The Witness Chronicles August 10, 2023

‘Perfect’ storms, the unraveling of the GOP, and the sad truth about Florida

Paradise lost? Photo by Evan Brandt on Unsplash

“The struggle of men against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”

~ Milan Kundera

Ah, a little doom and gloom this week. It seems that every day brings us new stories about extreme weather and it’s unavoidable for a writer who writes almost daily commentaries on politics and climate, it’s impossible to not acknowledge their reality.

But when I started reading news about residents of Maui in the Hawaiian Islands being forced into the ocean to escape fire and smoke, it was just too much.Especially because a good chunk of the population still pretends we are not in dire straights, including most voters who vote Republican. 

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When ‘Perfect’ Storms Become Normal Storms

Residents of Maui are jumping into the ocean to escape flames

Ten years ago this story would have been extraordinary. CNN reports that intense fires are consuming the island, moving too fast to easily escape them. Officials are encouraging boat owners to try and rescue swimmers escaping smoke and flames.

Cell and phone service is down, fire departments cannot even begin to stop the flames. But this story is about much more than forest fires. First, a cyclone seven hundred miles away is generating winds that are fanning the flames. Low humidity and high temps, higher than normal, are fueling the intensity and speed of the fires.

There is no normal anymore. When storms hundreds of miles away have effects on climate catastrophes we’re in a whole new level of disasters. As this is happening far out into the Pacific, here on the northeast coast we are seeing torrential rains unlike anything in the historic record.

A town near Syracuse, NY got ten inches of rain in a couple of hours, a situation that has become common this summer. But it is not just rain, it’s wind, including tornados which have been incredibly rare in this part of the country.

We saw dozens of cars trapped by collapsing power poles and wires, trapping drivers in their cars for hours while waiting for emergency workers. In one striking image every single pole, dozens, came down in one blast with cars trapped in the mess.

The question now is how do we cope with these extremes? There is simply no precedent for these events, no emergency plans, and not enough resources to cope with them.

It is likely that the 2024 election will be determined by younger voters alarmed by a future they cannot comprehend and angry at deniers on the right who want to pretend this is all normal. As a 68 year old, my generation has to live with the knowledge that we pushed acknowledgement of warming out until it began to crush our society.

I don’t blame Gen Z for being angry at this coverup of what their generation will spend their lives dealing with these extremes. I do blame the fossil fuel industry for perpetrating crimes against humanity, crimes equivalent to war crimes like those being seen in Ukraine, Niger, and other hotspots are the globe.

But it wasn’t just disinformation campaigns by price gouging corporations that are to blame. There has been a lot of ‘this can’t happen to me-ism’. As Ron DeSantis like to remind us, Florida, a climate disaster zone is experiencing the fastest influx of new residents, despite a collapsing home insurance market.

As a New York State resident, we felt insulated from things like the inability of homeowners to buy protection for our homes and possessions. That was something going on in places like Florida, Arizona, Louisiana, and California.

As actuaries update their risk tables they will start redlining regions all over the country with catastrophic effects on the nation’s economy from coast to coast. 

Am I exaggerating? Only in the eyes of those who refuse to accept change that we brought upon ourselves. Recent stats show 80% of Republican voters believe the economy is more important than climate issues. They don’t seem to understand that warming will do a major number on that economy.

It already is. You can’t have a healthy housing market without homeowners insurance. Getting policies canceled has a domino effect, making getting mortgages more and more difficult. The ability to get mortgages was a major driver of American prosperity, and a major factor in the growth of the middle class that is the backbone of our economy.

Perfect storm indeed.

Meanwhile in Washington fully one half of congress has elected to not govern, instead focusing on culture wars, accusations, fake investigations, and conspiracy theories. All at a time when we face an existential moment in American history and the existence of civilization.

Is this all too alarmist? Well if you insist in believing that I suggest you go back and reread what I’ve just read and do your own fact checking. Look for confirmation from multiple sources, not just the known bias of media like Fox and it’s more whacko cousins like Newsmax.

Perhaps the most alarming aspect of this is I don’t see a path forward, which scares the crap out of me. I’m not wealthy but wealth offers no guarantee of living a safe future. This is beyond the ability to insulate yourself and your family with money.

There is no high ground anymore. 

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The Hollowing Out of the Republican Party

No one is in control

Yesterday, the financial rating company Fitch downgraded the US economy from AAA to AA+, confounding economists as the economy is unusually strong under Bidenomics. Financially it makes no sense but the decision was not about economics.

