No Help Coming
Reflections on Hurricane Helene
It looks like a warzone. Something out of Aleppo. But its pictures of western North Carolina, South Carolina, east Tennessee, and Georgia you’re seeing on your timeline. Seemingly no one expected Hurricane Helene to be this bad this far inland. Deaths and missing persons are in the hundreds already, and that figure will surely rise over the coming weeks. Already neglected, historic towns that will never be rebuilt were literally swept away. But it is the response, or lack thereof, from those ostensibly running the government that should shock people almost as much as the damage itself. The storm represents death and destruction in more ways than one.
The plight of Appalachia in the wake of Helene is a microcosm of the salutary neglect of the incumbent regime toward that part of the country. The part of the country that disproportionately fights and dies in the forever wars. In grossly poetic fashion, last weekend, just as the storm was slamming into the Carolinas and East Tennessee, the Tennessee National Guard deployed some 700 troops to Kuwait. To be clear, National Guard, including Florida’s, have deployed to Appalachia to perform search and rescue operations. But that’s not the point. While billions are being funneled overseas to defend the borders of other nations and offer humanitarian aid in conflict zones of our own making, the most neglected region of America is literally (and metaphorically) being swept away. Recall that George Bush was castigated by every major news outlet after Katrina. Don’t expect the same media defense for the deplorables. A lot of MAGA yard signs were washed out by Helene.
Federal attention to Appalachia post-Helene has been, to put it mildly, delayed and unenthusiastic. Vice President Kamala Harris proudly tweeted a clearly staged picture of herself Monday morning ostensibly being briefed by the North Carolina governor. In front of her is her phone next to a blank sheet of paper. As many users pointed out, her headphones aren’t plugged into her phone. The shot belongs in the Louvre, as they say.
While Biden was in Rehoboth, again, and Harris was out fundraising in San Francisco, another tragic metropolitan picture of liberal rule, Donald Trump was on the ground in Georgia. In any normal race, the media would be emphasizing how presidential he looked in comparison to his opponents. Shaking hands with non-profit responders, surveying the destruction, giving speeches amidst the rubble. No such luck for the Donald, as is to be expected. The media no longer covers events, it shapes them.
To illustrate how deep the Democrat disdain for flyover country is, they are incapable even of pursuing their own self-interest. A golden opportunity was not so much missed as ignored. Here was a chance for the Democrats to cut into Trump’s base with shock and awe disaster relief. There’s a reason that FDR is still beloved in Tennessee Valley Authority world: the attention to infrastructure and employment, not to mention regular visits to the region. He died in Warm Springs, Georgia, after all. As Charles Haywood put it, “In a dark basement somewhere, James Carville is screaming obscenities.”
Of course, this is nothing new for Appalachia. A truly heartbreaking account of how the federal government has preyed upon and utterly decimated the people that used to produce energy and fuel for the nation was written up in National Affairs last spring by Sally Satel. It’s a must-read history of the very intentional origins of the opioid crisis at the hands of big business and big government. Oliver Anthony might be forgotten already, which seems to be his intention, but “Rich Men North of Richmond” caught fire for good reason. The sentiments and experience imbedded in the tune is exactly what Trump has been able to tap into, and if his efforts are purely cynical then he’s very good at acting genuine. This enrages the establishment, obviously, but not enough induce a shift in their approach to the region Helene just flattened. Instead, the left beats these people over the head for being anachronistic on the latest thing, for being sub-fluent in the new lexicon of equity and inclusion, for not embracing the global economy. Learn to code is our generations let them eat cake. Hate is a helluva drug. More fundamentally, what this demeanor of the incumbent regime is how unfit they are to rule.
When Caesar’s legions were ambushed by the Nervii, and his men were beginning to falter, Caesar “snatched a shield from one of the soldiers at the rear (he had come out without his own shield) and made his way to the front line.” Once at the front, Caesar “called upon the centurions by name,” of which there would have been dozens, though many had fallen, “and encouraged the men.” He gave them “fresh hope and heartened them.” Thus, the tide was turned, and the Romans emerged victorious, the campaign saved.
This is what a true aristos looks like. We are forced to read ancient tales of them because we have lacked such a class for so long. Caesar called on each centurion by name. Meaning, he actually knew them. He had taken the time. He stood shoulder to shoulder with his men, and they loved him for it.
