The answer is “Hubris”<\/p>\n
The question not being asked.<\/a><\/p>\n This Autumn has been rough for the Southeast. First, Hurricane Helene ripped up Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and then Hurricane Milton hit a different part of Florida and tore it up.<\/p>\n And the season isn\u2019t over yet.<\/p>\n Tilting At Windmills is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.<\/p>\n By now, you may have already heard about what happened down in Florida and may well have happened elsewhere. It turns out that personnel working for FEMA knocking on doors to see if people were eligible for federal funds were told to skip the homes of obvious Trump supporters<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n After publication of this story, a FEMA spokesperson told The Daily Wire it was \u201cdeeply disturbed\u201d and \u201chorrified\u201d by the employee\u2019s actions, and that it has \u201ctaken extreme actions to correct this situation.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWhile we believe this is an isolated incident, we have taken measures to remove the employee from their role and are investigating the matter to prevent this from happening ever again,\u201d the spokesperson said in an emailed statement. \u201cThe employee who issued this guidance had no authority and was given no direction to tell teams to avoid these homes and we are reaching out to the people who may have not been reached as a result of this incident.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cThis is a matter that we take extremely seriously and we are doing everything we can to make sure all survivors receive support from FEMA. To date, we have helped over 365,000 households impacted by both Hurricanes Helene and Milton in the state of Florida and have provided over $898 million in direct assistance to survivors.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe are horrified that this took place and therefore have taken extreme actions to correct this situation and have ensured that the matter was addressed at all levels. Helping people is what we do best and our workforce across the agency will continue to serve survivors for as long as it takes.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n That\u2019s all fine and well.<\/p>\n Plus, the individual responsible for that, Marn\u2019i Washington, has been\u00a0fired from her position<\/a>\u00a0and the case has been referred to the Office of Special Counsel. That means she faces potential prosecution for her actions, which should most definitely happen.<\/p>\n However, while people are focusing on what happened\u2014and for understandable reasons\u2014I can\u2019t help but ask the question no one else seems to be asking. Why did she think she could get away with it?<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While not everyone thinks through their actions, most people over the age of 25 have a fully developed frontal cortex. That means they\u2019re less likely to be overly impulsive. That means they\u2019re not firing off at the hip and not thinking about the ramifications of their actions, by and large.<\/p>\n Washington is 39, which means she\u2019s well past that point in life, so she did this believing she would get away with it. Why?<\/p>\n It\u2019s possible she just figured that no one would learn about what she did, but at least one of the screenshots in the Daily Wire piece linked above shows that people were spelling this out in their official notes. She put it in a \u201cbest practices\u201d memo that was sent to employees. Washington had to know someone would potentially see all of this sooner or later. That means she felt like she wouldn\u2019t face any repercussions for her actions.<\/p>\n She felt that her leadership would approve of what she did, even if not directly.<\/p>\n This is really just an example of how the federal bureaucracy isn\u2019t working for the American people. This isn\u2019t just one person who made a decision that was bigoted against people who didn\u2019t share her political opinions. No, there was some reason she believed she could at least get away with it.<\/p>\n I suppose it\u2019s possible she thought what she was doing was right, which would be enough reason to think it would fly all on its own, but I doubt it. Even if she thought it was right, she had to know that Trump supporters, at a minimum, would blow a gasket.<\/p>\n No, she had reason to believe her chain of command approved, and let\u2019s also be real here, they likely gave her reason to believe this. Someone above her told her things that, on some level, made her believe this would be greenlit.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s remember that the federal bureaucracy is essentially the same entity that silenced an untold number of Americans on X, then Twitter, and Facebook by labeling their disagreement with the official line as \u201cmisinformation.\u201d It\u2019s the same federal bureaucracy that pressured an untold number of Americans to\u00a0forfeit their Second Amendment rights<\/a>\u00a0or face prosecution. It\u2019s the same federal bureaucracy that actively conspired against Trump during his first term.<\/p>\n What Washington did was wrong, but she didn\u2019t do it in a vacuum. She figured it would be tolerated at a minimum. If she hadn\u2019t, then her instructions would have remained verbal, then she could simply claim people misunderstood her or something, but she put it in writing because she wasn\u2019t worried about the ramifications.<\/p>\n The problem is that the wrong people found out about it and it became a thing, just as Trump was elected president with both the electoral college majority and a majority in the popular vote.<\/p>\n So, Washington is being thrown to the wolves, the sacrificial lamb designed to make us think that this sort of thing isn\u2019t acceptable. However, there needs to be an investigation into just what else federal agencies have been up to over the last decade, especially in regard to partisanship in how American citizens are treated by those whose paychecks they fund.<\/p>\n Because I promise you, Washington didn\u2019t come up with this out of ether. There\u2019s a reason she believed she could get away with it. I want to definitively know what it was and who was responsible.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The answer is “Hubris” The question not being asked. This Autumn has been rough for the Southeast. First, Hurricane Helene ripped up Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, and then Hurricane Milton hit a different part of Florida and tore it up. And the season isn\u2019t over yet. Tilting At Windmills is a reader-supported publication. 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