Puerto Rico is all our worst fears about Trump coming real

[babylonsister]

https://www.vox.com/2017/10/1/16390006/puerto-rico-trump

Puerto Rico is all our worst fears about Trump coming real
A real crisis comes and Trump can’t handle it.
Updated by Matthew Yglesias@[e-mail] Oct 1, 2017, 9:00am EDT


For the first nine months of his administration, observers have had occasion to wonder — and wonder, and wonder, and wonder — how exactly Donald Trump would manage to handle a real crisis imposed by external events rather than his own impulsiveness. The answer is now apparent in the blackened streets of San Juan and the villages of interior Puerto Rico that more than a week after Hurricane Maria struck remain without access to food or clean water.

To an extent, the United States of America held up surprisingly well from Inauguration Day until September 20th or so. The ongoing degradation of American civic institutions, at a minimum, did not have an immediate negative impact on the typical person’s life.

But the world is beginning to draw a straight line from the devastation in Puerto Rico straight to the White House. Trump’s instinct so far is to turn the island’s devastation into another front in culture war politics, a strategy that could help his own political career survive.

The rest of us will just have to pray for good luck.

snip//

Retired General John Kelly background and experience are unusual for a White House Chief of Staff, but as it happens his final military assignment was as commander of American military forces in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean basin — basically perfect preparation for the crisis that happens to have struck.

It’s of course entirely possible that things would be going even worse if Reince Priebus were still in charge, but on its face Kelly’s experience does not seem to be doing any good. And that should be a stake through the heart of the notion that some stable of “adults in the room” are going to save the country from having picked a spectacularly inappropriate choice to serve as chief executive.

The one thing we can say for sure is that it’s essentially inconceivable that the next objectively difficult crisis that Trump fumbles will be more in Kelly’s wheelhouse than a disaster requiring a military response in the Caribbean. We’re witnessing the Trump administration at peak performance and it’s appalling. Bismarck supposedly said that God has a special providence for fools, drunks, and the United States of America. If we’re lucky he’ll be proven right and nothing much else bad will happen for the next three years. If not, buckle your seatbelts.

[Iliyah]

1. t-rump is pure evil. I saw it and as HRC tried to warn, I guess

many thought it was not. Now, the USA has a monster in the WH, monsters in the congress, and monsters in his supporters. I have completely changed my minds on evangelists as well.

[dalton99a]

6. We are being ruled not by men, but by monsters

[True_Blue]

2. I knew he couldn't handle a crisis

But this is not just his inability to handle a crisis, he's committing genocide by neglect. Congress needs to remove him Monday period!

[yardwork]

3. He makes a very good point. If Kelly cant handle this, he cant handle anything.

[C_U_L8R]

4. And thats not all...

How much you wanna bet that the Trump Organization will be buying up ‘distressed’ Puerto Rican real estate. He’s got a stake in making this the worst situation imaginable.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. Disaster capitalism.

We've been warned by Naomi Klein and Richard Wolff.

[dalton99a]

7. Yep.