Hurricane Matthew is barreling down on Florida’s Atlantic coast. It’s currently a Category 4 hurricane and a significant amount of damage is expected. More than 1.5 million Floridians have been ordered to evacuate their homes by Governor Rick Scott. “This is serious,” Scott said on Thursday morning. “This storm will kill you. Time is running out.” Hurricane Matthew killed 136 people in Haiti and four in the Dominican Republic earlier this week.
But is it serious, really? Matt Drudge thinks that the hurricane’s potentially catastrophic impact is being exaggerated ... so the government can prove some kind of point about climate change.
The problem with this conspiracy theory is that, like most conspiracy theories, it makes no sense. Why would the government decide to exaggerate a storm’s significance when any exaggeration would be disproven in a matter of hours? Why would Rick Scott, a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, be in on it? Why did the United States government design a scheme so silly that an idiot like Matt Drudge could figure it out? Ordinarily, this would be silly, but Drudge’s conspiracy theory is dangerous because Hurricane Matthew is dangerous and real and it shouldn’t be treated as a metaphor for our tyrannical government, or whatever the hell Drudge is trying to say.