A coworker who I consider to be a friend sent our team a message that there was a hurricane rolling through where they live near Houston Texas. They said they would be losing power and weren’t sure when it would come back online. That was on Monday morning at 11AM pacific time and I am writing this at 10 pm Tuesday evening over 24 hours later. We haven’t heard back from them yet.
I looked on social media for any posts about Texas or anything to show what is happening on the ground in areas where the hurricane hit the hardest. I saw nothing except standard run of the mill leftist political commentary a la instagram meme accounts.
I looked at Snapchat’s map to see what if anything was posted and all that existed was randos who seemingly somehow had internet or maybe the post was saved to the map once they got connection.
Either way, I have this growing sense that things are really bad for folks, especially as the hurricane winds gave way to absurdly high heat to the tune of 105 farenheit (with humidity)
The fact that I haven’t seen any news or posts here in California all weekend about the hurricane which had been tracked since June 30th tells me that something is up with the social media posts that Americans are being allowed to see. This isn’t new of course – posts about Palestine and other conflicts of course don’t make its way to American screens and at worst are actively censored.
However, to witness and sense a growing uncomfortable realization that for news within the USA information is being censored; that information about millions of people without electricity or access to the internet is being censored is a worrisome realization to say the least. It wouldn’t be the first time in U.S. history, it wouldn’t even be the first time in recent history, that the U.S. actively disregards poor and low income areas where disaster capitalism has taken hold.
To make the feeling worse, I read an article in Ars Technica of one person’s experience which only makes me feel sicker to my stomach about Starlink getting richer in the process so that those who “can’t” live without access to the internet can have it (not to mention the article’s author is well off enough to have installed a whole home electrical backup generator system).
What I am sensing is that the rift between the rich and poor, especially in Republican controlled states and even in areas where Democrats have a moderate majority, is becoming staunchly apparent based on the lack of media and content coming out of the most negatively affected areas.
I just hope that my coworker and their family is doing ok.
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