Several random first hand observations on the San Diego wildfires.
There was a time not too long ago when the word holocaust might have been among the handful of useful words in a context such as this. Today however that word has been usurped in such a way that to even try to use it in any of its older meanings is considered politically incorrect. Which is of course why I use it now. Who nitpicks PC language diktat when their family is under evacuation orders? A flaming (har har) anti-semite of course!
Being evacuated and sleeping on someone else’s floor certainly can make you punchy. That’s about the only excuse I can think of for spending hours atitter over the lame impression of Abbot and Costello with which we kept ourselves amused: "Which fire? The Witch Fire. Yes, which one? No, they’re calling it the Witch Fire. Stop playing games, my house might be gone!" Well OK, it might also have had something to do with the alcohol.
Anyone in San Diego who would like to know what it smelled like in NYC up until the late 1970s, step outside right now and take a deep breath. That’s what public housing projects running trash incinerators smell like. Likewise the ash. For extra credit now go about your life without a filter mask. We didn’t have sissy crap like that back then. Mom said go out and play in the ash. And we liked it that way.
Parallels with Katrina are already being made. "Our Katrina" some blubber in a pathetic appeal for sympathy. I wasn’t there and don’t know anyone who was but it is easy to imagine that deluge being more terrible for more people all at once and for a longer duration than the gradual and near deathless hit-or-mostly-miss holocaust has been, so far, for San Diegans – but perhaps that’s only because I haven’t lost my home. If I had I know I’d sure be pissed off at the CDF and military twits who kept some great firefighting hardware grounded yesterday with their intra-governmental bureaucratic pissing contests.
At any rate it’s a bit premature to be making unripened apple to moldy orange comparisons. The full glory of the Katrina debacle took more than a week to unfold. The fires here aren’t under control yet and whatever hasn’t burned is still dry as a bone. The Santa Ana winds could whip up again as easily as they died away, and that would give us a bitter taste of what the Gulf Coasters felt as Rita bore down on them before they had even dried out from Katrina.
Nevertheless, interesting comparisons are already being made between the general tone of civility at Qualcomm stadium today versus the distinctly uncivilized environment at the Superdome back then. If not then allow me to be the first to make one. I’m sure we can believe our politicians when they say, amid their endless and eminently ignorable mutual admiration and backpatting, that race has absolutely positively nothing to do with the different outcomes. Racism, on the other hand, definitely does. Not that I’ve actually heard any of them do anything but admire themselves for their hard work (do they think they’re mexicans?) and superior bureaucratic skills (as if that’s a good thing) but I’m sure someone somewhere (google it, I just got back from evacuation) has pointed out that the only imaginable reason a black majority would harass and terrorize a White minority at the Superdome while a White majority coexists quite peacefully with black and latino minorities at the Q is, of course, racism. What other reason can you think of racist? As Descartes might say if he were alive in these times of mass delusion: I think therefore I am a racist.
Last but not least, and I’m sure my long-suffering cricket-readers will be very surprised, this holocaust got me thinking about the immigration invasion. As with 9/11, when the entire commercial air fleet was grounded for days, we see that much of what is considered unthinkable or undoable according to conventional wisdom is in fact quite thinkable and doable. The speed with which our government was able to get hundreds of thousands of people in heavily populated areas to "migrate" elsewhere, even though it inconvenienced and terrified many more who were not directly involved, certainly puts the lie to all the ninnies who claim we are incapable of deporting the millions of invaders, have no right to even make them fearful, and darn sure better not inconvenience the Holy Economy with any such attempt.
In evacuated areas police and guardsmen are stopping people and asking for ID! Oh my. Civil libertarians around the world must be wetting themselves. Can you imagine the sheer INJUSTICE, the TERROR this must instill?
I can’t. All I can think is: see, it’s easy. And how safe we all are with only people who live in our own neighborhoods being allowed in. All we have to do to catch and evict 80% of the invaders is have everyone pin on their driver’s license for a few weeks and arrest anyone who isn’t wearing one. The other 20% are even easier – they’re already in jail. It is, I must humbly point out, only to thwart this simple but brilliant plan that Spitzer does what he does. By the way, did you know he’s a Jew?
We see at times like this that law enforcers don’t abide looters and they certainly can do something about them. Too bad the traditional orders to shoot on sight have fallen out of favor. We can be sure the many side effects of our new anything-goes scofflaw norm is that whenever disaster strikes sociopaths nearly chuckle themselves to death with glee. "Rest assured," we are told, "the authorities will come down on them with the full force of the law." Translation to invaderese: "fill your truck homey."
