When You're in Charge, They Let You Do It

Optics, Power, and the Hawaii Fires

As the disaster relief efforts continue in the aftermath of the Maui fires, many on the mainstream right have likened the Biden administration’s response here to George W. Bush’s response to Hurricane Katrina back in 2005. Speculation on the cause of the fire aside, it’s safe to say that the competency crisis was in full effect, leading to excess deaths and destruction of property.

It’s certainly been a field day for the mainstream right-of-center press to go on about how Biden is Marie Antoinette or just his usual “Sleepy Joe” self whenever it comes to actual crises such as the Maui fires. The lack of answers and the booing from outraged citizens don’t particularly mean much, except to those of us who look for the objective facts. If it hasn’t been made obvious in the last few years, “objective facts” don’t mean a thing to many people.

“It is what it is” is usually seen as an exasperated, resigned expression in acknowledgment that “that’s just the way things are,” and there’s little to nothing that you can do about it. While the outrage continues over the Maui fires, nothing will change the political facts on the ground in Hawaii at all. Countless children can be burnt to a crisp, and people can be forced to jump into the ocean to avoid the flames, while the water was turned off and no alarms were initially given; but it’s better than the other guy being in charge! Our good friend Battle Beagle explains it perfectly:

Biden, of course, isn’t the one in charge — anyone who believes otherwise is either a diehard partisan or simply insane. When Sam Harris said that he didn’t care whether Hunter Biden had children’s bodies in his basement, he meant it. These people in Hawaii had their kids vaporized, but they won’t change their vote or patronage.

That’s the nature of power: it’s totalizing, with narrative control and occasional fluctuations in how patrons and clients are maintained and handled. Yet the problem that exists for this current crop of managers trying to keep the emperor’s clothes on is that they display a propensity for senior moments and tone-deaf attempts at empathy:

Fellow Old Glory Club member NotMeNotYou made a good point here regarding the power of narratives:

In a nominally “democratic” system, narrative as a political formula is necessary for success in maintaining your grip on power. In the U.S., democracy has reached a point where the paper of record complains that we vote too much and that voting is bad for democracy anyway. This should be illustrative of where regime power is. To reference sign-tapper and Blaze contributor Auron MacIntyre, the State is totalizing, and any rightward direction in governance — such as reprimanding criminals or just wanting competent public servants — is anathema to the progressive regime under which we now live. I’ve long said that Progressivism is anti-civilizational: even if thousands must burn in order for them to maintain their grip on power, so be it.

Biden will take a hit in the polls. This will continue for as long as there are questions and speculations about whether this was all about buying up more land from the natives, or whether this was some ritualized sacrifice carried out by means of direct energy weapons. Hawaii, of course, will still vote Democrat, while the average citizen is being robbed to pay not only for the collective Zelensky but also for Jorge, who just crossed the Rio Grande. An official explanation will be nowhere to be found for months, if not years, to come. It will be swept under the rug, or the buck will be passed to the governor or some local emergency authorities just in time for another Trump Indictment, the debates, or the latest offensives in the Ukrainian War.

As this event unfolds, it will become a stress test for narrative control and how the administration’s bureaucracy can handle actual emergencies. It doesn’t bode well on the face of things as Biden is there tending to the locals and the super-wealthy, but it’s not like Hawaiians are all going to turn into dyed-in-the-wool right-wingers overnight, either. Although it’s particularly suspect that the Maui County Chief of Police was also on site in Las Vegas during the infamous 2017 shooting, about which we still know close to nothing.