When it made landfall in Florida’s Big Bend region, Hurricane Helene was a Category 4 and four hundred and twenty miles across. The storm surges ranged between eight and fifteen feet, lifting boats and mobile homes from their docks and trailer parks, depositing them hundreds of yards away across the torn and battered landscape. But the real story with Helene was what the news media and meteorologists call the “rain event,” an aspect of hurricanes that in the last decade or so has become their major destructive feature, affecting not only those who live near the sea, but far inland as well. And so it was when, after devastating the west coast of Florida with the effects of its winds, that Helene hit Georgia, Tennessee and the Carolinas with massive floods of what can only be described as Biblical proportions.
The devastation and havoc wreaked by Hurricane Helene upon these states – all bastions of atavistic, Bible-thumping primitivist white nationalist Christianity – poses a vexing conundrum for their resident Bible-thumpers. Because on the one hand, maybe this “climate change caused by anthropogenic global warming” stuff those egg-headed, evolutionist scientists and those Commie liberals are always yakking about is actually true. And on the other, if not, then it’s certain sure looks like the Lord God Almighty who made the world six thousand years ago in less than a week is pretty damn angry with every single redneck Bible-thumper from Tampa to Greensboro. And despite the holy host of blustering, self-righteous preachers between those two cities, no success was had praying that hurricane away. I suggest they check these out for their next sermon – Genesis 6:7, Isaiah 40:26, Mark 7:6, Matthew 23:27-28, Titus 1:16, and Luke 20:47. But I suspect they’ll just quote Genesis 9:11 and say God couldn’t possibly be involved because he promised not to kill us like that any more.
And speaking of Greensboro, North Carolina, one of its native sons is currently experiencing his own personal political hurricane at the moment, one that promises to devastate his rise to power with the same vengeance as Helene toppled the steeples of backwoods evangelical churches like some militant Freethinker. I refer to none other than the distinguished Lieutenant Governor of the Tar Heel State, one Mark Robinson, who contacted me quite unexpectedly at my home in Great Falls, Virginia, yesterday evening as I lounged on the couch with my cat Twinkle.
Tom: Good evening, Lieutenant Governor Robinson.
Mark. Uh… you can call me Mark… uh, how did you know it was me?
Tom: I have Caller ID.
Mark: So do I, but it doesn’t work like… that.
Tom: I have the kind of Caller ID you can only get inside the Beltway.
Mark: Must be nice.
Tom: It’s not cheap, I can tell you. To what do I owe the honor of this telephone call?
Mark: Well, um… I got your number from Rand Paul…
Tom: I must remember to thank him. Why are you calling?
Mark: I heard you, uh, give away consultations… uh, the first time?
Tom: Yes, it’s part of my marketing plan. And I assume you want one?
Mark: Uh-huh.
Tom: Well, normally, I’d tell you to call my office and book a free initial consultation during business hours, but since I’m a bit bored at the moment, I can give you one now. What’s your problem?
Mark: Uh, gee, thanks, uh…
Tom: No need to thank me, what’s your problem?
Mark: My problem is… uh, that the media is telling lies about me, trying to sabotage my campaign for governor.
Tom: Which media?
Mark: CNN.
Tom: As far as I know, CNN reports the news on the wire and does investigative pieces, just like all the other legitimate network news organizations. There’s plenty of true material like that to report on. Why would they decide to lie about you?
Mark: Because they are politically motivated against me.
Tom: CNN? No. Making up politically motivated lies in an attempt to destroy people is what Fox News does, not CNN.
Mark: Well, then CNN is copying Fox!
Tom: Nonsense. Nobody copies Fox News. That would be like aspiring to be the village idiot.
Mark: Fox News is not idiots!
Tom: The village whore, then. Whatever. What’s your problem?
Mark: I just told you!
Tom: No you didn’t. You told me what you’ve been telling the media ever since CNN broke the story that you posted personally embarrassing things on various websites before you shot your mouth off in that Greensboro City Council meeting back in 2018.
Mark: I did not shoot my mouth off!
Tom: Oh, really? What did you do, then?
Mark: I defended the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms!
Tom: Okay, then, you shot your mouth off defending the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms. There had been a school shooting in Florida on Valentine’s Day that killed seventeen people, the story was still getting high media play and the City Council was considering whether it was appropriate for Greensboro to host a gun show in April.
Mark: That’s right! I’m a law-abiding citizen who’s never shot anybody!
Tom: Indeed.
Mark: Those school shooting survivors were nothing but media prosti-tots! So I stood up and told those liberal cuks where to put their gun show ban!
Tom: And you went viral on social media.
Mark: Damn right I did!
