In terms of historical circumstances operating at the
level of metaphor, nothing could be more nakedly symbolic than Hurricane
Sandy. Sandy itself was widely seen as a
disruptive force for the presidential campaign, its destructive force spiraled
into a discussion, albeit a superficial one, on climate change after the
subject was left out of the debate process.
But beyond this stunted and somewhat teethless reaction was an
enunciation of what we all knew about the election and which none of the
nonstop chatter could seem to articulate; the fact that regardless of who won
the vote, our only certainty in the
aftermath was a continuation down the path of disaster capitalism. And if climate change wasn’t touched upon in
the debates, neither were the failures that lead to the 2008 crash, another
time when thousands of homes were underwater, and how little has been done to preclude
the repetition of those events.
In Sandy were a vast swath of the American population
caught up in circumstances beyond their control, left powerless to a
destructive force laid upon them and, in the wreckage, literally without power,
left to the ramshackle devices of a busted government that had been purposely stripped down to
incapacitation. This is not to downplay
the amazing work of emergency crews and first responders operating on the
government dime, who did do truly incredible work at both avoiding catastrophe
and lessening its impact when it transpired.
However, you don’t have to go far to find places where FEMA and even the
Red Cross was totally impotent, inert, or absent.
Until recently, you would think Lower Manhattan was the
only place that got hit. Though the
devastation was wide, reaching across several countries and over 20 states, the
media aimed its focus on New York as the center of culture. The flooded subways were cleared days before
precious resources were even getting to poorer areas like Staten Island, Long
Island, and Rockaway Beach. The concerns
of the poor were washed away as the bankers returned to work, Broadway shows
began bustling again, and we restarted the marathon race to the bottom.
Yet, the view from Manhattan made it abundantly clear
where the concerns of private concentrated power lay, as the skyline went dark
except for the Goldman Sachs building, a bold demonstration of the
self-preservation of industry. GS can’t
be blamed for the surrounding area not being hooked into its own grid of
generators, but this illustration of the vastly unfair centralization of
resources certainly made them look indifferent to the suffering of those around
it.
Like clockwork, the quips about whatever convenient pet
cause God seemed to be punishing us for came spewing out of the mouths of the
attention-seekers, but overall we were spared the quips about cleaning up
public housing and the like that came out of Katrina, because, you know, rich
people were affected too. Still, God, if
he was present, seemed to be telling us a whole lot of things in the rich
tapestry of young adult level symbolism masked in drowning Dumbo Carousels and
Seaside Heights rollercoasters being carried out to sea, telling us that the
halcyon days of the American dream were over.
In the gas shortages, we were treated to what might have
looked to believers to be a recursive loop back to 1979 when the current
economic crisis really started and the Fed created new ontologies to deal with
it. With a more global oil crisis a
near-guarantee in the near future, those gas lines looked less like a
circumstantial setback and more like a grim vision of the future. The democrats scored great points in the
election off of the “success” of the auto bailout (a success paved with
concessions by one of the last strong unions around), but without a concerted
effort to build fuel efficient cars that the least wealthy Americans (the
largest growing population) can afford ,we can only expect to see higher prices
and longer lines at the pump we run out of places to bomb for our depleting
resources.
As the storm barreled towards the U.S., it caused a massive
amount of damage in Haiti, Cuba, The Bahamas and other places that regularly
get affected by U.S. actions/inactions but hardly garner a notice in the
national attention span. The news media,
in the spirit of Halloween, declared the Hurricane’s mixture of tropical and
wintry conditions a “Frankenstorm”, and though it’s hard to make the case for
any single weather event being the direct result of climate change, it was hard
not to view this beast as something man-made, a Frankenstein’s monster out for
revenge on her maker.
The storm approached at a glacial pace and telejournalists,
unsure of what to do with no new facts coming in, spent an inordinate amount of
time focusing on the HMS Bounty, a ship best known for its use in the Pirates
of the Caribbean movies that had been lost at sea. As certain doom loomed over millions of
people, people stranded in their homes strapped to their TVs were using their
last bit of energy for weeks watching the news tell them how relics designed to
look like they were from the 17th century were in serious
danger. Kind of like being told that
corporate monoliths needed to be bailed out while underwater homes who had been
pirated by these vessels sank without so much as a life vest.
America, via the filter of Sandy, was a home exposed, like
the one pictured above, but it wasn’t the image of a bunch of unreliable
backstabbers looking to swindle one another on the lifeboat as it went down,
sharks patrolling the waters looking for things to loot as the “fake” Sandy
pictures indicated. On the contrary,
overwhelmingly, people came out to help their displaced neighbors. What stuck out was institutional rot, piled
up like lines of debris on the side of the street.
Romney’s death knell was not even the campaign
rally-not-rally in Ohio that turned into an empty gesture of filling trucks
with canned goods that his staff bought to give to people to give back to him
that the Red Cross didn’t even want.
Instead, the fatal blow was a quip made at the Republic National
Convention months earlier in which Romney ironically mocked the very thing that
was about to happen. “President Obama
promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans”, he said pausing for a laugh
with gusto as the sea levels ensure that they’d have the last one, “and to heal
the planet. My promise is to help you
and your family.”
But where Romney’s truck fiasco failed at both the level
of symbolism and the level of real aid to real families in need, the Occupy
movement, quickly regrouped into Occupy Sandy, succeeded in New York. All the things the media had criticized OWS
for were proven immediately wrong- that they would ultimately falter without
strong central leadership (on the contrary, without a hierarchical bureaucracy,
they were able to help more people), they were too disorganized (the group used
real time social media to call attention to hot spots in need of immediate
attention and direct essential aid where it was needed), they were a bunch of
spoiled whining college hippies (they sprung to direct action almost
immediately after the storm struck), the movement was basically dead (recent
forecasts on their one year anniversary were almost unanimous in pronouncing
the movement irrelevant), and that they would never win popular support without
streamlining into a single message (unless they make their core message assistance
to those victimized by economic inequality).
Reports began pouring in from everyday citizens that they
had yet to see any government or Red Cross aid, but Occupy Sandy was
there. The effort was so great that even
the mayor’s office and the National Guard conceded and acknowledged their
service to the city. Somewhat
unthinkably, New York police officers stood in solidarity with the volunteers,
chanting “We are unstoppable” with them.
40 Years back, when our country was the closest it ever
got to real revolution since it could only conceive of things with war, a
fringe group took its name from a Dylan lyric that claimed “You don’t need a
weatherman to see which way the wind’s blowin’”. A mere week later, a nor’eastern blew in and
dropped far more snow than had been predicted in recent weather reports. Sometimes, all it takes is a strong enough
gust to show just how worthless those weathermen are.
