Hurricane Sandy is no longer a merely natural event. An apotheosis, a transfiguration has occurred.
Months after the storm ravaged the east coast of the United States in late October 2012, the event has risen to the level of legitimating myth, and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries seems as if he hopes to solidify the status of super storm Sandy as sacred story.
Rep. Jeffries has had Sandy on his mind a lot lately, and the event has served as a useful tool in helping him score political points as the representative of areas that were highly affected by the storm. For many, Sandy didn’t just happen. It is happening. It is still affecting our politics. It is, like Noah’s flood, the disaster as myth, a story of catastrophe used as a tool of legitimation.
An immaculate example of this would be Rep. Jeffries recent media flame war with Executive Vice President and CEO of the National Rifle Association, Wayne LaPierre.
LaPierre, in a Feb. 13th article in the Daily Caller, made his own attempt at a tropological reading of Sandy. In his manifesto-article, he states:
No wonder Americans are buying guns in record numbers right now, while they still can and before their choice about which firearm is right for their family is taken away forever.
After Hurricane Sandy, we saw the hellish world that the gun prohibitionists see as their utopia. Looters ran wild in south Brooklyn. There was no food, water or electricity. And if you wanted to walk several miles to get supplies, you better get back before dark, or you might not get home at all.
Anti-gun New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had already done everything he could to prevent law-abiding New Yorkers from owning guns, and he has made sure that no ordinary citizen will ever be allowed to carry a gun. He even refused to allow the National Guard into the city to restore civil order because Guardsmen carry guns!
Here we have an example of Sandy as myth used to justify dogmatic ideological beliefs. LaPierre’s assertion that post-Sandy South Brooklyn instantly descended into a Hobbesian nightmare scenario once the regular course of society was interrupted has little to no basis in reality. But of course, myths do not need to have literally happened to serve the purpose of the holy men who propagate them.
Rep. Jeffries, the Congressional representative of the Brooklyn area in question, quickly stood up and defended his district’s reputation from LaPierre’s heretical Sandy theology with that eternal enemy of the myth… the facts.
“There’s Wayne’s world and then the real world,” Rep. Jeffries said. “In Wayne’s world the facts don’t matter.”
According to the NYPD themselves, overall citywide crime actually fell 25% directly after Sandy, and the city went a record eight days without a murder. In South Brooklyn specifically, despite sporadic cases of looting, shootings and robberies went down by 17% and 22% respectively.
Mayor Bloomberg did mention guns when he explained why he didn’t want to call in the National Guard, but his main point was that calling in the National Guard was simply unnecessary and a waste of resources. Bloomberg’s exact words were:
The National Guard has been helpful, but the NYPD is the only people we want on the street with guns, and we don’t need it. There has been one or two minor outbreakings, disgraceful though they may be, of looting reported in the paper, but the vast bulk of people are doing the right thing. And in Brooklyn people are safe the same way as they are in the rest of the city. We have the resources. The NYPD is 100 percent confident that we can protect the public. We’ve been doing this for an awful long time. You just have to take a look at the crime rate to understand how good a job this is. And the National Guard has plenty of responsibilities. There are plenty of locations upstate and into surrounding states where they don’t have a police department the size of New York, and they can use help from the state, and that’s where they should be.
Rep. Jeffries then sent a letter to LaPierre demanding that he repent for his Sandy heresy stating:
I urge you to formally apologize to the residents of southern Brooklyn for your insensitive and factually inaccurate statements. In addition, I extend an invitation for you to visit the neighborhoods of Coney Island and Sea Gate, witness the devastation first hand and meet the patriotic American citizens you have chosen to insult. The people of southern Brooklyn look forward to your response.
But besides the factual inaccuracies of LaPierre’s Sandy myth, the political purpose for which it was crafted was another reason for Rep. Jeffries to denounce LaPierre’s fantastic version of the events. Rep. Jeffries, if he wanted to be seen as a valiant and noble defender of his district, simply could not allow the descent of South Brooklyn into anomic chaos to become part of Sandy orthodoxy. What kind of representative doesn’t stand up for those he represents? Answer: one that doesn’t expect to be re-elected.
