The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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I guess if you’re not the kind of leader who’s interested in history, you might have missed the Katrina debacle. Day after day, week after week of video showing the victims of that hurricane struggling to put their lives back together, struggling to survive, calling out for help back in the swamps. The nation got a dose of what reality was like down in the delta so that when President Bush flew in and shook the hand of his Disaster-in-Chief, telling him what a great job he was doing, the country was not only shocked, they were pissed off.

Trump flew into Puerto Rico without reviewing the film clips of Katrina’s aftermath. As usual his administration was doing a great job, fantastic job. But the trouble is all those lying journalists down there shooting footage of the carnage. Folks without food or water or medical care. Humanitarian shipments sitting idle at the docks with no diesel to run the trucks to deliver all those items. No truck drivers. No open roads. No electrical grid. No communication lines. No clue. The mayor of San Juan decried the President’s characterization of the clean-up as a Good News Story. “Dammit,” she said, “this is not a good news story, this a people are dying story.”

The President, true to form, attacked the messenger, saying the mayor expected everything to be done for Puerto Rico when they should be doing it themselves. Even George Bush didn’t make the mistake of telling Louisiana to get off their swamp cracker Cajun butts and suck it up. But he still paid a huge price in popularity for an apparent lack of conservative compassion. Folks in this country can be hard hearted, but video of half naked kids drinking polluted water from a filthy creek touch a chord. They expect some help from the damn government, not criticism the victims aren’t grabbing their own bootstraps.

You ignore history at your peril, that’s for sure. Tweet all you want about those crybaby NFL players, but the evening news loves a video of devastation and misery even more than a hot controversy revolving around the flag and the anthem. We aren’t so callous yet that we blame the victims for a Category 5 hurricane. Those people on the 6 o’clock news aren’t faux and they need some help. My advice to the President, send in the Marines, send in the Navy, send in some helicopters, send in whatever it takes. If you don’t, no sunny press conference about the great job the administration is doing is going to save the nation of Puerto Rico. Or you.

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