An Excess of Calamities

Quite a string of bad news for America these days:  Hurricanes Harvey, Irma, Maria, and Nate, all affecting our states and/or territories; the massacre of innocents in Las Vegas; the wildfires in Northern California, stunning in their severity; and, most embarrassingly, the US Men's National Team of soccer and their improbable elimination from World Cup qualification.

This lastt, man-made calamity required a very unlikely combination of events, all of which happened within a course of a half-hour:  the US had to lose to Trinidad and Tobago, the worst team in their qualifying group; Mexico had to lose to Honduras, and Costa Rica had to lose to Panama.  All three games were being played simultaneously, and at halftime Mexico and Costa Rica were winning, while the US was, incredibly, losing by two goals.  i am a bit suspicious:  perhaps Mexico and Costa Rica, both of which already had their qualification assured, got the word that maybe they could arrange for the hated us rivals to get shut out, and they did the necessary:  lose.  Of course, the most important element was the USMNT's own letdown--after a fabulous victory over Panama a couple of days before--without which the rest of it wouldn't matter.  Maybe it was Putin (Moscow will be hosting the games in 2018)?   I blame Trump.

Our America'Nero
Not a typo, referring to a hero, of which we have many, but to Nero, the Roman emperor who, according to a famous criticism, "fiddled while Rome burned".  Our guy played golf while Hurricane Maria destroyed Puerto Rico's underfunded infrastructure; he has since compounded the problem with his lame efforts on the that territory's behalf.  Just as bad as our ignorance of Puerto Rico's calamity, largely in the media, and more by this administration (though the military did its best to provide relief) was the weak response to Irma's devastation of another US territory in the Virgin Islands.

I don't begrudge Houston the attention given Houston after Harvey, at first clumsy, but then more effective; or Florida, also victimized by Irma, though not as badly as feared, or Las Vegas, site of yet another mass assault of gun violence in America.  But Trump showed clearly that the problems of these disenfranchised citizens--unable to weigh in on any Federal elections, though full citizens--mean less than our states'.  And let's not even talk about his level of concern for Guam, a territory with a disproportionate share of military enlistees and inconvenience, one that Trump seems very clearly willing to sacrifice if it will tease out a foolish military action from the North Korean dictatorship.

Nero, the last of the familial line of emperors beginning with Augustus, had a fairly disastrous end to his reign; historians of the era blame him for unsound executions, lowering the prestige of the office, and even for possibly starting the great fire in Rome, as a means to facilitate his urban renewal program. He was ultimately deposed by a rebellion, condemned to death, after which he committed suicide.  Just saying.

My comment above about Trump (and Putin) was facetious, but I do want to comment on one thing. Drumpfenreich is bad in almost every way, but one positive outcome is that it may retrain us some from thinking that every good (or bad) thing that happens is due to our President.  We have invested too much power in that office, but beyond that, too much emotional dependence.  We just had the best President we could hope for, and it was not enough:  not for his supporters even, certainly it was not in his power to convert his opponents.  Time to be a little more realistic in our expectations.

The Motive for Evil
Aside from the usual bootless wrangling over gun control--it seems some sort of ban on the "bump stocks" used by the killer to increase the rate of firing may be a concession that the NRA and its obedient servants in the Republican party could agree upon this time, though apparently not a limitation on the number of rounds in the ammunition clips which were just as important--most of the other discussion has been a search for what drove the ignominious killer to do what he did in Las Vegas, gunning down dozens at a country music festival from the safety and advantaged angle of a 32nd-floor hotel room.  There was no ISIS or al-Qaeda link to him, no criminal record or history of violence,  no obvious signs of insanity.

On the other hand, there is abundant evidence of premeditation and planning for the massacre. There is a lot of discussion about his motivations; also a school of thought that says it doesn't really matter, for policy purposes. I'm calling him out as an 'ammosexual':  loves his guns, hates people.  He went for the record, and to his discredit, he got it.  His brother said, "I'd like to be able to say he was a miserable bastard..." but he couldn't.  I have no problem saying it, with confidence.