May 4 news item: A volcano is erupting on the Big Island of Hawaii and plans are underway to evacuate endangered communities as ash, toxic gas and lava spew high into the air.
May 4 news item: Rudy Giuliani, former New York mayor and latest roving attorney for Donald Trump, spewed a stream of lies for the 45th president, and nothing is happening to protect the nation from the pelting untruths meant to bury the billionaire’s unsavory history.
Nature and human history shutter with destructive events. Part of Pompeii, Italy, remains buried under 13 to 20 feet of ash from an eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 A.D. Archeologists have been unearthing the remains of the once-thriving town since 1748. It takes time to discover, uncover and preserve the evidence of life lived in its villas, shops and kitchen plots and by the stunned citizens who froze in their tracks under a torrent of pumice and ash.
On the other side of the world in 2018, it appears about 1,700 residents of housing estates around Mount Kilauea will suffer a less harsh fate and flee for safer ground.
But, what of us and the torrent of presidential lies – at this point reportedly numbering 3,000? What of us and our daily slog through jolting news headlines implying crimes and misdemeanors, followed by surveys of unfazed Trump supporters who airily dismiss them. There is no safer ground for us.
Stuck with these mind-boggling naysayers as their ill-equipped leader barges into delicate peace talks and trade talks and opens our coasts for offshore oil drilling, we wince and wait. All evidence is as perilous as rumblings far underground yet hard to detect for those who refuse to notice them. “It’s nothing, folks, move along.”
As to Giuliani, an aging New York City borough boy, he lies lavishly to a kindred demographic on Fox News, gamely selling the proverbial bridge from his home town to all takers. Meanwhile, they fuss over a potty-mouthed female comedian’s spin on a correspondence dinner roast as if that really matters. “Tut-tut” unless it’s spewing from their president’s potty mouth.
We have no idea how much seismic damage Trump will do to America, though he and his administration have left some clues: shamelessly preserving assault weapons for the NRA; naming preposterous nominees to government agencies; breaking the bonds of nuclear treaties, justice, safety nets and the environment. Nail them on insane shenanigans? Not while Republicans control Congress. It takes time to discover, uncover and preserve evidence, especially when brazen lawmakers shovel back over whatever comes to light.
Which reminds me: May to November is the time to push back on the old boys and rustle up enthusiasm for the midterm election of new lawmakers, even if candidates seem like work-a-day public servants – not like the lounge-lizard comic of a president at a rally, attacking a free press and stirring the crowd – his blah, blah, blahs building to a ho-hum crescendo of unprecedented greatness. Actually, public servants are allowed to just be people like you with sane ideas and the courage to take on the public’s shell-shocked lassitude.
It’s the lassitude that troubles, the puttering around in our kitchen plots while the lies pile on, burying us. It's not like that hasn’t happened before.
Coast of Hilo, Big Island's safer ground