OCTOBER 2, 2020 – This is hurricane season in the Atlantic, and among the many dynamics that will affect the outcome of the approaching election, I’ve long cited the weather. What happens in states from Florida to North Carolina and Alabama to Texas and beyond if a CAT 5 storm strikes on the eve of the CAT 10 election?
I woke up this morning to a different kind of storm, to the same news you did—Trump and Melania testing positive of for Covid. Already, skepticism abounds: is the “news” a ploy? Is it “fake news,” perpetrated by the Fraudster in Chief to demonstrate a quick recovery by way of a miracle cure? Or just the opposite—will the supposed positive testing be used for cover to disappear in the dark of night from a job he never wanted in the first place or . . . to save face from defeat in the upcoming election?
But there’s another possible scenario: he’s actually got the disease. On top of that is the possible outcome that given Trump’s pre-existing conditions—age and obesity, plaque in the arteries—the virus does him in, one way or another.
There’s yet another possibility on top of Trump’s demise or incapacity: that the president and his family in attendance at Tuesday night’s debate transmitted the disease to Biden, also at high risk because of age.
If you twirl these prospects around, then jump off the merry-go-round, you see “Pence vs. Harris” and the probability that Harris winds up as president sooner rather than later.
By that time, the hurricane-force winds of political upheaval will have swept across the entire country. While Covid hot states are bailing out from the record deluge of bad ideas and misinformation, the nation will be forced into a reckoning with its scorn for truth, facts, science, reason, civility, rule of law and all the other essential ingredients of a well-ordered society supportive of the constructive strivings of a broad mix of citizens.
Twenty-four hours, let alone 31 days, are an eternity in hurricane season. Will the storm stall over especially warm waters and gather greater force? Will its course shift more north than west? Will millions have time to evacuate before the full fury of the hurricane strikes? How long will power outages last? What effect will the disruption have on Covid transmission rates? With all eyes trained on the storm, who’s keeping an eye on the rest of our “normal” crises?
And so on.
We’ll all now have to pick up the pace of our daily slog through dispiriting headlines and articles about the state of our nation. We’ll need to rely on journalistic Hurricane Hunters, reporters that fly into the midst of the storm to gather data. We’ll then need to tune in to the journalistic meteorologists, insightful veterans of national crises, to provide appropriate warnings and advice on how to find our way to safety.
In the meantime, inspect your flashlights and test your batteries. You’ll need the back-up illumination.
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© 2020 by Eric Nilsson
