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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 26, 2022

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Yea it’s the same thing as the very fine people quote. Where he never said KKK were the fine people but the left decided to say he did and promoted it everywhere.

It reminds me of the MTG quote about the Rothschilds boiling down in popular culture to "Jewish space lasers," and now I get ads on Facebook for army patches for the "Jewish space laser corps."

Holy shit, I had no idea that wasn't what she'd actually said. I assumed it wasn't quite a direct quote, but a distillation of something she'd said, rather than a deliberate fabrication from a media snake looking for a dunk. MTG's actual post is (from my perspective) pretty kooky, but this doesn't justify the willful distortions. Jonathan Chait, the weasel that got that ball rolling, explains thusly:

To be clear, the story, which I wrote, did not say she used the words “Jewish space laser.” It accurately reproduced her entire post blaming the Rothschilds, and I noted that “the Rothschild family has featured heavily in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories since at least the 19th century.”

The story in which Chait definitely didn't say that she used the words "Jewish space laser" is titled "GOP Congresswoman Blamed Wildfires on Secret Jewish Space Laser". Every time that I think I have adjusted my views of journalists to be sufficiently low, I find out that I need to turn that mental ratchet once more.

Having just read the post, "GOP congresswoman blamed wildfires on secret jewish space laser" is... not a bad description. What's the willful distortion you're seeing here?

I had no idea that the same post was speculating on possible corruption as well.

It's almost as if reframing it in maximally silly terms will allow the non-kooky bits to be ignored.

I would consider an accurate and neutral single-sentence framing of MTG's post to be "MTG speculates that wildfires may be caused by industrial mistake with space-based solar power". The use of "laser" implies to almost any reader that this is an intentional, aimed weapon; MTG speculates that such a beam could look like a laser, not there is a weapon being used. There is no suggestion in her post that said "laser" is "Jewish" in anyway. I would consider describing her speculation as being a "secret Jewish space laser" to basically just be dishonest dunking.

"MTG speculates that wildfires may be caused by industrial mistake with space-based solar power".

I loathe journalists, and MTG is at least putatively on my side. Her post is written in the profoundly annoying "just asking questions" style which adds a degree of ambiguity, but I don't think your summation is accurate. She claims that connected officials gain fiscal advantage from the wildfires, and have implemented policy to maximize this advantage: the areas under threat from wildfires are the same areas where the high-speed rail project is planned to go through, and the same officials are investing in the power company supposedly causing the fires, the rail project the fires are enabling, while passing legislation to protect the power company from adverse consequences of the fire. The implication I'm reading is that they're setting the fires on purpose, not a mistake.

MTG herself uses the term "laser or beam of light" twice, making the claim that it's reasonable to attribute the fires to such space-based beams.

Does the industry in question even exist? Obviously the company is a thing, but do they actually have emitters or a ground station operating? Much less a setup scaled sufficiently to deliver significant power?

Having just read the post, "GOP congresswoman blamed wildfires on secret jewish space laser" is... not a bad description. What's the willful distortion you're seeing here?

Yes, it is a distortion, here is link to her original post.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/marjorie-taylor-greene-qanon-wildfires-space-laser-rothschild-execute.html

It is not "secret Jewish space laser", but "secret Rotschild space solar power microwave transmission"

Do not blame her, we are all science fiction nerds, we would love to live in world where launch costs were low enough to make this possible.

On the other hand, rather not - imagine how high would energy prices have to be to make this pay, or imagine the power of aerospace lobby to push for this bondoogle anyway.

Maybe MTG is visitor from another timeline, either utopian or dystopian compared to ours? This would explain many things.

SpaceX has plenty of military contracts with secret payloads. There are also plenty of military installations in California.

Beamed energy would be great for military logistics. Especially for the remote outposts in Afghanistan that we were still maintaining at the time of MTG's post.

Blue light is most probably a transformer frying or power lines arcing, but maybe not.

MTG's thesis is that a well-connected energy company is beaming energy down from space, and that these beams are being used to intentionally start wildfires, apparently to clear the way for the high-speed rail project.

"Secret": She implies a secret plan to use the collectors to set wildfires, and also implies that the company may have more satellites in space than is publicly known.

"Jewish": The Rotchschilds connection, natch.

"Space Lasers": the solar emitters are putatively in space, and she mentions eyewitness accounts of "lasers or blue beams of light", and then suggests that the solar emitter beam might resemble a laser or beam of light.

"Secret Jewish Space Lasers" is not a maximally-charitable interpretation of her claim, but it's certainly defensible. I do not think it can be fairly argued that the journalists in question are twisting her words. She really did claim that possibly-secret space-based satelites were being used by democrats and the Rothschild corporation to start wildfires with concentrated energy beams.