The initial news was grim enough on its own: flash flooding in Central Texas had taken dozens of lives, with many victims still missing.

According to Weather.com, the devastating flooding rushed in during the middle of the night on July 3, surging into people’s homes in the wee hours of July 4. Many of the victims and missing were from Camp Mystic, a private, all-girls summer camp near the Guadalupe River in Texas.

Then Kandiss Taylor, a Republican congressional candidate from Georgia, stepped out of the shadows and added her bit. In posts on X (formerly Twitter), she suggested the flooding was the result of Democratic “cloud seeding, geoengineering and manipulation,” which she called “Fake weather. Real Damage.”

“If fake weather causes real tragedy,” Taylor declared, “that’s murder.”

I could hardly believe what my eyes were telling me. And I was not alone. Soon her claims were met with sharp backlash from commentators and public figures, including prominent members of her own party. But she refused to take any of what she’d said back — indeed, dug in her heels, characterizing anyone who dared question or criticize her as “brainwashed zombies.”

Apparently, Taylor’s lust for scalps was sharpened by congressional Democrats who’d questioned the Trump Administration’s recent talk about eliminating the National Weather Service and the National Atmospheric and Oceanic Administration, among other weather watchdog agencies, because they were too expensive to maintain, and were, moreover, useless.

Here’s my problem. As far back as I can remember, history and science books have told us that rain, catastrophic or not, and droughts and floods have been natural phenomena on this planet ever since there’s been life on it, and well before that. Indeed, without it, there would be no life at all.

So, just when did we start trying to score political points based on the weather? Accusing our ideological opponents of engineering human tragedy? Several months ago, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia suggested that dastardly Democratic cloud-seeding had been behind Hurricane Helene.

And while cloud seeding has been practiced for years, the weather folks say it only affects tiny areas, and it would be absolutely impossible for it to kick up a giant storm, spread out over such a area, and aim the water cannon at a state based on ideological differences.

When did we start electing to Congress people who promulgate such obvious whoppers? And when did so many of us become so gullible as to believe them?

And more important, when is all this going to end, or is this how it’s going to be from here on out?

Robert Whale can be reached at robert.whale@soundpublishing.com.