It was about politics. Specifically Republican politics, which are currently do nothing politics, and the politics of obstruction. The Party has devolved into a party of no ideas, no policies, no discipline.

It’s not surprising because they have no leadership, no guiding hand that pulls them together to get things done. Their ex-President and presumptive leader is reeling under a widening set of legal scandals, all of which are legitimate, regardless of weak calls of it being a witch-hunt.

When a jury of twenty-four citizens votes to indict, it is not a witch-hunt.

Their leaders in Congress are Kevin McCarthy in the House, the lamest of lame ducks, and Mitch McConnell in the Senate, who appears to have serious health issues following his apparent blackout in a recent press conference.

With the extreme anarchist Freedom Caucus holding McCarthy hostage, the House has devolved into chaos, doing nothing except obstruction for its own sake. That obstruction led to the Fitch decision to downgrade the economy, costing taxpayers billions.

And it does not appear that the Party has any will to change. They will shut down the government in a vain attempt to derail the economy and empower their multi-indicted candidate, taking all of us down with it.

Step back and reread what I just wrote, and because it is not some kind of dystopian fiction, it is reality. Our reality, all of our reality.

You might, rightfully, question just what the Republican Party is and what they represent, because they appear to not have a clue.

We were brought up to believe in some basic concepts including freedom of speech, the rule of law, good citizenship, and tolerance of new ideas and different perspectives.

The GOP is methodically undermining all of these basic foundations of democracy. It is the closest thing they have to policy but it really adds up to chaos, the intentional destruction of the American way to retain shreds of power. And shreds is all they will find themselves holding.

It is not overdramatic to state that we are facing an existential crisis that is hitting every aspect of life, in the form of the climate. Our fishbowl is literally becoming untenable and there is no end in sight. This is a world war scale crisis requiring a response on the scale of a Great War we could very well lose.

One entire Party of our two party government has chosen to bury their heads in the sand while fingering the money big oil and gas has stuffed into their pockets. They have chosen to abandon the future, their grandchildren’s future, and they seem to be taking glee in that.

It’s collective insanity.

We can blame Trump but he is not the root of this intellectual corruption. It started with Reagan rewriting the economy to empower the wealthy, at the cost of the middle class, which became a Republican ideology bordering on religion. We had a moment of reprieve, call it redemption, under Obama, but the forces of intentional ignorance prevailed and we got what we have now.

Interestingly, the end of this zoo may be in sight. Trump has run out of campaign money, having bilked his followers out of millions only to spend it all on an estimated $60 million in legal fees. It appears that the only way he can find attorneys is to pay huge retainers up front, given his reputation for not paying his bills.

McCarthy gave away the store for a title that will follow him into history as a monumental failure. The Speaker of the House does not speak for the house.

McConnell, who has tried to inject some gravity into the Party, is now politically crippled by age and the appearance of weakness. For years I saw him as enemy number one as he blocked any Democratic attempts to govern, but today’s politics are so skewed he almost seems like the voice of reason on the right.

I’m quite sure there are those who secretly celebrate his troubles and see them as an opportunity to corrupt the Senate as they have the House. The bad blood has metastasized across the Republican Party until they consider the cancer to be normal.

As a political observer I only see one outcome and it is not pretty. In 2024 the Republican Party goes down in flames and they desperately try to take us all down with them, spreading lies and dividing us into a new kind of civil war.

I personally do not believe they will succeed. Their faith in the power of their cause is misplaced because that cause has no center, no true leadership or direction. They have embraced negativity, the last refuge of those with no imagination or vision.

But though I believe they will fall, the cost to all of us is terrible to imagine, literally terrible. Every one of us needs to work together to save a future for our grandchildren.

Even the Republicans.

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If I Lived In Florida I Wouldn’t Be Too Happy

The Sunshine State is getting darker by the minute

“As of July 26, Ritter said that Visit Lauderdale has tallied 10 events and conventions that were canceled by organizations citing recently enacted laws, policies and travel advisories. That amounts to 15,000 lost hotel room nights and an estimated $20 million economic impact, she said.”

~ CNN Business, DeSantis’ ‘anti-woke’ bills are costing Florida millions of dollars in business

Last night I had a very pleasant dinner with the girl and her upstairs neighbors, who are here for the summer from Florida. Here is Rochester, NY in western NY. We talked a bit about climate issues and they assured me they weren’t worried because they live in Central Florida and their home is 200’ above sea level.

