There are some serious disasters affecting our country right now.  California wildfires. The Covid-19 pandemic. Our disastrous withdrawal from the war in Afghanistan. And now, Hurricane Ida.  Once upon a time, historians looked upon wars and natural disasters as nature’s way of controlling the population.  However, no one thinks that way anymore. We look to our leaders to prevent such events, or get them under control once they occur.  Unfortunately,  some things can’t be fixed.

Governor Newsom is undergoing a recall election in California right now.  He’s getting blamed  for a lot of things, and one of them is the wildfires. .  They say he could have prevented them if he’d managed the forest growth better.  Newsom promised to  clear underbrush and thin forests with prescribed burns and other techniques, Wow.  Should our governors go all over the states chopping down trees ?  That would be an unimaginably complex undertaking, involving a lot of private and public property.  I don’t follow California politics, and I have no opinion  as to Governor Newsom’s competence.  Nevertheless, I think the extreme heat was the main cause of the wildfires.

The Covid-19 virus was a political football from the git-go. President Trump didn’t take it seriously. He  predicted the epidemic would be over by Easter of 2020.  And even though he pushed through the development of a vaccine, it wasn’t enough for the voters. Consequently,  he lost to Biden, who everyone thought would get the virus under control.

Biden’s doing his best to get everyone vaccinated, but we’re still in the midst of  a pandemic  It seems to me we’re expecting miracles from our presidents and state governors.  They can  try, but they can’t outwit nature.

And now, we have Hurricane Ida.   Homes destroyed.   Three weeks without power in New Orleans.  No  way to cook or run your air conditioner.     The misery goes on and on.  Yes FEMA can step in and help rescue stranded people, provide food and supplies and shelter.  But in the end, the damage was done by an act of nature and there’s nothing any one could have done to prevent it from happening  20 years after Katrina..

Remember the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 29 AD? The city of Pompeii and surrounding cities were buried under volcanic ash.  Thousands were killed. Titus was the Roman Emperor at the time, and he organized a huge relief effort to help the victims of the disaster.  But there’s no record of anyone complaining that he didn’t do enough.

Some things can’t be fixed.