There may be no predicament harder than choosing the worse of two evils. In the past few days, I’ve wrestled with two profoundly nefarious ones. They are as follows. While in an elected position, act wildly irresponsible and inadequate in response to a major crisis. Or the second, cover up that failure by supplying information you know to be false in an effort to mislead the American public and protect your political well-being. This is exactly the situation unfolding with the current administration and its response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
The official death toll is estimated to be 64 people. In the past few weeks, both the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Economist have reported the death toll to be in the thousands. How in the world can the federal government, a multi-trillion-dollar entity produce such a substantially inaccurate estimate except with the sole purpose to mislead? The negligence is overwhelming.
You probably haven’t heard much about Hurricane Maria lately. I encourage you to seek out proper information regarding Puerto Rico’s current wellbeing. Immerse yourself the best you can for just a few minutes in the fear Puerto Ricans must feel. They lost friends and family. Lives were changed forever. They need our help. Yet, before many worry about how we’ll help, they worry if the White House will ever report an accurate death toll. This is nothing short of madness.
Give the White House the benefit of the doubt for a moment. Let’s say they really were unsure and could only confirm 64 deaths, while accepting that there were likely thousands more. When did it become okay to give false information while waiting for the right information? When did we become complacent with any information instead of the right information? If the administration really was unsure, they should’ve come out and said it.
The U.S. has seen a handful of deadly and destructive hurricanes since the turn of the century. From Katrina to Sandy to Maria and the many in between, we’ve experienced loss and tragedy, no doubt making mistakes in our previous responses. The actions of this administration are not mistakes we can overlook or repeat. In our lifetimes we will see many more natural disasters.
The Commander-in- Chief shoulders a similarly great responsibility in managing the response to a natural disaster as they do in fighting an enemy in war; the wrong decisions can prove deadly for a great many of our people. We need to demand better for our people.