Every Now and Again...

Every now and again we're reminded of just how puny we really are.

Just how small.  And insignificant.  How subservient to Mother Nature you and I really are.  For every now and again Mother Nature rises up and swats us across the kisser.  Delivers a death blow, in fact.  She'll rob us of our homes.  And our livelyhoods.  And our history.  From which we'll have to rebuild.

But in spite of all that, we'll choose to rebuild in the same exact areas which attract the kind of swatting from which we've had to rebuild.  Again and again.

Those who pine to live next to an ocean.  Or to a ski slope.  Or next to a raging river.  And then find a way to do so, only to have Mother Nature take it from us.  As has just happened, and is happening in Southern California as this is being written.

I come from a part of the Country where people have a goal to buy a spread nestling up against a river.  For we had a paucity of oceans and mountains and ski slopes.  And many were (fortunate?) enough to do so.  Yet, every now and again that river will flood.  As they all do from time to time.  And steal our homes and farms and vehicles and businesses from us, as they all do.  

Again and again.

Yet we choose to rebuild.  Apparently embracing the (false) belief that it won't happen again.  And yet it always does.

As I reach a lofty age, I've come to believe that we all live our lives with one goal in mind: hoping not to die.  The ancient Egyptians lived their entire lives as a warm-up act to dying.  Believing that the real good stuff occured after we were dead and gone.  That life was just a preparation for death.  And that their Pharoah would be resurrected to that star in the sky and protect them all.  That's why they so willingly helped to build the pyramids.  For their just reward in the afterlife.

We Americans don't think that way.  We want to live, and live well.  And we invest most of our wealth into our homes and farms and businesses.  Yet the 1993 Laguna Canyon fire I referenced in a previous posting should have served to educate us all about what dry vegetation, Santa Ana winds, Mother Nature and a spark can do to those same homes, farms and businesses.  

It didn't.

Now we're faced, as a society, with having to deal with another such disaster.  Only several times as big.  Perhaps the biggest and most expensive natural disaster to ever occur in our Country.  Perhaps as much as $150,000,000,000.  With a "B."  Will we learn this time how to prepare and deal with a future event like this one?  

I'm suggesting that no, we'll not learn from this.  Not so long as we have a smug, grinning, preening, smarmy Governor.  A man born on third base, yet thought he'd hit a triple.  Were it not for having J. Paul Getty as a Godfather, and San Fran Nan Pelosi as an aunt, I suggest this guy would be selling cars to Silicon Valley $Millionaires.  

A run-of-the-mill, socialist-leaning Democrat just won't do anymore for any job of consequence.  For they're the ones who made this mess.  And keep on making it.  We don't need a slick salesman as Governor any more.  We don't need a Lost Angeles Mayor who's only qualifications are being Black, and a woman, when being Black and a woman was the primary requirement.  We need those who know their jobs, and do their jobs, for the benefit of all their voters.  

Until the good citizens of California are willing to vote their own best interests, and "hire" those who know what to do, and will do it, natural disasters like these will continue to upend their lives.  

The truth hurts.  As those in the military say, "Embrace the suck."  And then do something about it...