My question is this...
If all this activity can so easily be explained away, why does the administration not respond to inquiries from Congressman?
Very interesting question. The short answer is: I really don’t know why this isn’t handled better.
If you look at social media forums, it’s easy to see that the homeland security components have major PR problems. For every positive “thanks for keeping us safe” message on Facebook, etc., there are five ranting about the latest conspiracy theory.
Obviously more transparency would help. But I imagine -- in a world where a lot of the most worrisome threats are highly classified -- the activities and assets needed to counter those threats are commensurately classified.
Changing public perception is expensive. Some agencies do it way better than others. The DOD must have spent a fortune over the years running “Army of One” and “The Few, the Proud…” commercials. NASA had some pretty effective programs to do outreach to teachers, who are in a position to then take cool science curricula back to the classroom and, in the process, get future generations psyched up about space exploration. DHS’s own “Coast Guard Alaska” on the Weather Channel is quite good. But, like I said, PR campaigns are spendy. Using tax dollars to do PR to explain why an agency needs more tax dollars to buy more equipment or hire more people should be viewed quite skeptically.
As you suggest, though, the logical answer would just be to ANSWER the questions. Explain why FEMA, which is responsible for dealing with large scale disasters, needs coffins. (OK, that’s kind of a “duh” issue, but obviously some people need it spelled out, and what harm could come of explaining disaster preparations?) Take the media on a tour of the federal law enforcement training centers. Take them on ride-alongs on the southern border. Maybe this is being offered and the media doesn’t care because they sell more commercials doing TV interviews with some idiot pop star. Or maybe it’s not being done for reasons I cannot guess and am not privy to. But if there is reluctance to answer, a fair assessment would be that the underlying reasons are highly “political” rather than apocalyptic.
Ultimately, combating conspiracy theorists may just be swimming upstream. Right now the “FEMA death camps” are en vogue. Rewind to a few years ago and people on the other side of the political spectrum were claiming that President Bush used his hurricane-generating equipment to wipe out New Orleans.
My beef with the conspiracy theories is that they detract us from the real political fight. Someone said here recently that this president wants to make us a communist nation. That’s not quite right: he wants to make us a socialist one. He wants to make us like Europe. Hey, Europe’s an awesome place. I have lived there, and I love visiting there. But when I come back to the US, I don’t want it to be like Europe here. The US is better, as evidenced by all the Europeans trying to immigrate here because they have lost their liberties. We don’t need to “change.”
Wow, even as I wrote that last paragraph, it occurred to me THAT might be the answer to your question. If your political opponents are barking up the wrong, conspiracy theory tree, why should you stop them? Let them expend their time and resources in fruitless pursuits.
