At the end of John's gospel, Pontious Pilate says in response to a remark made by Jesus, 'What is truth?'
This is an important question. Normally accepted criteria for deciding what is true, and what is false have never been so challenged as they are these days. We seem to be descending into a swamp of chaos in which more and more politicians make completely unfounded claims and more and more ordinary people rush down the rabbit hole of made up data and conspiracy nonsense. It's quite depressing really.
I was reminded of this just now when i read of this insane remark made by Marjorie Taylor-Green, the controversial Republican Congresswoman, which she made recently on X.
Marjorie Taylor Greene says 'they' control weather as Helene death toll reaches 125
Congresswoman
Marjorie Taylor Greene, a hard-right congresswoman of Georgia, is once again facing criticism for peddling a baseless – and just plain bizarre – claim about the weather.
“Yes they can control the weather,” Greene
said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. “It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
The eyebrow-raising comment came as the death toll from Hurricane Helene
rose to 215, after the storm tore through Florida, Georgia, the Carolinas and Tennessee last week. Greene had previously
shared a map of the hurricane’s devastation overlaid with an electoral map to seemingly draw a (very questionable) connection between the two.
Greene did not specify who “they” were in her tweet, but she has a controversial history when it comes to weather claims. In 2018, Greene
suggested California wildfires were caused by a laser beam from space that was connected to the Rothschild family, which has frequently been the target of antisemitic conspiracy theories.