Our oligarchs can barely name a town between New York and Los Angeles. They actually expect you to vote for them: people like Tim Walz, whose main accomplishment was handing over his state to mobs and boarding up people in their homes for two years, are their standard bearers, cosplaying the red-blooded heartland American. Trump is a “tragic hero.” He serves as an imperfect contrast to all this in that he may pave the way for the return of true aristoi, one that understand the mood of the people, identifies with their plight, and stands shoulder-to-shoulder with them in the midst of chaos and danger. For this we should pray. Whatever else Harris-Walz represent it is certainly not a pathway to future renewal, but rather ever more entrenched kleptocracy.
More immediately, the people of my home state, Tennessee, and North and South Carolina, and Georgia need help. Good Americans are even now rallying to bring it to them. This kind of neighborly and patriotic self-help reminds us that true America still exists, in pockets, the very pockets the regime has intentionally ignored for decades. We should not soon forget all this. It is a picture of what is happening all across the country. No help from our regime, no protection, is afforded to the maintenance of the American way of life. They would sooner see it washed away. Good riddance. If Americans want to hang on to their history, their place, their way of life, they are going to have to recover the frontier spirit of their ancestors and do it themselves. This is not an ideological assertion—heaven forbid. It is a practical reality never more on display than right now. But there’s something else to be said. Disasters, storms, war, famine, have a way–or should–of opening our eyes to reality, both human and spiritual. Self-reliance in the American tradition has never been detached from the indispensable preliminary: reliance on God and his Providence. There is much talk of spiritual awakening, or at least newfound spiritual awareness, in this country. If that is true, and I think it is, then a storm of this magnitude should exasperate it. For those Americans who claim Christ already, Hurricane Helene should remind you to think like an American Protestant again.
Our ancestors of the Protestant religion used to view natural disasters Providentially. A storm that sunk a Spanish or French fleet was a sign of God’s favor; an earthquake that rattled New England towns was one of judgment. Whatever the case, such events invoked in them reflection and prayer.
In 1772, Alexander Hamilton wrote to his father about a hurricane that hit the island of St. Croix (West Indies). The letter was later published in the Royal Danish American Gazette. Witnessing the terrifying power and devastation of the storm, Hamilton reflected on the moment and his own mortality, recording his internal conversation and prayer in the midst of the tumult and his conclusions thereafter.
“Where no, oh! Vile worm, is all they boasted fortitude and resolution? What is become of thine arrogance and self-sufficiency? Why dost thou tremble and stand aghast? How humble, how helpless, how contemptible you now appear. And for why? The jarring of elements—the discord of clouds? Oh! Impotent presumptuous fool! How durst thou offend that Omnipotence, whose nod alone were sufficient to quell the destruction that hovers over thee, or crush thee into atoms? See thy wretched helpless state, and learn to know thyself. Learn to know thy best support. Despise thyself, and adore thy God.”
Hamilton continues,
“He who gave the winds to blow, and the lightnings to rage—even him have I always loved and served. His precepts have I observed. His commandments have I obeyed—and his perfections have I adored. He will snatch me from ruin… Hark—ruin and confusion on every side. ‘Tis thy turn next [i.e., death]; but one short moment, even now, Oh, Lord help. Jesus be merciful!”
Eventually, in the midst of his prayer, God allayed the storm, Hamilton writes.
“But see, the Lord relents. He hears our prayer. The Lightning ceases. The winds are appeased. The warring elements are reconciled and all things promise peace. The darkness is dispell’d and drooping nature revives as the approaching dawn. Look back Oh! My soul, look back and tremble. Rejoice at thy deliverance, and humble thyself in the presence of they deliverer.”
Helene has likewise afforded us a time of reflection, repentance, and sobriety, both as to our own spiritual condition and to the moral state of our country. In this respect, we should feel deep shame if we let such suffering pass without, as Hamilton put it, learning “humility and contempt of ourselves” through our “helpless condition.” For “That which, in a calm unruffled temper, we call a natural cause, seemed then like the correction of the Deity.”
But this most necessary reflection does not preclude the analysis above. Hamilton ends his letter on a curious note. “Our General,” that is Ulrich Wilhelm Roepstorff, the governor of St. Croix, “has issued several very salutary and humane regulations [i.e., policies], and both in his publick and private measures, has shewn himself the Man.” Think on this too this November, and do not let the sufferings and neglect of your countrymen in Appalachia fall too quickly from memory.
I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help. My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.
Editor’s note: an earlier version of this article stated that “at time of writing,” no federal aid had been given to Appalachia in the wake of Hurricane Helene. This was from an earlier draft of the article and has since been corrected. FEMA has been deployed as of Monday.
Image: Claude-Joseph Vernet, A Shipwreck In Stormy Seas (1773).