Just in case you had any hope that the coming week was going to be easy, FEMA is going to test a system on Thursday that allows the president of the United States to send an emergency message to nearly every cellphone in the country. Of course, our president happens to be famous dickbag Donald Trump, so while this should be a pretty straightforward event, we can’t shake the odd feeling that he’s going to fuck it all up somehow. Maybe it’s because he’s an idiot who can’t do anything right? Yeah, that’s probably it.
NBC News says the message will be accompanied by a tone and a vibration, along with a header that says “Presidential Alert.” After that, it will say, “This is a test of the National Wireless Emergency Alert System. No action is needed.” That seems to mean Trump won’t be writing the message himself, so he won’t have a chance to shit out something that says “crooked Hillary” or “fake news” or whatever, and NBC News even notes that the system was created in 2015 with a law that says it “shall not be used to transmit a message that does not relate a natural disaster, act of terrorism, or other man-made disaster or threat to public safety.”
In other words, the law says he can’t use it to say some Trumpy bullshit, and we all know that Donald Trump is a guy who never breaks laws. Don’t trust our sarcasm, though, here’s a comment from Karen North, director of the Annenberg Digital Social Media program at the University Of Southern California:
If you separate this from the politics and personality of any individual president then this is a great idea and an amazing use of technology to reach everybody if they’re in harms way.
That may be true, but here’s a counterargument: Fart noise.
Alright, let’s check with UCLA communications professor Tim Groeling, who told NBC that “broadcast-based emergency alert systems… have remained professional and impartial over decades.”
To that we say: Another fart noise.
Trump has an infinite capacity to fuck things up, and just because nobody has fucked this particular thing up before, it absolutely does not mean that he’s not going to be the one to do it. So how’s he going to fuck this up? We’re sorry to say this, but it’s a trick question. FEMA has already fucked this up because the message going out on almost every cellphone in America is only going to be issued in English. NBC points out that the message will only be in English “for now,” but does this mean that the system is only capable of issuing messages in English at the moment? If so, why bother instituting something that is so openly, unapologetically racist?
Again, it’s a trick question.