Tom: After the local MAGA Republican Congressman, Mark Walker, posted it on his Facebook page, that is. After which you dropped out of school yourself. I don’t suppose you were afraid of getting shot there, were you?
Mark: Of course not! I quit UNC at Greensboro to focus on all the speaking engagements I was being invited to.
Tom: Culminating with your triumphant oration delivered to the National Rifle Association at their 2018 national convention. After which, your meteoric rise in politics began as you defeated four other Republicans in the primary to become the 2020 party nominee for lieutenant governor, rising higher in its ever-accelerating arc as you won the general election and then ran for governor of North Carolina in 2024, receiving the endorsement of none other than Donald Trump.
Mark: Damn right I did!
Tom: Only now, your meteoric career arc threatens to bend downward, causing you to crash and burn even more quickly than you ascended, because CNN did some investigative reporting on your background and found some rather… interesting things, did they not?
Mark: Lies! They used AI to make that [expletive] up!
Tom: Oh, come on now, do you really expect intelligent, educated people with ordinary common sense to believe somebody used artificial intelligence to fake you posting that you are a “Black Nazi” and a “perv” who thinks that slavery is a good idea on a website called “Nude Africa” between twelve and sixteen years ago?
Mark: Of course not.
Tom: Then why do you say it?
Mark: Because the people who vote for me aren’t intelligent or educated, and they don’t have any common sense!
Tom: And I suppose that’s why they’re MAGA Republicans?
Mark: I think you just answered your own damn question!
Tom: But why did you try to get me to believe it?
Mark: Oh… well… I didn’t. That is, I didn’t mean to. Saying that [expletive] has just become a reflex for me now, any time someone mentions that stuff. Sorry.
Tom: Forget about it. Look, I’m sure that all you have to do with your Republican base is make up any convenient lie and tell it to them, and they will believe you. Marjorie Taylor Greene tells them stories about Jewish space lasers starting wildfires and they believe those. Compared to her lies, your excuse that somebody used AI to frame you looks positively plausible. But I’m sure you realize that in a general election, there are, in fact, enough intelligent, educated voters with sufficient common sense to know a story like the one you are telling is total bullspit.
Mark: What did you say?
Tom: I said, “total bullspit.”
Mark: Oh, I thought I heard you say “total [expletive].”
Tom: Have your doctor check the wax in your ears. Either word will do, though. But let’s level with each other here – that’s your real problem, isn’t it?
Mark: Um… yeah… I guess it is.
Tom: You can’t come up with a convincing lie that will serve as a believable explanation for the racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, misogynistic hate speech you posted on porn sites before you more or less accidentally got into MAGA Republican politics. Correct?
Mark: I… I… just can’t think of anything but to deny I did it, say I don’t know how the posts got there, and say it looks like somebody probably faked them. I really, really, need a better cover story!
Tom: But instead, you lost it and accused your opponent, Josh Stein, of faking the posts and telling CNN. You tried to get the general voting public to believe your opponent’s campaign faked your posts to the Ashley Madison adultery website looking for extramarital affairs, that they faked your posts on Nude Africa praising Mein Kampf, bragging about having sex with your wife’s sister behind her back, saying you like to watch transgender pornography, peeping at women taking showers in gymnasium locker rooms, making references to “Martin Lucifer Koon” and regretting that they don’t let black people like you into the Ku Klux Klan. What’s up with that, by the way? How come a black man like you hates Martin Luther King and wants to join the Klan?
Mark: Well, you know how sometimes a little boy tells his mamma that he feels like a girl inside and wants an operation so he can be a girl?
Tom: Yeah.
Mark: It’s like that. I feel like I’m white inside. But I can’t get an operation to make me into a white man.
Tom: I see.
Mark: You… wouldn’t be able to help me with that, would you? I mean, they say you know all kinds of secret stuff known only to the Washington insider elite and all that. Is there some… medical procedure I could get in like… I donno, Switzerland or some place… that could change me into… a white man?
Tom: I could definitely recommend a very good psychiatrist. I give him a lot of referrals from MAGA Republicans. You’d be surprised how many of them have similar problems.
Mark: Actually, I wouldn’t. But… no dice on a race-change operation somewhere?
Tom: Well, as Michael Jackson demonstrated, turning into a white person is a lengthy, multi-step process. And very, very expensive. Unless you have at least a million in the bank, I’d advise you not to even try to get started.
Mark: Okay, so I just have to wait until I become governor of North Carolina, then I’ll have the money.
Tom: Um, the governor of North Carolina gets paid one hundred sixty-five thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars a year. You know that, right? That’s only nineteen thousand, three hundred and twenty-nine dollars more than you already get now as lieutenant governor.
Mark: But I intend to be a MAGA Republican governor.
Tom: Which means?
