Heart of the Hurricane

 

Here on the southwest Gulf coast of Florida, the weather over the past few weeks has been a tourism board’s paradise—clear sunshine, low humidity, and highs just touching the low 80’s, with a few nights calling for a light sweater. It’s these conditions that gets the beachfront Ritz-Carlton in Naples $1,600 a night for a regular room. Suites are priced in terms of nation’s GDP. Except right now nobody is staying at the Ritz. As some $50 million dollars of renovations were coming to an end this summer, Hurricane Ian blew through and the storm surge wiped out the entire first floor of all the buildings in the resort.

Hurricanes bring out the best and worst in governors and presidents. There is a quickly scheduled presidential meeting a few days after landfall, at which time the president notes the abundance of mud and destruction. The governor then thanks the president for coming down and looks forward to working with FEMA. Manipulating the imagery of the occasion is often mistaken for effectiveness in the actual rescue and cleanup efforts. Sensing a zero-sum game, the press takes sides on who did what well, and who is to blame for every problem.

For Florida, the protagonists—tottering Joe and Governor Ron—played nicely for the cameras. While the property damage was estimated to be $40-$60 billion, the relatively small number of deaths and speedy restoration of electricity gave everyone the impression that this calamity was not going to be calamitous (that is, unless if you had your house washed away). But in these cantankerous national times, it made for a feel-better, if not feel-good moment, and Joe didn’t go wandering around the podium looking for a hand to shake. So the administration didn’t screw this one up.

If only.

For as soon as Air Force One had returned from Florida, media reports started to take sides on what the Vice President had said. Did she really proclaim that FEMA aid should be distributed first on the basis of…race? There was scattered intelligence—video clips, a history of supplicant wokeness, and a Democratic Party desperate to portray all Republicans as racists. It was up to me as Capt. Willard to sail down the river and find my Apocalypse Now Kurtz of truth. I would be going into the heart of darkness not knowing what to expect, and after this mission I wouldn’t want another.

The setting was not some remote jungle but the pleasantly temperature-controlled Democratic National Committee Women's Leadership Forum. The outside observer might think this kind of meeting brings together great-thinking minds to address their party’s challenges. The reality is that this brings together those whose thinking is predicated on how much of their substantial checkbook they can fork over. It’s the kind of people who would usually be spending this time at the beachfront Ritz. In the suites.

Priyanka Chopra Jonas moderated the session, and somehow created a minute and 45 seconds’ worth of verbal diarrhea off a single 5X7 index card. The rambling briefly started about relief efforts in Florida, but then quickly migrated to something about climate legislation and then more about the climate crisis. And yet there was still time for all to embrace enlightenment with the Great Woman taking the mic. Seasoned politicians use such wayward questioning by graciously thanking the moderator and then saying exactly what they want, usually scripted by their bevy of political consultants.

Yet hope quickly faded when Kamala Harris invoked the nauseating business-speak, “There is a lot to unpack here.” It should have signaled for everyone to pack their bags and leave, but the audience wanted their considerable money’s worth. For the next five minutes and six seconds there was a string of seemingly unconnected ramblings, in no particular order, that included: her starting an office for environmental justice while she was the San Francisco DA; promoting the $300 billion in green spending for environmental improvement; America’s need to lead the fight on climate change; how Caribbean nations were getting washed away because of climate change and this was destroying their tourism industry (not that cutting off the American tourists because of absurd Covid travel restrictions helped any).

Mixed into this was the “controversial” part—a weird hand demonstration about equity and equality. If the equity hand went up, the equality hand went down. If the equality hand went up, the equity hand went down, like some bizarre elevator dance. They eventually met at the middle after invoking how natural disasters disproportionately hurt the most vulnerable and poor, and that this is where our funding should go. Was she sending some leftist message? It’s hard to say because I’m not sure she had any idea what she was saying. It certainly wasn’t about Hurricane Ian, as I timed her glancing remarks sending her sympathies to families in Florida and Puerto Rico (where another hurricane had hit before) at…11 seconds.

Should we even care about what was said? Probably not. But that isn’t my problem, it’s the Democrats’. For the next 20 minutes there was more drivel on assault weapons (upon which Harris improbably opined that she was a second amendment believer, in general) and abortion rights. With the refrain of “39 days” until the election popping up every few minutes, the Democrats in that audience believed climate, guns, and abortion are their keys to mid-term victory. But in the real world, the one where the workers of the beachfront Ritz are wondering what is going to happen to their jobs, the issues are inflation, gas prices, and crime on the streets. With that kind of disconnection from reality, all I know is that on November 9^th the Democratic National Committee Women's Leadership Forum is going to look around at their party’s carnage and mutter, “The horror. The horror.”

© 2022 Alexander W. Stephens, All Rights Reserved.