Already, the political war drums are beating. Democrats in Puerto Rico such as San Juan Mayor Carmen Yulín Cruz have decided to take to the airwaves and absconding their own responsibilities and duties to the citizens the purport to represent, have decided to make a political football out of their own ineptitude.
The problem in Puerto Rico is very simple. Hit with a Category 4 hurricane and plagued by inefficient roads and infrastructure, the federal government has been co-ordinating rescue and relief efforts accordingly — first at the harbors, then with the electrical grid, followed by hospitals, schools, water and other vital infrastructure before diving deeper into the mountainous inland region.
Government has often been criticized as “the god that fails” — and for Democrats who are watching their secular god struggle to provide even basic needs, when matched with the vitriol and hatred spewed at President Trump?
It creates a category 4 storm of its own.
Witness the attempts of National Security Adviser Tom Bossert to (successfully) knock questions out of the box from a hostile White House press corps whose mantra doesn’t seem to be anything approaching journalism… but rather, a policy of “question until it fails.”
…want everything to be done for them when it should be a community effort. 10,000 Federal workers now on Island doing a fantastic job.
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2017
When the politics of crisis and the “never let an opportunity go to waste” set begins to extend their complaints into ingratitude? That’s a problem of civil society.
For years, Puerto Rico has had the opportunity to harden and improve their infrastructure, become more fiscally competitive, take advantage of the same laws that the Marianas Islands have used to become an economic powerhouse, lower their tax thresholds, and become every bit a vision of what Cuba could have been under capitalism.
…and instead, they have chosen to be what Cuba is today. Mired in debt with a crumbling infrastructure, Puerto Rico’s options are slim thanks to lax leadership more willing to play to the crowd rather than speak plain truths to the mob.
Cruz’s political play is a smart one, if one seeks re-election and is ready to dodge and blame for the mess. The mess that nature leaves behind is one thing; the mess created by poor governance lays squarely upon the shoulders of those who would rather place the blame rather than pick up their duties.
Puerto Rico is receiving all the help that can be humanly delivered to those attempting to rebuild their lives in the wake of Hurricane Maria. Rather than treat it as a political football, politicians should seek to fix the Puerto Rico’s longstanding problems rather than fix the blame.
Watch the press scrum. Cloaking that sort of rhetoric and those sort of questions under the form of journalism without the substance? That’s the sort of reporting that undermines the idea of media, precisely because it lacks conscience.
Does turning Puerto Rico into a “wag the dog” style tragedy feed a single child or clear a single road? It doesn’t, of course… but it makes for great theater.
UPDATE: Just in case anyone is confused about the scale and scope of the aftermath of Hurricane Maria, NASA has helpfully provided a disaster recovery map that outlines the problem.
No bureaucrat is going to snap their fingers at this and make the logistics problem magically go away. Meanwhile, the United States has literally deployed an army to fix the problem… what more can be asked?
For the mayor of San Juan to compare the humanitarian effort and first responders involved as an act “close to genocide” is obtuse and horrific.
UPDATE x2: More on the relief effort from former FEMA director David Paulison:
Imagine the devastation of Hurricane Andrew spread across the entire 34,000 square mile island.
Paulison, the former director of FEMA during the George W. Bush administration, says that’s one of the reasons why recovery efforts have been stalled.
“I think it was slow. I don’t know if it was any person’s fault. The ports were closed,” Paulison said.
“The airport was shut down. The roads impassable because of the debris. So yes, it was slow getting started,” he said.
When it starts coming into focus as a logistics issue, the picture becomes more insurmountable. To attribute malice is simply a lack of character during challenging times.
UPDATE x3: As if on cue, San Juan Major Carmen Yulín Cruz has chosen to brand the relief effort and the first responders engaged in this Herculean response as — wait for it — an act “close to genocide”:
The mayor of San Juan lashed out at Trump administration on Friday, decrying its relief effort in the wake of hurricanes Jose and Maria and saying if it doesn’t solve the logistics “what we we are going to see is something close to a genocide”.
“We are dying here,” Carmen Yulín Cruz said at a press conference, speaking with tears in her eyes. “I cannot fathom the thought that the greatest nation in the world cannot figure out the logistics for a small island of 100 miles by 35 miles. So, mayday, we are in trouble.”
Did we neglect to mention that she is a Democrat? Guess “amazing logistical effort” doesn’t quite fit into the Bash Trump (TM) narrative…
