Erwin TN after Helene Storm

The kind that gets struck in the face with a wooden paddle and it seems like they're saying - "THANK YOU SIR MAY I PLEASE HAVE ANOTHER?"

Good! There wont be as much flooding if we stop measuring it! /s

I live here and I am not voting that way. I am hoping this wakes some of my ignorant neighbors up.

Your ignorants neighbors will think Helene is the consequence of the Dems.
I assure you they will find a way to blame the blue team that is easily defeated with logic and facts but they will have already made up their mind.
- I kid you not, on Xitter they already argued that the increase in flooding is due to the clearing of forests for wind turbines. Also that wind turbines slow down cloud drift so much that much more rain falls in an area. So, wind turbines are the evil cause for all that.
  
  How can you believe in this? The degree of brainwash is incredibly high.
  
  Repeat a lie often enough and people believe it. Especially if you get then angry first so critical thinking is shut down. Help that along with social media echo chambers and 24/7 "news" broadcasts. Add cult of personality around it and you get this.
I hope it works out okay for you.

Tennessee and Kentucky are far more purple than conventional thought gives them credit for.

Take away Memphis and see how much the hue of Tennessee shifts towards 0°.
- Take away New York, or Baltimore, or Detroit, or any city really. It has long since ceased to be a state level thing. The system however is still running like it's the 1840's.

Man, some of them, sure. I live here, there are a lot of good people without homes, power and water, or any way out of their neighborhoods right now. I know someone who's whole fucking house just floated down the river, they barely got out with their lives.

Don't make this into some election bullshit when WE ALL KNOW how many people in rural areas just get dragged along by those in power.

I'm waiting to hear back from several people myself. I have no idea if they're okay. One of them is restoring a site off the Appalachian Trail as a historical marker for its history related to slavery, he's genuinely a good person. As most of them are.

Have some fucking manners

Sorry for the losses but shit like this is caused by ignorance for and/or denial of climate change and its causes.

Don't use the victims to silence the solution which indeed is better policies to avoid or at least dampen the impacts of climate change. And it is a political problem that can only be solved by voting for those who take care of the problem and don't deny it.

I wish you and all the people there all the best. And as soon as you're all safe please make sure you all go and fucking vote.
- Unicoi county went for Bernie in the 2016 primaries. It's a very small town that has gone through a lot of shit trying to claw it's way out of horrendously bad politics in the 80s and prior. Bumpass cove, where I'm sure some of worst damage was, was the site of nuclear waste dumping, and has been the nucleus of a major swing to the left for a lot of people in the area. Right down the road is Johnson City, a very progressive college town. Dumping on the victims of a disaster because their neighbors, or even they, have shitty politics is a shitty thing to do. Maybe those school kids deserve to get shot because their grandpappy is a Republican? Yes, moments like this should be catalysts for change, but victim blaming isn't the route to take to that.
  
  Bumpass cove is not a nuclear waste dump site. However, there is a chemical dump site there.
  
  That's not just what the teenagers call it? Bumpass Cove is it's actual, legal name?
  
  Wow, that's certainly a... choice.
  
  Well, it was changed to "Bumpus Cove". Which is more in line with how the locals pronounced it.
  
  I'm not the most familiar with the story, so many I'm remembering wrong. But I googled it to make sure before I posted that.
  
  PDF the screen shot is from
  
  Yes, the lawsuits by the community collations belived nuclear waste was being dumped from the nearby NFS, but the NRC would have been all over their ass for doing so.
  
  The NRC clearly states there is no nuclear waste there. https://web.archive.org/web/20170325023938/https://www.nrc.gov/docs/ML0930/ML093010711.pdf
  
  Now there may be chemical dumped from the deenrichment processing, but when I researched into this topic a while back, all my sources lead all the chemicals was coming from the chem plants in Kingsport, mainly eastman.
- Stick your liberal highroading up your ass. We've got a flood to deal with.
  
  Out here acting like you know all about what's going on here. We've got a lot of people working hard to bring progressive politics to the area, thank you. We've got a DSA chapter and all that good shit. I even know folks on the DRC that I respect a lot, and I'm an anarchist. East Tennessee State University is liberal as hell and Johnson City with it.
  
  So, again, have some fucking manners and quit judging rural Appalachians like you bastards always have. We're fuckin trying man.
  
  They're talking about the area's average, not everybody in it.
  
  And if they're not, then they're as dumb as the republican cunts they're lambasting and their stupid opinions don't matter.
  
