Another Rant: Just More Stupidity And Entitlement

Anybody with two seconds to spare these days is aware of the latest volcanic activity in Hawaii. I'd feel sorry for all those folks whose homes and possessions are in danger of destruction ... if they'd not actually realized there were in a development in the volcano's potential path of destruction and they were not supposed to build there in the first place. That's just the first level of stupidity.

As we all are aware, there are very few stupid things that our President* can't make more stupid. He's proclaimed it a disaster zone. We can start with, "Well, duh!" because our compassion bones are tweaked for all those folks and what the consequences are to them for thinking they can outwit a force of nature.  (Oh, if only I believed Trump had a compassion bone!) But the point of a disaster declaration is making available low cost loans for rebuilding homes and infrastructure. The hubris of such an ambition in this location leaves me stunned. What do they think they can do? Dig up the cooled lava because they have some magic way of knowing the volcano is through with its cycle of activity, when every geologist knows it's a permanent part of the island creation cycle, so somehow there's a point to repairing the roads and digging new sewers? Or because they magically know the flow won't change course again and spread into new territory? You know, so all of that magic makes a low cost loan actually useful for something?

It makes just as much sense as leaving offerings next to the lava flows for Pele. Heck, even the people who go through those motions understand that Pele will do whatever Pele will do. Or as one of them said on TV: "Welcome to Paradise!"

The only things I've heard that make any sense at all have been ordering evacuations with the warning there will be no rescues, closing the National Park, and clearing out tanker-loads of flamable liquids from the nearby power plant. In other words, admit the mistakes and move somewhere else.

If you follow this blog, you have read similar sentiments about people building their expensive dream homes right along the seacoast, then whine when the next storm and the following storm remove the beach sand and destroy part or all of their homes. But somehow they are "entitled" to have the government, aka your taxes, enable their repetitions of the same stupidity. And of course, insurance companies continue to insure them and raise premiums for the rest of us to make up their inevitable losses.

Hey guys, everything changes but change. We don't get to stop it. And I am rapidly losing my idealistic faith in my fellow humans to learn and adapt, or stop holding their hands out after the predictable occurs. Sea levels are rising. Glaciers are melting. Species are disappearing. Earthquakes keep happening, rivers keep flooding, droughts keep happening, forest fires keep burning, mudslides keep following, storms are being fed more energy. It's not a question of whether,  just where, when, and how extreme.

Anybody remember that archaic term, "thousand-year event"? Some newscasters now have actually stopped using it every 5 or 6 years. Apparently some few of us are capable of adapting.