Even limp-wristed promises of enforcement are however enough to cause cognitive dissonance, which is why the authorities are so uncomfortable talking about looting. They, even more so than any of the rest of us, must be thinking to themselves: why is it ok to crackdown on lawlessness now, to forbid people from moving freely, shut down massive interstate freeways, to even keep people out of their homes, but when things are calm and "normal" we must endure invaders looting our social services and preying on us as if we are stupid defenseless sheep? Why pretend there is no way we can tell who anybody is or where they belong when we so obviously can and do, at least some of the time? If the bureaucrats think too hard they might actually realize they swore an oath to uphold the law and protect their constituents at all times, not just during the occasional natural crisis.
Yesterday Chertoff provided a good example of what I’m talking about. I wish someone had posted it online but I can’t find it. Anyway, imagine the minefield of contradictions he had to tiptoe through to describe how pulling guardsmen off the border wasn’t going to impact our security because he had talked to Mexican authorities and advised them it wouldn’t be a good idea to send people across the border for the next few days. What with all the fires down there and stuff. Por favor?
Mass deportation is unthinkable? Undoable? Yes, if you’re used to pretending there’s no way we can do anything about the millions of invaders then you certainly aren’t thinking. Or perhaps you’re just spending all your time thinking about sneaky ways to serve the invaders rather than We the People.
Update 24 Oct 2007: Well it isn’t all roses at the Q. Here’s a story from Immigration Watchdog about invaders doing what they do best. Taking. "Take what you need" translated to invaderese means "take it by the truckload and sell it until the police stop you". But of course the problems didn’t start until ICE was forced to do their job because the invaders were too brazen (or stupid) to lie about their status. Really, you should see these pathetic invader baby makers tell their sob story. They were caught, they returned the last truckload, no problemo!
Update 25 Oct 2007: Two online stories related to those linked above. The comments sections reflect the absolutely fed-up mood of Americans, whether toward our treasonous Senate’s undying NIGHTMARE Acts, or toward the invader parasites and our PC-addled ICE agents. It really is encouraging to see so many people have rejected the media’s brainwashing. Next step, wipe the viral infection and reboot.
Update 6 Nov 2007: Jared Taylor’s Africa in our Midst: Lessons from Katrina.
Tanstaafl, sorry to hear you are in the fire zone; you and yours will be in our prayers.
Excellent post, by the way. Thanks for giving us your account of the situation. You make some interesting and useful points about the illegal invasion in the context of this disaster.
I’m linking to this post in my blog entry about the fire.
-VA
Thank you VA. In retrospect I’m ashamed with my flippant tone. Many people here have lost their homes, and of all days I choose this one to write with such sarcasm. I think it has to do with the strange mix of giddy feelings I’ve gotten from not losing (yet) in this holocaust roulette. That is one definite contrast with Katrina, where just about everybody was screwed more or less. Here you either lose it all or walk away unscathed.
Tanstaafl,
You hit it, friend. It’s fascinating to watch the handwringing and teary-eyed television face workers describing the horror of people losing their homes to the conflagration, while overtly or tacitly supporting the degradation of entire neighborhoods and this beautiful state (I’m writing from Santa Monica at the moment) because of Mexican mass migration.
If it should happen to turn out that one or more of the fires had its origin in arson committed by migrants, the media will start telling us that fires are suppressed, they work hard, they do jobs that Americans won’t do like clearing excess brush.
Glad to hear you are safe.
Yes that’s it. We can see our government respond vigorously and decisively to one sort of short-term acute crisis, meanwhile it does nothing but deny and abet a long-term chronic and ultimately more fatal crisis.
Cheers to you Rick, enjoy what’s left of CA while it lasts!
I enjoyed your post. Sorry to those of you having to deal with all of it. I lost everything I own to fire about 10 years ago so I have some idea although certainly not in such fashion as open field/forest fires. I wouldn’t worry too much about the sarcasm, which I loved BTW, as you noted about the comments many/most people have had enough and I would imagine understand exactly where you are coming from. Good luck to you!
Thank you Ernest. Things are virtually back to normal again for me, though some friends and neighbors have been traumatized. Overall it was a good WTSHTF drill.
Q was no superdome. As described by the press and your own experience it was an orderly evac to Q versus a slog through swamplands to the island super D; No humidity with plenty of water on hand versus 100% humidity and supplies “in transit”; open air stadium versus super-sweat dome; interactive govt and media experience versus helicopters and Geraldo-vision from a distance (lets not forget the National Guard secured themselves in one section of super D).
Yes, the Q pop was certainly more agreeable (“we’re all in this together” – Brazil) like a New York blackout – but, the expectation was to sit in a safe zone until the all clear announcement – Super D was the hopeless finding themselves in a hopeless situation.
