People in the Dark Put 40,000 Other People in the Dark

 

Moore County is east of Charlotte and is largely without electric power this morning because some people, so far unknown, used fire arms to shoot up a couple of Duke substations in a very targeted way -- “The persons who did this knew exactly what they were doing,” says the Moore County sheriff -- in the process knocking out power to most of the county and incidentally breaking a federal law that has brought in the FBI to investigate. And perhaps just incidentally, the outage happened as a drag show -- much hated and protested by Moore County rightwing activists -- was just getting started at a downtown theater in Southern Pines.

From the NandO coverage:

On her Facebook page, Emily Grace Rainey, an outspoken opponent of the drag show, posted an invitation to protest at the theater. After the lights went out, Rainey, who became known in Moore County during the pandemic for her opposition to mask mandates, posted on Facebook that, “The power is out in Moore County and I know why.” 

Later, she posted that the Moore County Sheriff’s Office had come to her house to ask about the outage. 

“I welcomed them to my home,” wrote Rainey, who organized a group of Moore County residents to travel to Washington on January 6, 2021. “Sorry they wasted their time. I told them that God works in mysterious ways and is responsible for the outage. I used the opportunity to tell them about the immoral drag show and the blasphemies screamed by its supporters.”

Rainey said, “I told them God is chastising Moore County, thanked them for coming, and wished them a good night...."

Emily Grace Rainey

So Emily Grace Rainey, who seemed to know something specific about the outage -- perhaps God told her about his mysterious ways with firearms -- got along swimmingly with the sheriff's office. Later, the sheriff himself, at a press conference yesterday, said flatly that Rainey's Facebook posts were "false." He said officers “had to go and interview this young lady and have a word of prayer with her, but it turned out to be nothing.”

Hmmm.

Rainey has earned a very high profile in Moore County. On January 6th, while she was still on active duty at Fort Bragg attached to 4th Psychological Operations Group (PSYOP), she helped organize a hundred Moore County Republicans into buses for the trip to D.C. to hear Trump rev up the crowd on the ellipse. The Moore County group subsequently said they were not part of the storming of the Capitol, but Rainey was investigated by the Army for her political activity and is no longer in the military.

She had previously in 2020 sparked a run-in with the police in Southern Pines when she filmed herself tearing down yellow tape cordoning off a playground after Gov. Roy Cooper closed parks to prevent the further spread of COVID.

Incidentally, training in PSYOP means that Rainey has a handle on how "to convey selected information and indicators to audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of governments, organizations, groups, and individuals" (Wikipedia). Whether she has talent, I know not, but it's clear she has skills, courtesy of the US government.