A new threaded post on this topic can be found here. For previous posts about the Harreld hire, click the tag below.
08/16/20 — Having your suburban homestead blasted by a derecho has a certain clarifying effect on the mind. No electrical power for 70 hours, no internet for 85 hours, yet I know I am one of the lucky ones. In Iowa City/Johnson County I had no damage to structures or trees, and only lost a little food after securing most of the frozen goods offsite. Meanwhile, Cedar-Rapids/Linn County just to the north was obliterated, and going on six days now tens of thousands are still without power and a thousand homes have been deemed unsafe for human habitation until repairs are made. (Which will now bring out the con artists by the score, fleecing people when they are in most in need, and when law enforcement is otherwise occupied.)
The most interesting mental aspect of the power outage was that even though I was witness to the storm, I had no information about the storm. It also became clear as days passed, and as I picked up a little news here and there, that most of the country was oblivious to what happened. A landed hurricane launched a sneak attack on the Midwest, yet both coasts and the Sun Belt cared not a whit. Yes, the pandemic accounted for some of that, but I also lay blame squarely on Iowa’s demon governor and the leadership in Linn County, which failed utterly to provide for its dazed citizenry and to communicate to the outside world the severity of the damage. (As I have said many times, if this had happened on the East Coast, and particularly around New York City, it would have received wall-to-wall coverage for days.)
Having said all that, for three days I didn’t think about the idiot president of the United States or the idiots at the Iowa Board of Regents. I did think about the illegitimate idiot in the president’s office at the University of Iowa, and about the idiot in the athletic director’s office at UI, because I heard that the Big Ten finally cancelled its football season. But even then the only substantive thought I had was that it’s a real problem that we keep electing and appointing idiots to important leadership positions.