There is an anecdote about the eleventh-century King Canute. His courtiers fawned on the old man, praising his dominion over land and sea. Canute ordered them to carry him to the far edge of the beach that had been exposed by the ebbing tide. He had them set his sedan chair right at the water’s edge and then commanded the sea not to get him wet. Of course, the incoming tide gave Canute a soaking and gave his courtiers a warning against exaggeration and flattery.
Our Ruler (some have called him King Con) is also surrounded by flatterers and yes-men. But unlike King Canute, he takes their flatteries at face value, for they coincide with his own self-evaluation. Trump recently got it into his head that Alabama was endangered. He called it “the great state of Alabama,” a characteristic phrase of George Wallace’s.
Where did he get Alabama? At least we know that it was not from the U.S. Weather Service. But whether he had earlier overheard someone mention Alabama in another context, or thought up Alabama’s peril all on his own, he has been sticking to his guns and even conjured up a Weather Service map that had been clumsily falsified to show Dorian menacing Alabama.
Why did he mention Alabama? Perhaps he was trying to play-act the “Empathetic President” and show the depth of his concern for Alabama. According to the latest U.S. News evaluative comparison of the 51 states, Alabama comes in at the 46th place in health care, 45th in economy, and 50th in education. So support for Trump in Alabama runs very deep. Or did he make his mistaken statement only because he was feeling expansive and wanted to show how supremely well-informed he was about a coming national emergency.
In any case, whatever he scribbled on the Weather Service map, even Mr. Trump cannot make a storm blow to the West if it does not want to. Unlike King Canute, who was quite ready to admit he had no dominion over nature, Trump was asserting his dominion, not over nature, but over information about nature. He knew where the storm was going, just as he knows that Climate Change is bogus.