  Either way, you're not in the blast zone. Hope the flood recovery goes as well as it can and your political efforts are successful!
  
  Hey, fellow Tennesseean anarchist. I lived in Erwin for a while, as well as Kingsport. Closer to Knoxville now. Are you still local?
  
  Yes indeed. Solidarity ✊️
  
  Mind if I DM?
  
  Go for it
NO. I watched rural Republicans laughing that my state was on fire. I saw them saying we deserve it because of "something something heathens". Nobody deserves it. This is a national spotlight and I'm going to be as clear as day. We have one party who flat out denies climate change, which is directly causing all of this. We have another party who is not doing nearly enough, but at least have some plans. This is absolutely a political problem, because voting for the party who actively denied this is happening is slapping you in the face. You should absolutely be angry at them. People's houses floated away and that party is shrugging and sending thoughts and prayers. Being active now is the empathetic approach.
- if you're just complaining on Lemmy, that's not political activism
- Hey
  
  Go fuck yourself
  
  I'm going to bring water and supplies to the donation site.
  
  You can kiss my whole ass.
  
  Man, you're a real insufferable cunt. Lambasting the "high road" while parking your ass firmly in the middle of it. Unreal.
  
  [Edit] Isn't it funny when people act like asshokes on the internet, get rebuked for it and then delete their comments?
  
  If you weren't willing to stand behind your comments why did you post them in the first place? This is some weak ass revisionist behaviour.
  
  Great, I'm 2000 miles away so I'm going to do what I can, advocate against climate change so we can stop having once in a generation storms every year. Seriously why does that piss you off so much?
  
  You are both agreeing that the storm is bad yes, but you are communicating in a way that is generally assumptive and hurtful to an area of human beings who are affected by disaster
  
  It would be really very nice if you could hesitate blaming them for this unnatural disaster until after this guy (and others) can get the water out of their houses.
  
  You're right, which is why I stopped. Telling them right now isn't important. What I have is anger, anger that people in power allow this to happen, but directing it here doesn't help. So directing it at people who could have done something is what I'm doing instead.
  
  Because the way you're doing it, and the context in which you are, is incredibly dickish.
  
  Did you know, for instance, that you could've kept your obnoxious trap shut this whole time, rather than preach at someone who's actively dealing with a disaster?
  
  But good for you, you enjoy your ~~thoughts and prayers~~ voting circlejerk.
  
  That's why.
  
  You're kind of an ass. I hope we're not co-workers in real life or something.
  
  Don't worry, I work for myself.
Northerners just assume everyone in the South are ignorant conservatives. There’s no such thing as a red or blue state, it’s all shades of purple.
- I mean, northerners assume that bc on average it's mostly true. Southern states are absolutely full of ignorant people that prefer to stay ignorant and ignore the world around them. Roll coal baby! Let's get rid of the dept of ed fuck yeah. Get rid of NOAA what's it do for me?
  
  I live in a deep red southern state, with a purplish metro area 150 miles away. 99% of my state will continue to vote for stupid policies that are bad for the state and the world at large. Red states exist bc the constituents vote that way.
  
  It’s the same in the North though. The divide is rural vs metropolitan.
  
  At a national level, I think some of it just comes down to resentment at popular policies being blocked, largely because of lawmakers from southern and midwestern states. I'd also wager context plays a part in this. Sure, NY has its share of rural Republican voters, but our dumbfuck GOP voters mostly manage to just mess things up for our own urban areas, appropriating funds from the MTA budget to build bridges to nowhere in their home districts so they can point and cry about those god-damned socialists in NYC not even being able to manage the budget for a single agency (that they actively work to undermine) so they can further gut public services.
  
  Sure, it's not ideal, but at least we're (mostly) only hurting ourselves. GOP Congress-men and -women from southern and midwestern states collectively hold the rest of the nation hostage through their disproportionate impact on the Senate. Whether it's climate change, student loan forgiveness, universal healthcare, packing the Supreme Court, or any of numerous other issues, these states hold others with vastly larger populations hostage, impeding broadly popular policies in a profoundly anti-democratic fashion.
  
  It may not be fair to the non-GOP voters in those states, it may be misdirected resentment, but I don't think it's all that difficult to understand why people from majority Democrat, northern states might be kind of tired of the south and midwest's collective shit at this point. If the GOP-leaning demographics in those states could either be dropped into a volcano, or, failing this, soundly beaten at the ballot, it would go a long way towards addressing this stereotype
In that case, heres some thoughts and prayers