The Witness Chronicles, 10/12/24

‘It’s not my fault’. Yes, it is.

Photo by charliewarl on Unsplash

Florida is Not Paradise

It’s an unlivable swamp with beaches. But this isn’t about Florida.

It took long enough. Despite the claims of politicians and local tourism promoters, we now have indisputable proof that there are places in the world where you cannot live anymore.

I get it. Water, beaches, warm weather, condos, and boats. Jimmy Buffet music. It has always been a fantasy, and an alluring one. A fantasy that was washed away in the past two weeks by two monster storms, things far beyond anything we have seen before. Killers.

We still do not know the total death toll of hurricane Helene because the areas hit are so remote and inaccessible due to flooding and mud, washed out roads and bridges. The common cry heard in TV interviews is ‘we did not see it coming’. Except that we did, over and over again.

When politicians conspire with oil executives to hide the reality of what’s going on, it costs lives and livelihoods and now it can’t be hidden anymore. All the lobbying money in the world cannot blank out Mother Nature. At least I hope not.

I’ve been ranting about the scale of the lying by rightwing Republicans, but this reality is simply too huge to pretend it’s normal. Nothing is normal anymore and we need to deal with that. That means admitting to hard realities.

My country is spoiled, not in the sense that it is rotten, though there are those who will take it there for personal gain. We are spoiled. We think we have some kind of right to deny reality, but that view was demolished by Helene and Milton.

Those who live in the fire ravaged west coast or the deserts blasted by months of deadly heat, should know. Those whose homes and businesses were flooded or blown to pieces should know. And those who we elect to lead us in times of trouble should know and then do their jobs, no matter how unpleasant.

Except, they don’t want to. By they, I mean Republicans who kowtow to a pitiful man and his pitiful sidekick because they represent a path to short term power, even as the world their children will inherit falls to pieces.

I try to be relatively balanced when I describe the world I see these days, but it is impossible when we have an entire political party pretending things are not the way they are, or that we do not have anything to do with it.

It’s the wrath of god or something like that. God has nothing to do with it. Greed and the pursuit of power have trumped the truth (pun intended) and, for some reason, a lot of Americans are willing to accept an alternative reality, even as it destroys lives around them.

There is a concept called a wake-up call. You know, that event that destroys fantasies and kicks us into action. If recent events are not that wake-up call, what the hell is?

I have a theory, and it is reinforced when I hear some homeowner standing in front of their gutted home and vowing to rebuild, again. We have a society that believes bad things won’t happen to us personally. Even when they do. So, politicians can tell us what we want to hear and we will suspend disbelief just to keep our fantasy intact.

But that was blown away, literally, in recent days. And what happened? People like Donald Trump saw an opportunity and seized it. Realizing how far we were willing to go to believe things can’t happen to us, they started lying on a scale never before seen in American life.

The lie is simple: everything is someone else’s fault. You have no personal responsibility. Immigrants did it. Democrats did it. People of color and gays did it. Commies and socialists did it. Women did it. Anyone but you did it.

It’s someone else’s fault.

Except, it’s all of our fault. We built a society of unheard of prosperity, but it was based on a loan and the loan came due. And now we have a candidate for leader of the free world who doesn’t believe in paying his debts. He never has. And he will not work to pay this one.

A lot of people are dealing with reality right now. But are we learning from the experience? If we elect men who think death and destruction represent an opportunity for themselves, we get what we have coming.

That’s the truth, plain and simple.

Your subscriptions, paid upgrades, and small donations, via Buy Me A Coffee, are the only compensation I get for my writing, beyond the satisfaction that some find value in it, which is a big deal. Please consider supporting my work. Thank you.