
That’s why the unchallenged normalization of lies across our politics and culture is at once a repudiation of the gospel of Jesus Christ and threat to democracy whereby we are transformed into “willful disbelievers in the truth” as journalist Neal Gabler wrote powerfully this week.
Yes, many politicians — Democrat, Republican, independent — lie, but not like the lies that are re-forming our republic and our faith. So why haven’t MAGA-oriented Christians, so concerned about orthodoxy, gender, sexuality, abortion, library books and prayers in school, spoken out collectively against lying as public policy in the land of the free and the home of Christian nationalism? Why the silence when our democratic freedom and our soul liberty are at stake?
To understand the danger of the present moment, we might take seriously the work of Jewish historian/philosopher Hannah Arendt, who wrote extensively about “lying and politics.” In her last interview in 1974, the year before her death, Arendt declared:
If everybody always lies to you, the consequence is not that you believe the lies, but rather that nobody believes anything any longer. This is because lies, by their very nature, have to be changed, and a lying government has constantly to rewrite its own history. … And a people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.
And with such a church, too.
Bill Leonard is founding dean and the James and Marilyn Dunn professor of Baptist studies and church history emeritus at Wake Forest University School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, N.C. He is the author or editor of 25 books. A native Texan, he lives in Winston-Salem with his wife, Candyce, and their daughter, Stephanie.
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