Mark: It means, like the Supreme Court says, I can accept tips.
Tom: You mean, you intend to finance your race change operations with money you get from taking actions favorable to rich people and big corporations without them asking you to…
Mark: And without me asking them for the money before I do it…
Tom: And then accept gifts from them afterward?
Mark: Right. The Supreme Court says that’s perfectly legal. That’s how they do it – Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, Samuel Alito… all of them except the [expletive], the [expletive] beaner and the Jew [expletive]. All except those three Communist [expletive].
Tom: You mean, “women.”
Mark: Yeah, right, like I said, the Communist [expletive].
Tom: But you have to win the election first.
Mark: And I’m down twenty points in the polls and half of my staff have resigned! I burned my hand on a truck exhaust pipe at a rally and now I’m denying rumors I actually burned my [expletive] trying to have sex with the [expletive] truck! I’m totally [expletive] here! What have you got?
Tom: The Iranians.
Mark: The Iranians? What about the [expletive] Iranians?
Tom: “Somebody” did not “probably” use artificial intelligence to associate your name with vile and disgusting remarks on the Internet. There wasn’t any AI capable of doing that in 2012, and there isn’t any now, either. But the Iranians are capable of hacking all of the websites involved, breaking into their user accounts and faking posts.
Mark: But why would they do that to me?
Tom: Because they know Donald Trump endorsed you, that he talked about you a lot, and that he called you “Martin Luther King on steroids.” And they’re frustrated.
Mark: Frustrated about what?
Tom: On January 3, 2020 president Trump directed the US military to conduct a drone strike that killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Iranian Quds Force. He was very popular in Iran, and the Iranians have been sore about it ever since. They want to punish Trump for it somehow, but they can’t get to him.
Mark: So they went after me instead?
Tom: You can tell anybody who asks, that’s a prominent rumor here in Washington.
Mark: It is?
Tom: No, that’s a lie. But you don’t have any problems with lies, do you?
Mark: Of course not! I’m a MAGA Republican!
Tom: Okay, then. And it’s a much, much more believable lie that the Iranians hacked all those websites last month and established fake, back-dated defamatory posts attributed to you. Go get a pen and a piece of paper.
Mark: Be right back. All right. All set, shoot.
Tom: Okay, first write down what I just told you a minute ago.
Mark: Um… would you mind repeating it?
Tom: Oh, all right. The Iranians hacked all those websites last month and established fake, back-dated defamatory posts attributed to you.
Mark: Hold it, hold it, not so fast… hacked all those websites last month and… and?
Tom: And established fake, back-dated defamatory posts attributed to you.
Mark: Established… fake… back-dated… defamatory… posts attributed to me. Okay, got it.
Tom: They did it by defeating secure-socket layer encryption using a Chinese quantum computer at a secret underground military base located between Yulin and Wuzhong in Inner Mongolia.
Mark: Wait, wait, slow down… how do you spell “encryption,” “quantum,” “Yulin” and “Wuzhong?”
Tom: E-N-C-R-Y-P-T-I-O-N, Q-U-A-N-T-U-M, Y-U-L-I-N and W-U-Z-H-O-N-G.
Mark: Okay, got it. Um… “Mongolia?”
Tom: M-O-N-G-O-L-I-A.
Mark: Right. Go ahead.
Tom: Using a secure quantum entanglement data link.
Mark: How do you spell “entanglement?”
Tom: E-N-T-A-N-G-L-E-M-E-N-T.
Mark: Thanks. And?
Tom: That’s it. What you have there is a perfectly plausible lie that actually makes sense to an educated, intelligent person and perfectly fits the available technology in October 2024.
Mark: So the AI thing wouldn’t work?
Tom: What I just described is the solution to a very specific, unique problem. AI isn’t used for that kind of thing. AI is used for generalized types of problems that occur many, many times and are solvable with restricted outputs, like text and audiovisual data files. It wouldn’t make any sense to train an artificial intelligence to do what I just described, and besides it’s not feasible to do so. The lie I just made up would require teams of human technicians coordinating hardware and software tools and interfaces over significant geographical distances. That’s its best attribute, actually; its intricate complexity makes it considerably more believable.
Mark: Wow. That was a whole lot of ten and twenty-dollar words there. You talk out of a book like nobody’s business!
Tom: That’s what I do. Now – turn what you just wrote down into a press release and go out there and lie like only a MAGA Republican can.
Mark: Ah… do you think maybe I should clear this with Mr. Trump first?
Tom: Spoken like a true sycophant. If you can get him to take your phone call, sure, why not?
Mark: What’s a sycophant?
Tom: I think we’re done here. Have a nice day.
Mark: Oh… oh yeah. Uh, thanks.
Tom: You’re welcome, goodbye.