I survived Katrina, and as I watch what's happened in the North East, I am reminded of how surreal life becomes when the devastation is so vast and so complete that it is beyond contemplation. I am reminded of the thousands and thousands of drowned cars flung far and wide, refrigerators filled with oozing rot and maggots as big as my little finger, and mile upon mile of debris that sat three stories high.
As I look at pictures of Sandy's destruction, I get a little weepy remembering the loss of life here, the friends who left and never returned, the life and soul of a city deluged. It must be a mini version of PTSD that Sandy has triggered some tough memories and regifted them to me, and undoubtedly to many others. After Katrina, I stood with a woman and her teenage daughter. Their house was gone except for the concrete steps. She had a plastic grocery bag which she held in the hopes she would find something, anything to take away as a reminder of the life she had. The bag remained empty. I spoke with a man whose house, and his mother's house next door were completely gone, blown in pieces onto streets far away. He hoped to find somethng, anything of the life he had. Eventually, he picked up a brick from the rubble that was once his house to take with him as a reminder of the life he once had. Multiply these two stories by the thousands. These are the stories people devastated by Sandy will tell in the future.
So, it shouldn't take much to drum up some compassion for people we do not know and will probably never know who are suffering. And even if you feel a little distant from events that don't seem to directly affect you, the decent human being would not feel inclined to insult the victims of such a massive tragedy.
But then there's Steve King. He of the cobra eyes, the soul of a true believer, and the mind of the child left behind. Steve King who thinks it's okay to take children to dog and cock fights (which he thinks should be legal), he who has never heard of a girl getting pregnant from rape or incest, he who compared immigrants to live stock, he, the village idiot advancing the idea that Barack Obama's parents announced his birth in Hawaii via telegrams from Kenya.
What does Steve King hope for the survivors of Sandy? Only his hopes that they are not like those people from Katrina (meaning all those BLACK people) who spent all that FEMA money on
"Gucci bags and massage parlors and everything you can think of".
I remain unsurprised by this. As it is, I have not yet heard anyone say we shouldn't rebuild in New Jersey or New York as was said of New Orleans.
But, Steve King is nothing if not representative of the radical right wing fringe. Since the election of President Obama, we have watched the fringe Tea Partiers slither out from their rocks, uncoil themselves and puff out their hoods, warning the rest of us that their venom is stronger than an antidote we may possess. And, motivated by fear, those we once thought of as right-of-center establishment Republicans have either succumbed to the hypnotic snake charmer's music of people like King, Bachmann, Walsh, and others, or they have been bitten and brought down, like Richard Lugar. But, there is an antidote to this particular venom, and that's called the vote. For Democrats, the choice is fairly easy. It is more difficult for Republicans to vote against their party. But, I would suggest that Republicans have much more to lose if they vote for the poison that has leaked into their party. In time, and not so much time, they will have a party, Republican in name only, and one by one, every Republican who strays an inch from the orthodoxy will face those hypnotic eyes. That means you, my Republican friends. They will be coming for you.