Holocaust – appropriate.
hol·o·caust (hl-kôst, hl-) KEY
NOUN: Great destruction resulting in the extensive loss of life, especially by fire.
Spitzer aka idiot. Glad my state taxes are going to the new 3-license program – whoopee! Wonder if Im eligible just to hold the scarlet letter – oh jeez thats a blog unto itself.
NYC in the ’70’s? Dont forget those New Jersey refineries pouring it over the SI landscape – remember that slaughter house odor off the Goethal’s Bridge. Hmmmm …. brings back the memories.
You nailed the hypocrisy home run with evac & deport. Look at the what happened to the II thieves – four were let go. Some system were paying for…
The differing natures of the NOLA and SD effects (widespread versus spotty) was certainly a contributing factor, but mostly what it did was cause there to be even more affluent White, ie civilized, folk at the Q than there would have been if the evacuations had been widespread and thus more demographically representative, ie more invaders.
Because it was mostly civilized people the situation stayed civilized. My Watson-like politically incorrect point is: behavior and race are correlated. But then anyone aware of the unpleasant reality of crime statistics knows that.
As it turned out the invaders did show up for the freebies, but since most of them were able to take those goodies back to their non-evacuation zone home (several times!) there wasn’t much of a need or even an opportunity for the mix of races to “get real” ala the Superdome.
How could I forget those Jersey vapors? After all, if I should die of “natural causes” some day, they’ll be what killed me.
a black majority would harass and terrorize a White minority at the Superdome while a White majority coexists quite peacefully with black and latino minorities at the Q . . .
I hadn’t heard about racist harassment of whites at SD. I googled it and came up empty. Do you have a source?
Thanks,
From the BBC, concerning British tourists stuck in the Superdome:
“He witnessed a good deal of violence, with scuffles going on and people breaking things.
“The group really feared for their safety because they were being targeted because they were the only white people there.
“The National Guard moved them out into the basketball stadium next door where the very sick were being held.
. . .
He said of his eventual Superdome refuge: “There was a lot of heat from the people in there, people shouting racial abuse about us being white.
More details from American Renaissance:
A group of about 30 British students were among the very small number of whites in the stadium, where they spent four harrowing days. Jamie Trout, 22, an economics major, wrote that the scene “was like something out of Lord of the Flies,” with “people shouting racial abuse about us being white.” One night, word came that the power was failing, and that there was only ten minutes’ worth of gas for the generators. Zoe Smith, 21, from Hull, said they all feared for their lives: “All us girls sat in the middle while the boys sat on the outside, with chairs as protection,” she said. “We were absolutely terrified, the situation had descended into chaos, people were very hostile and the living conditions were horrendous.” She said that even during the day, “when we offered to help with the cleaning, the locals gave us abuse.”
Mr. Trout said the National Guard finally recognized how dangerous the threat was from blacks, and moved the British under guard to the basketball area, which was safer. “The army warned us to keep our bags close to us and to grip them tight,” he said, as they were escorted out. Twenty-year-old Jane Wheeldon credited one man in particular, Sgt. Garland Ogden, with getting the Britons safely out. “He went against a lot of rules to get us moved,” she said.
Australian tourists stuck in the Superdome had the same experience. Bud Hopes, a 32-year-old man from Kangaroo Point, Brisbane, took control and may have saved many lives. As the stadium reverted to anarchy he realized whites were in danger, and gathered tourists together for safety. “There were 65 of us altogether so we were able to look after each other, especially the girls who were being grabbed and threatened,” said Mr. Hopes. They organized escorts for women who had to go to the toilet or for food, and set up a roster of men to stand guard while others slept. “We sat through the night just watching each other, not knowing if we would be alive in the morning,” Mr. Hopes said. “Ninety-eight percent of the people around the world are good,” he said; “in that place 98 per cent of the people were bad.”
John McNeil of Coorparoo in Brisbane tells what happened to their group, too, heard the lights were about to go out: “I looked at Bud [Hopes] and said, ‘That will be the end of us.’ The gangs had already eyed us off. If the lights had gone out we would have been in deep trouble. We were sitting there praying for a miracle and the lights stayed on.” Mr. Hopes said the Australians owed their lives to a National Guardsman who broke the rules and got whites out to a medical center past seething crowds of blacks.
Peter McNeil of Brisbane told the Australian AP that his son John was one of the 65 who managed to get out. The blacks were reportedly so hostile “they would stab you as soon as look at you.” “He’s never been so scared in his life,” explained Mr. McNeil. “He just said they had to get out of the dark. Otherwise, another night, he said, they would have been gone.” No American newspaper wrote about what these white tourists had gone through.
Emphasis mine.
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