[ExI] Trump, in an Escalation, Calls for Republicans to ‘Nationalize’ Elections

[John Clark]

On Tue, Feb 3, 2026 at 1:53 PM Darin Sunley via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

*> Unfortunately, we all saw the pictures of the family on the beach and
> the filled-in skateboard park. I'm certain your media bubble has gaslit you
> into believing that those incidents didn't happen, but the rest of us are
> not so fortunate.*
>

It's not that I didn't believe it, it's that I didn't know what the hell
you were talking about. So I asked Gemini the following question:

ME: I heard somebody say " Unfortunately, we all saw the pictures of the
family on the beach and the filled-in skateboard park", do you know what he
could've been talking about?
====

GEMINI: "That phrase is almost certainly an allusion to the *2023 Lahaina
(Maui) wildfires*, and it’s using two very specific images that circulated
widely afterward.

Here’s what each part likely refers to:

*“The family on the beach”*
After the fire swept through Lahaina, photos and reports emerged of *entire
families who had fled toward the ocean* to escape the flames and smoke.
Some were found *together near or on the shoreline*, having been overcome
by heat or smoke before they could get into the water. One image in
particular—described rather than usually shown—of a *family found together
on the beach* became emblematic of how sudden and inescapable the fire was.

*“The filled-in skateboard park”*
This refers to the *Lahaina skate park*, which was heavily damaged. In the
chaotic aftermath, there were reports and images showing the skate park *filled
with ash, debris, burned vehicles, and soil*. Online, this became
emotionally charged because:

   -

   It symbolized how completely the town was erased.
   -

   Rumors circulated (mostly false or exaggerated) that it had been used as
   a *mass burial site*, which authorities later denied. Still, the image
   of a familiar community space being literally filled in stuck in people’s
   minds.

So when someone says *“we all saw the pictures of the family on the beach
and the filled-in skateboard park”*, they’re invoking *shared, traumatic
visual symbols* of the Lahaina disaster—often as shorthand for:

   -

   government or emergency-response failure,
   -

   the human cost of climate-driven disasters,
   -

   or the feeling that the public briefly saw something horrifying and then
   moved on."

==========
So now I know what you were talking about, but I still don't know what
relevance that has to the topic of our discussion.

John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20260204/63344966/attachment.htm>