The North Carolina Air National Guard is transporting more than 100,000 pounds of Federal Emergency Management Agency supplies in a C17 to western North Carolina in support of Hurricane Helene. (U.S. Air National Guard photo by Maj. Monica Ebert)

In a political year in which a steady stream of GOOD And optimistic News and political progress have been accompanied by a relentless drumbeat of misinformation and delusion, it is no surprise that one of the most important events and news stories of the year – Hurricane Helen – has produced such a maddening combination lately in North Carolina.

The encouraging news, of course, is in the response we have seen from elected leaders, public officials and average citizens of all political stripes.

First, there were the neighbors and emergency personnel who performed countless acts of selfless heroism to rescue and care for those in need. Time and again we have been reminded that while we are a divided and quarrelsome state and nation, we are not so divided that we (or most of us anyway) have lost our instinct for empathy fundamental human.

When rescuers pulled someone from floodwaters, nurses worked in appalling conditions at a hospital for the disabled, neighbors took in a displaced stranger, shared bottled water or scooped mud from a basement ground, the politics of those involved were not a factor.

And despite the fear and discord that false rumors have helped to sow, it is also clear that leaders of both major political parties want to respond to the disaster.

This encouraging truth has been apparent at all levels of government in recent weeks as officials have worked to allocate and distribute public funds for hurricane relief and recovery.

This is not to say that efforts to date have been perfect. The General Assembly’s latest relief bill — a measure drafted behind closed doors that spends about $600 million (only about 15 percent of what Gov. Roy Cooper requested) — is woefully insufficient. Going forward, state lawmakers must be more transparent and spend significantly more.

But the bipartisan commitment to a hurricane response is at least a reminder that North Carolinians still care about their neighbors, retain many common ties and can work together to use government to improve lives for all. We fervently hope that our leaders will build on this model moving forward.

Unfortunately, none of this is to say that Helen didn’t also help fuel two dangerous cancers that currently plague us.

Cancer number one has been particularly evident in the flood of cynical lies and misinformation that a small handful of politicians, activists, and confused citizens have spread in the aftermath of the storm. Unfortunately, thanks to social media, things that would once have been summarily dismissed as ridiculous urban legends have now spread instantly and with an air of apparent authority – so much so that a handful of disturbed individuals have even sought to disrupt relief efforts.

And Cancer number two involves the growing affinity for authoritarianism – some even call it, with some justification, fascism – that has gained momentum among the political right.

It’s hard to believe and sad to say, but after years of far-right American politicians moving ever closer to Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, some are now beginning to directly imitate him.

The last deeply disturbing example: the call of some extremist politicians and advocates — including, for heaven’s sake, a Republican congressman from Maryland named Andy Harris, who heads the U.S. House Freedom Caucus — to ignore our state’s election results. The group said last week that the North Carolina legislature should pass a law that would ignore our state’s election results and simply award its 16 electoral votes to Donald Trump.

Yes, you read that correctly.

According to these extremists, the disruptions to the state’s electoral process caused by the hurricane were such that the Legislature should substitute its own judgment for that of millions of North Carolina voters.

And, while the congressman later tried to partially walk back his remarksit’s still difficult to know whether to laugh or cry and such deranged madness.

First, thanks to the heroic, bipartisan efforts of our state’s election officials, North Carolinians are voting at a record pace. This is true even in counties affected by hurricanes.

But more to the point, it is simply astonishing that an elected official from the world’s largest democracy could make such an outrageous suggestion.

Earth to the Freedom Caucus, if that’s your attitude, you’re in the wrong country.

Fortunately, even most conservative Republicans — supporters who officially continue to support one of Helen’s main sources of misinformation, former President Donald Trump — recognize how outrageous and absurd such a suggestion is.

As Policy reported last weekthat includes Patrick McHenry, the arch-conservative GOP congressman from western North Carolina.

“It makes no sense to prejudge the outcome of the elections. And that’s an uninformed view of what’s happening on the ground in North Carolina, thank goodness,” McHenry said of his Republican colleague’s suggestion.

Good for McHenry.

And so much the better for all those – politicians, public servants and ordinary people – who continue to recognize Abraham Lincoln’s great observation that, despite all our differences and despite the malicious efforts of Putins everywhere, “we are not enemies , but friends. We must not be enemies.

May it continue to be the dominant belief.