Unrelieved in Deplorable thoughts

The man stood in my doorway bemoaning his difficult day.
He’s a genial fellow and,
having many difficult days myself,
I don’t begrudge him using me as a pressure valve.
We all need to blow off a bit of stress sometimes and if I can help now and again, use me.

What do you say though when someone drops his problems at your feet?
I made empathetic clucks until he finished and then sighed for him,
agreed his day sucked (though I did not mention I thought mine sucked worse).
In the end I wished him luck with it and added,
“Well, at least you’re not in Puerto Rico.”

A look of confusion crossed his face. “Puerto Rico?”

My turn for confusion.
He didn’t know that Puerto Rico has been slammed by a second massive hurricane
just days after it was slammed by a first massive hurricane?
He wasn’t aware that the island is devastated,
that they are running out of food and fuel and water,
that people are actually dying after they have survived the actual storms
because there isn’t enough fuel to keep power in hospitals and dialysis centers going,
there isn’t enough food and fresh water to keep healthy survivors healthy?
He hasn’t seen that relief efforts are being badly bungled,
that aid from foreign sources was at first being refused because of a shipping regulation that could be and was lifted for Florida and Texas during their period of crisis
but was not being lifted for Puerto Rico after their double whammy?

• Dotard initially stated that he couldn’t suspend the Jones Act because it would upset the business community and unions. People are dying and he’s protecting business interests? Does it have anything to do with the fact that these people mostly speak Spanish? Did he have to be informed that these people who don’t engender the same concern as Texans and Floridians are also American citizens even if they do speak Spanish and live in an American territory instead of a state?

He hasn’t seen that even what has gotten into the ports is not getting out to the devastated communities, that rescue response is being badly botched, continues to be massively disorganized and ineffective?

• Don’t tell me that they can’t find enough truck drivers to haul the goods. I’m fairly certain that the US armed services have more than enough people trained and equipped to clear roads and qualified to drive trucks to the areas in need - but they have to be mobilized. Someone has to order them deployed.

Hey, maybe I’m a little overly sensitized to this issue, but I’d kind of thinking pretty much everyone in post-Katrina New Orleans would be fairly raw about hurricane relief.

When my city was threatened, my family and I fled by road to a neighboring state.
We had the resources to do so - a vehicle, the finances to pay for our flight, the roads to use.
The poor of my city did not and many of them died.
For the people of Puerto Rico, fleeing meant even greater resources were needed to actually fly out.

I was physically vulnerable at the time,
suffering from a failed skin graft that had become seriously infected.
I was taken in by functioning medical facilities and treated for weeks (at no cost to myself) and I am convinced that, without this treatment, I might have died.
Many vulnerable people trapped in New Orleans after the storm also died as hospitals that hadn’t fully evacuated lost power
and people trapped in their homes or on the freeways or in the convention center
ran out of water and medications
and the heat and time simply picked them off.
I can only imagine what similar stories are going on in Puerto Rico.

To hell with artifice and writing parallels.
These are Americans, our people
- whether you recognize them as such or not -
they simply are our people.
It’s beyond all that though,
beyond politics or language or any other damn thing
that is impeding the will to simply cut the crap
and help these people
- PEOPLE, okay,
human beings for which other human beings with any morals whatsoever
simply pitch in and help
out of the compassion that supposedly sets us above the other animals .

I take it back.
I don’t think I’m overly sensitive about this issue.
I think I’m correctly sensitive about it.
I know we have a moral imperative to take care of people,
yes, our people, if you must,
to save these lives
just as we had a moral imperative to save the lives
of those in Houston,
in Florida,
in New Orleans.

We don’t get to stand on stupid.
We don’t get to fail to do whatever it takes,
to suspend whatever regulations need to be suspended in order to save lives.
We don’t get to say, oh, it’s their fault,
they had an aging infrastructure,
they’re in massive debt,
They whatever…

It just doesn’t matter.

This isn’t about politics.
It’s about basic humanity,
And, oh my god, we are so failing.

We have a president who has no concept of human decency,
who will only do the right thing if it benefits him,
who can only be forced into saving lives
when he finally realizes that the optics are so bad his base might notice.

His inability to president,
to be even a minimally decent person,
has now risen to the level of negligent homicide.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The man in the doorway responded,
“Oh, yeah, Puerto Rico.
Yeah, I saw on the news that they’re going to be okay.
We’re taking care of them.”

I shuddered as the realization hit me.
True, I might be looking at a fellow Katrina survivor
but I was also looking at a true believer,
a Kool-Aid drinking follower who has been told
by the leader who thinks for him
that everything’s okay down there,
so everything is okay.

I’m looking at a man who’s given away his mind and compassion
And
he thinks he’s looking at an idiot too.

There was nothing more to say.

I wished him a somewhat less empathetic good day
and moved him into a whole different category
of people than I’d previously classified him.

Last updated September 30, 2017