Also, Jeffries supports President Obama’s gun control plan which LaPierre, as shown in his Daily Caller article, opposes very strongly. Exposing one of LaPierre’s premises as utterly false thus results in his argument in favor of less gun control falling apart. Serious arguments over gun control can then be dismissed as the rantings of kooky 2nd Amendment zealots like LaPierre.
Clik here to view.
But Rep. Jeffries doesn’t just chastise heretics. He also assists in establishing Sandy orthodoxy.
According to Rep. Jeffries and 353 of his colleagues in the House of Representatives, Sandy was an extraordinary event that warrants the allocation of taxpayer money to the rebuilding of houses of worship damaged by the hurricane. Normally, the use of state funds to help build religious establishments would run contrary to the Establishment clause. But Sandy, the Disaster, the Exceptional Moment, has changed all that! Now, members of Congress can score more points with their districts’ religious constituents and can boast of bringing even more money back to their districts. Secularism and the ACLU be damned!
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn laid it out clearly in a letter supporting the bill.
“Recovery from a natural disaster like Hurricane Sandy isn’t a matter of state sponsoring religion. It’s a matter of helping those in need after one of the worst natural disasters our country has ever seen,” she said.
“Under such extraordinary and painful circumstances, houses of worship should be eligible to receive aid on the same basis as all other non-profits damaged by the hurricane.”
This use of Sandy’s exceptional nature against the separation of church and state has, of course, also been repeated by clerics as well. Constance SanFilippo-Hulla, pastor of the Coney Island Gospel Assembly located in Rep. Jeffries’ district, says she has no problem with the separation of church and state.
“I’m for that actually,” she said. “But when it comes to a natural disaster, I think all of those walls come down… We all have to link arms and get the job done, because it does take everyone working together.”
Her church did some great work helping victims of Sandy, and she claims that she helps people regardless of religious affiliation. But she also gives sermons on the “sin of homosexuality” and claims that her church preaches “the real gospel.” She also passionately wants “Coney Island to know Jesus.” Should state funds go to rebuilding her church?
The Nation of Islam, which has a mosque in Rep. Jeffries’ district, and the Church of Scientology both claim to also have provided much needed social services in the aftermath of Sandy, and the bill says that state funds would go to houses of worship “without regard to the religious character of the facility or the primary religious use of the facility.” Should taxpayer money go to any of their houses of worship damaged by Sandy?
While such a thought would usually make liberals recoil in fear, serving constituents and placating the religious come before secularism in this case for Rep. Jeffries and his colleagues. Sandy, as the Disaster and the Exceptional Moment, provides the perfect narrative by which you can justify taking down “those walls” that separate church and state.
And though supporters of the bill may insist that giving money to institutions embedded in these communities is the best way to help people, certain cases, like that of Victory Gospel Chapel Ministries of New Orleans, have already taught us that providing state funds to churches isn’t always the most efficient use of resources. In that case, the church was provided with over $200,000 in FEMA funds for repairs after Hurricane Katrina. The money was spent, but the repairs never happened. But who are we to question how the Lord spends His money?
It’s certainly understandable that these politicians are willing to do what it takes to bring state funds back to their district. And these areas do need help in order to fully recover from Sandy. But along with offerings, the Moloch known as “The Constituents” also demands sacrifices. Something good must die for their salvation. So the separation of church and state has been laid on that altar known as the floor of Congress. And Sandy as the Unique Disaster, the mythical narrative behind all of this, serves as the justification of this sacrifice.
In LaPierre’s strange Sandy mythology, South Brooklyn’s reputation becomes the lamb burned in the name of “Gun Rights” and the Second Amendment. In both cases, reality is distorted and mystified in the name of narrow political agendas, a myth is called upon to move people to action.
And in this world turned upside down, natural disasters have metaphysical significance, and liberals use myths as a weapon against secularism.