I wish I shared that security with that astounding altitude but I don’t. They said they were Democrats but, after a few drinks, they were praising Ron DeSantis mainly because they pay no state taxes, though that policy far predates the current governor.

It seemed like a good time to change the subject, something a lot of us are getting very good at.

Oddly enough, they are looking for a second home in this area and I couldn’t help thinking they were hedging their bets, given NYS’s enormous taxes. But there are grandchildren involved.

It seemed to me that their situation exemplified the riddle that is the draw of Florida, though having been in central FL, I don’t really see the attraction. But they had the self-assurance of those with enough money to protect themselves.

Even there, that is not the majority of citizens. The attractions of the state that I understand include the water, the mild winters, and the dynamism of cities like Miami, a multicultural mecca.

But a mecca whose future is precarious in the extreme, like much of the state. We can tick off the issues: surface ocean temps too warm for swimming that are driving new predictions of a much more violent hurricane season, the disastrous homeowners insurance situation, and governor who seems bent on creating an atmosphere of fear and distrust, with his draconian social policies like censorship and denial of the rights of many who do not look like him.

If he succeeds in his campaign of fear and prejudice he will be creating a state increasingly removed from the rest of the country, particularly many of the places where newer Florida residents hail from, like my state.

In conversation I stayed away from the social injustices that the governor they admire has forced on many in the state, a very diverse population. I don’t think they cared much about things like censorship and restricting educators from teaching the truth about difficult things like slavery and gender choices.

But those who canceled the conferences referenced those exact issues as big enough to cancel conference plans years in advance. And that is exactly the problem places like Florida are facing: the inability to look beyond the present and see the long term effects of climate, prejudice, and a worsening business climate.

It looks like a perfect storm to this observer, both literally and figuratively. But that should be no surprise to anyone. People choosing a retirement home are not looking into the future anymore, they have made their choices. But those choices, once so logical, now make less and less sense.

Recently a Florida-based home insurer went under, leaving many victims of Hurricane Ian with no recourse to rebuild their homes. The stories are just as cataclysmic as the storm itself, with damaged homes filling with mold, falling to pieces in the humid climate and homeowners forced to make do with much of their savings reduced to rubble.

I do not begrudge the well-off their ability to escape a situation like that. My friends last night worked hard to be prosperous and comfortable. But many in places like Florida or Arizona have bet their lives on moving there and are now finding the bet was a much bigger gamble than their level of risk tolerance can handle.

The risk is finding yourself at the mercy of a state run by a person who cannot even say the words ‘global warming’ much less deal with the realities of it, now that it is no longer in the future. It is here now and it is devastating to many. And that’s just money and property.

Imagine being a gay couple looking to retire in a warm place. Now they must consider a hostile social environment on top of the risks associated with weather and climate issues like access to water. 

Or being a black parent trying to educate your children about the realities of slavery when schools are telling them it was beneficial. Since when did American schools teach outright lies? In Florida that is now, and educators are leaving in droves.

It is impossible to understand what Mr DeSantis thinks he is accomplishing with these dictatorial rules. Or what vision he has for the state he governs. Does he want an aged white purgatory, aka God’s Waiting Room? That was the fantasy of the retirement state, a place that only exists in weird enclaves like The Villages, a place where reality is retired along with normal life.

All of this adds up to a vision of a dystopian future now, designed to protect the extremely wealthy at the cost of those retirees’ dreams being washed away by the winds of hurricanes and intolerance.

A very strange picture, indeed.

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These stories appeared on Medium.com during the past week or so. All are copyright 2023 Martin Edic and may not be used without permission of the author.

I usually try to avoid pointing out the obvious but there is a site out there calledSmartNews that aggregates content from online sites without compensating the authors and it pisses me off.

My stories this week are pretty doom and gloom but that just reflects the emerging reality of a world under siege by climate issues and the denial of an entire US political party with their heads in the sand.

We all get a little frustrated.

Ironically, it is a gorgeous day here, mild, clear, and dry with a refreshing breeze. There are huge sections of the country that pray for days like that, with none in sight. We have to enjoy them as they become more scarce.

So, sorry for the darkness but a part of me has to acknowledge a reality whose outcome is a mystery. Sometimes I feel all I can do is witness it.

Have you written today?

Martin Edic

2877 words

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