A Blizzard that Never Was Beyond Benign

A Blizzard that Never Was Beyond Benign

Blow, blow, thou winter wind.
Thou art not so unkind
As man’s ingratitude;
Thy tooth is not so keen,
Because thou art not seen,
Although thy breath be rude.

~~William Shakespeare, As You Like It

The religious acolytes of Global Warming are collectively twisting themselves into Brooklyn pretzels or the more elaborately designed pigtails of most Mongolian warlords to spin the latest spell of the winter Polar Vortex into an appropriate fit for the global warming narrative.  The endeavor to retrofit a natural phenomenon into the template of a pre-conceived hypothesis that serves as the main vehicle for a social advocacy agenda has the unintended effect of distorting the quality of the event to appear more severe than it actually is.

It behooves to emphasize sans apologies that the existence of atmospheric vortices had been sufficiently established by Helmholtz 150 years ago to behave according to the Navier-Stokes nonlinear partial differential equations in fluid dynamics.  Ergo, long before Al Gore was a hint of a glint in his father’s eyes for a hormonal escapades, the physics of vortices was a settled science. 

The introduction of “polar vortex” terminology into the global warming lexicon is nothing more than an attempt by an unhinged movement to impress and deceive a gullible public into believing that a highfalutin term could lend credence and respectability to the movement’s rhetoric.

It’s difficult to avoid the impression that the younger generation has become soft and somnambulant in both understanding and handling natural-physical adversity.  There was a time when I had to hike both ways of a normally forty-five minute tramcar ride from my living quarters to school to take my finals in Organic Chemistry when all public transportation was suspended, snowed out if you will. 

Kyoto University did not reschedule the exams and I did not make such a big deal about the rather memorable trek.  I could not even write about it until now and that was the winter of 1967.  Apparently, either the public is getting soft or the reporting infrastructure has gotten super idle it does not have much to talk about.  To compensate for the deficit and salvage its relevance, the media has resorted to exaggerating the gravity of events.

This is not to rule out the likelihood that the media has just been preparing the public for the worst while hoping for the best.  Giving anybody credit for good intentions is benign until the unintended consequences of good intentions backfire as they often do.

I observed on my Facebook page while the snow was falling that it bordered on the amazing how a blizzard was much more fascinatingly enjoyable when appreciated from the warmth and comfort behind my glass window.  Having been acutely aware that I would not even be allowed to take part in the clean-up proceedings in its aftermath when the storm finally settled down, the so-called storm had not even made it to my list of emergency concerns.

The County Sanitation contractor crew cleared the heart of Howe Court, the main access to my residence, before I went to bed. The accumulation appeared to be of very fine-grained powdery type~~a potential back-breaker to shovel off the ground.  I looked forward to posting on Facebook amusing pictures of the landscape by the morrow.

I ended up having to apologize for not being able to deliver on my intention to post pictures of the “blizzard.”  To begin with, there really was not much of a blizzard to write home about.  My grandson cleared up the driveway and walk-paths before I could find my boots to go outside and take pictures, not to mention about trying to find the upload-enabled camera.

Lest the political angle is lost in the shuffle, let it stay on the record that the blizzard that was not, served as the centerpiece of the newly installed New York City mayor’s first order of business.  It was immaterial that there was less than six inches of snow on the ground.  The most important point is he paid proper obeisance to the Sanitation Workers’ Union whose coffers are one of the more reliable sources of the Democrat Party’s campaign funds.

Mayor De Blasio, for all practical purposes sails left of the activist retired entertainer Harry Belafonte.  The mayor is the one who has the electoral mandate to translate, by whatever means, into harsh reality the Utopian fantasies of good old calypso Harry.  Belafonte only parleys the dreams and phantasms of social equality.  Mayor De Blasio distributes the dollars and cents and kindred resources.  For starters, he assured expectant Gothamites that under his watch the distribution of snow plows to liberate the hapless New Yorkers from the clutches of the blizzard shall be equitable amongst Gotham’s five boroughs.

All the electorate need to do is make sure they stay out of the way of those devoted sanitation workers so they can perform their jobs with due diligence unencumbered by the petty daily chores of New Yorkers living their lives.  The scarcer they keep themselves the safer they would be.  This projected the profile of the Nanny State at its finest.

Mayor De Blasio having been elected by “74% to 24% — the largest margin of victory by a non-incumbent in any mayor’s race in city history,” appeared somewhat justified in claiming an electoral mandate for his agenda.  The qualifier “somewhat” is in order because this margin was dwarfed by Pres. Obama’s winning “81% of the vote in New York City in 2012.”

Usurpation of political prerogatives being the hallmark of the Obama paradigm of governance, Mayor De Blasio had deservedly earned the mantle of distinction as implementor par excellence of Pres. Obama’s progressive statist designs on Americans of any and all political persuasions. 

Proceed, proceed: we will begin these rites,
As we do trust they'll end, in true delights.

~~William Shakespeare, As You Like It