Impromptus

Hurricane politics, &c.

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A scene in Old Fort, N.C., after Hurricane Helene, October 4, 2024 (Eduardo Munoz / Reuters)
On Helene and Katrina; the ‘Colorado baker’; the 2020 election; Chinese-made Trump Bibles; the problem with pandas; and more

Chuck Edwards, a Republican congressman from North Carolina, felt compelled to issue a press release. It was headed “Debunking Helene Response Myths.” No. 1: “Hurricane Helene was NOT geoengineered by the government.” No. 2: “Nobody can control the weather.” And on the list goes.

Was this list necessary? Yes. Did it take guts for a Republican to issue the list, in the current political environment? Yes. Will it make a dent in public perceptions? I don’t know, but I doubt it.

Chuck Edwards is new to the House — elected in 2022. He beat the incumbent, Madison Cawthorn, in a Republican primary. Cawthorn was a MAGA darling. Republicans such as Edwards are both scarce and valuable. (Valuable because scarce, economists would tell us.)

An Associated Press report begins,

The U.S. government’s top disaster-relief official said Sunday that false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to Hurricane Helene — spread most prominently by Donald Trump — are “demoralizing” aid workers and creating fear in people who need recovery assistance.

Another AP report is headed, “After the deluge, the lies: Misinformation and hoaxes about Helene cloud the recovery.”

I have thought back to 2005 and Hurricane Katrina. I wrote a piece called “All the Uglier: What Katrina whipped up.” Its opening paragraph:

For years, many of us have noted and analyzed the phenomenon of Bush hatred — and all the unreason, hysteria, and meanness packed into it. But Hurricane Katrina seems to have taken the phenomenon to a new level. A natural disaster has been made all the uglier by the politics surrounding it.

One more paragraph:

The first response of many to the destruction of New Orleans and other areas was to revile George Bush — and conservatism and Republicans and much else. Obviously, there are legitimate criticisms of the government, at all levels, to be made. In fact, a (conservative) friend of mine cracked, “We said we’d make Iraq look like the United States, and so we have.” But legitimate criticism has often been lost in spiteful lunacy. Katrina was an occasion to rehearse all of one’s fears and opinions and obsessions about the War on Terror, global warming, capitalism, the federal budget, race. Katrina was an invitation to bust a political gut.

I would like to paste a third paragraph, interesting in light of today:

Exhibit A in the awfulness of Katrina reaction was the piece by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for The Huffington Post (a prominent website). The title over the piece was Biblical: “For They That Sow the Wind Shall Reap the Whirlwind.” RFK Jr., of course, is not only the bearer of an illustrious name; he is a leader of the environmentalist movement in America.

He was a scourge of the Republican Party in those days. Now he is a toast of it.

It stung George W. Bush that he was called a racist — defamed as a racist, over and over. He writes of this, frankly and poignantly, in his memoirs, Decision Points. Kanye West, the popular rapper, said, “George Bush doesn’t care about black people.”


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Oddly enough, West, too, became a toast of the Republican Party. In October 2022, the Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee put out a tweet: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” The Republicans were positing a kind of trinity. (When West was utterly flagrant in his antisemitism, they deleted the tweet.)

In our country — perhaps all? — natural disasters are accompanied by disastrous politics.

• “Enough is enough,” said Jake Warner, a lawyer with ADF, i.e., Alliance Defending Freedom. “Jack has been dragged through courts for over a decade. It’s time to leave him alone.” Amen. “Jack” is the Colorado baker, Jack Phillips, hounded ad nauseam and (almost) ad infinitum. To read the latest, go here.

• There are two questions — basic ones — that I think Republicans should be asked, regularly. Until they are addressed, conversation cannot usefully proceed. (1) Was the 2020 election legitimate? Did Joe Biden win it fair and square? (2) Who attacked Congress on January 6? Trump supporters? Or BLM, Antifa, and the FBI?

People who cannot face up to these questions, you can hardly have a conversation with. They side with unreality over reality — and this embrace of unreality does great damage to the country.

Spend a minute on the first question, about the 2020 election. Sometimes, J. D Vance, the Republicans’ vice-presidential nominee, declines to answer it. Sometimes he does answer it — saying that Trump was the true winner, not Biden. He did just this last week. (For an article, go here.)

How can you take such a person seriously? Even on the question of whether today is Thursday?

• A headline: “Trump has long blasted China’s trade practices. His ‘God Bless the USA’ Bibles were printed there.” It would take a heart of stone  . . .  (To read the article, go here.)

• Trump is back at it, with the Jews. “Israel has to do one thing: They have to get smart about Trump. Because they don’t back me. I did more for Israel than anybody, I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not a reciprocal, as they say.” (Find a news article about this here.)

I would say to my Israel-supporting MAGA friends: Watch out. Those who are transactional can turn on a dime. Populists can turn on a dime, according to how the wind blows. More valuable is a friend, occasionally critical, who is nonetheless solidly grounded and steadfast.

• About immigrants, Trump has said, repeatedly, “They’re poisoning the blood of our country.” Most recently, he said, “We got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.”

Blood. Genes. Ladies and gentlemen, this is not American conservatism, as it has long been understood. It is something else.

• Trump’s use of immigrants as a collective bogeyman is interesting, given his personal background. His mother was an immigrant; his father was the son of immigrants. Two of his three wives have been immigrants. Could it be that Trump is merely playing at populism? Very, very well?

• Headline: “Pro-Palestinian protesters pitch encampment outside Jewish Democrat’s Ohio home.” (Article here.) One of the worst features of our politics, I think, is the harassment of officeholders at their homes. I don’t care who is doing the harassing, or who is the harassed.

• An interesting sentence, or heading: “Belgian PM and king blast Pope Francis for church’s sex abuse cover-up legacy in blistering welcome.” (Find it here.) A “blistering welcome” — a new one on me.

• If you happen to be thinking of adopting a panda, weigh the responsibilities: “A zoo in Finland is returning giant pandas to China because they’re too expensive to keep.” (Article here.)

• I saw this photo, from London, online recently:

With that attitude, Britain would never have kept the Falklands.

• Check him out:

Dude is a stud, I think we can say.

• “Luis Tiant, Crowd-Pleasing Pitcher Who Baffled Hitters, Dies at 83.” That obit is here. He was a great pitcher, with a distinctive wind-up. A lot of us did a pretty fair imitation of Tiant. But none of us could throw like him. It was a joy to watch Luis Tiant pitch. (Not so much for the hitters, true.)

• What a stunning photo:

I have Holst in my head — Gustav Holst, and, in particular, his suite The Planets, and, more in particular, the third movement of that suite: “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity.” Listen to it here.

Three cheers for jollity.

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