Some things inside this world that are unavoidable: death, sunrise, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) who responds to tragedies with sheer madness.

At least 215 people have been killed by Hurricane Helene, a category four storm that tore through Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Virginia over the weekend. Thousands remain without power and access to essential necessities as the federal government tries to provide relief in the aftermath of the deadliest storm to hit the continental United States since Hurricane Katrina. But in the wasteland of social media, some are trying to use the tragedy as fodder for political conspiracy theories.

“Yes, they can control the weather,” Greene wrote Thursday evening on X. “It’s ridiculous for someone to lie and say it can’t be done.”

It is unclear who the “they” Greene is referring to in this scenario are. If one of her posts earlier on Thursday is any indication, she’s talking about the Democrats. . Greene shared a map of the states affected by Helene, with a breakdown of their political leanings by county. “This is a map of hurricane-affected areas with an overlay of political party electoral maps showing how hurricane destruction could affect the election,” she wrote.

In case you missed your high school science class, hurricanes are large, powerful storms that form over warm tropical waters when evaporation rises in the atmosphere — condensing into storm systems — and creates a low-pressure zone toward which winds rush. As water continues to evaporate from the ocean’s surface, the cycle can create a large spinning vortex of powerful rain and strong winds known as a tropical cyclone. If this phenomenon forms in the Atlantic Ocean (and becomes powerful enough), it is called a hurricane.

Hurricanes can be incredibly destructive, but they are not a man-made phenomenon, or something that can plausibly be controlled by human intervention. According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which researched different ways to divert or dissipate tropical cyclones in the 1960s, potential methods “fall short because they do not estimate the size and strength of tropical cyclones.”

In the wake of Hurricane Helene’s devastation, there has been a large-scale mobilization at the federal and state levels to provide relief to communities affected by the storm. The effort was bipartisan and widely praised by the governors of the affected states. However, MAGA country has rushed to politicize the tragedy in the service of former President Donald Trump’s campaign.

Earlier this week, Trump baselessly claimed that “the federal government and the Democratic governor of (North Carolina) are going out of their way not to help people in Republican areas,” ahead of a visit to a disaster area in Valdosta, Georgia.

Sandy Hook conspiracy theorist Alex Jones — who has claimed the government has “weather weapons” that can cause floods, tornadoes and hurricanes — falsely claimed Thursday that “Biden has ordered the withdrawal of more than a thousand military helicopter crews in the South.”

“The hurricane conveniently destroyed the reddest areas in four southern states so that votes cannot be cast by Trump voters in the upcoming election! Now Democrats don’t want the state’s rural areas brought back online to allow blue cities to steal it again,” Jones wrote.

Other conspiracy theories are circulating on TikTok, with some users claiming that the hurricane was deliberately designed to level the area to support lithium mining. “Let’s be clear: Hurricane Helene was a weather-driven storm designed to displace residents of western N. Carolina so that a land grab could occur,” claims a video with more than 100,000 views.

Natural disasters are traumatic events that often force humanity to reckon with the way in which – despite centuries of technological progress and societal development – ​​we are often powerless against nature. They are the perfect breeding ground for conspiracies that attempt to attribute a human cause to an inhuman tragedy, and Helene is certainly not the first instance.

Rep. Greene, ever the instigator, has been a prolific voice in spreading such conspiracies. Who among us can forget when she blamed Jewish space lasers for the deadly California Camp Wildfire in 2018?