the_dunk_tank
It's the dunk tank.
This is where you come to post big-brained hot takes by chuds, libs, or even fellow leftists, and tear them to itty-bitty pieces with precision dunkstrikes.
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Dunk on me all you want to, but just here to ask, what could be done better? As far as I know this was a natural disaster (probably worsened by climate change). I'm sure there are for profit groups that are helping Hawaii just out of monetary gains, but aren't government emergency services on the island helping?
I hope this doesn't come across as me defending capitalism, but is the argument here that it would better if Hawaii was independent of the US? And would that actually help their ability to respond to a disaster such as this?
All of the factors which contributed to how deadly the fire at Lahaina ended up being were known years in advance, like the buildup of invasive grasses, poor planning and training, and the loss of agricultural land around the town which acted as fire breaks. In fact there had been several bills to improve wildfire resilience introduced in the Hawaii legislature in the last 5 years which ended up being voted down, often due to cost.
Like this fire killed several hundred people, that is unheard of, you have to go back to the early 1900s for wildfires that deadly. That's becuase we know how to slow wildfires when they get close to towns and how to effectively evacuate people. The fact that the Lahaina evacuation was so chaotic and that the fire could spread so quickly into town speaks to profound neglect by all levels of government.
also if Hawaii was still for Hawaiians they would be stewarding their lands better, presumably, like they did for the prior tens of thousands of years before hwhitie showed up, just as was the case with North American forests
https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2023/aug/16/non-native-grass-species-blamed-for-ferocity-of-hawaii-wildfires
You wanna know what China does in any natural disaster?
The PLA gets deployed to the disaster immediately, providing relief in the form of rescue, shelter and food handouts. Entire villages get reconstructed brand new where in the west they instead get fucked by insurance companies refusing to pay out to "acts of god". Not a single person affected by the disaster goes unhelped.
What really should happen in weather disasters is a relocation of the affected population to a newly constructed location, less susceptible to weather destruction. If no such safe space exists then all construction needs to take into account the new conditions and adapt to it. All of this should of course be paid for by the state(it's the people's money anyway), and it can quite easily do so if it goes without a handful of bombs for a single year. A few billion is peanuts to the US military but would completely resolve matters like this and climate-proof things for the future as well.
Well, I'm not american. I don't know enough about the Hawaii situation, all I have to go on is some accusations here and there that the government failed in it's duty. That's not enough to make a real judgement of the situation, and I haven't looked into the matter more deeply.
What I'm more wary of is the growing chorus of people who seem to think that criticism of the US government only exists online because of signal boosting from nefarious Chinese-Russian troll farms. If you're a liberal you're supposed to pride yourself on the institutionalized self criticism that is supposed to exist in a liberal democracy. Now we have the democrats and the republicans both united in partisan hackery and a desire to ascribe negative speech to either Russiagate or Soros and The Jews®. This is not a good thing.
From what I understand the US government did fail terribly during the Katrina disaster, and then the local government made full use of the opportunity to segregate and ethnically cleanse some historical black neighborhoods. So it's not like this is an impossible idea that came out of the blue.
Well since Hawaii is controlled by the US, they can't ask for help from other countries, and the US won't ask for help from other countries either.
I can't say for certain if Hawaii would seek help from others if it was independent, but I feel like it's a pretty good guess.
Adding onto this: the soldiers already there.
Soldiers can be moved around at will, send them a different base and use barracks as free temporary housing for the displaced people.
Martial law could prevent the tourist influx that’s straining resources.
Executive order banning real estate ghouls coming in and hoovering up land like Pompeii. Who gives a fuck if it’s illegal, by the time it goes through the courts more robust solutions can be put in place.
A strong executive that wanted to actually prevent further harm has many tools.
The issue is that this person is trying to claim that criticism of the US response to the natural disaster in Hawaii is not valid because its a "far right" smear backed by the governments of the PRC and Russian Federation.
The US has a long history of being shit in Hawaii particularly to the indigenous population, and there's plenty to criticize. So this this an attempt to handwave away that criticism by blaming it on disinformation
literally yes since the US military industrial complex is responsible for hogging most of the land on the island chain, polluting the water, crowding out the working class, and handing everything over to scumbag developers. As for this particular disaster, the US isn't exactly better equipped to help hawaiians considering how far out in the pacific ocean hawaii is and how far goods have to be transported there. They're just about as well equipped as anyone else, but with the added caveat that they have a habit of neglect even on the mainland (see Flint michigan, for instance)
Not even a week ago: https://jacobin.com/2023/08/joe-biden-justice-department-climate-crisis-constitutional-right-julianna-v-us