The story I wanted to write today is about “My Last Republican Friend”.
I’ll write you the Twitter version.
A plot line so insidious even Hollywood would not have written it unfolded along the Louisiana coast.
One day the photo of twisting metal blanketed the front page of the Times-Picayune and scientists were chartering boats and CNN was live-streaming the gushing oil.
In the window of time between knowing a disaster is inevitable but not yet knowing the extent there’s a particular feeling that I’ve never quite been able to name. It’s a kind of dreadful anticipation.
I evacuated with a group of girls, including the conservative beauty queen, I had known for a week.
This was, of course, a lie (fueled by Corexit).
One of my professors put us in the car and drove us down to the coast so we could see for ourselves what was happening.
(Never mind that it was her hero’s enemy I was criticizing for not doing enough.)
I told you, plotline so insidious even Hollywood would not write it.
The Republican Party gives them a roll of paper towels to clean up the consequences of century-long inequalities, superficial emergency management policies, & capitalism.
My unwieldy anger at injustice was met with her cruel indifference.
And so, she became My Last Republican Friend.
I know that will make some of you mad. I don't like the place where it leaves us either.
I see her now, every day when the President lies from the podium about the pandemic.
Of course, both disasters and science are political, and in ignoring that fact we do harm.
Silence gets people killed.
Silence means Bounty is the sponsor of our national disaster policy.
If we don't make changes now there will be more and more ten year anniversaries that will be largely ignored.